Campus Apartments Inc., which is redeveloping the former Seneca hotel building at East Broad Street and South Grant Avenue, would pay the city $2.25 million to turn the late-19th century school property at 400 E. Town St. into 71 rental units.

Campus Apartments CEO David Adelman expects to spend $13 million on the Deaf School project, which would open in the 2008.

The project would mark the next development phase for Campus Apartments in Columbus, where it has only the 80-apartment Seneca project under way. . . “Our goal is to have between 800 and 1,000 apartments in any market we’re in,” Adelman said. The Deaf School project would go “toward our goal of creating a critical mass in the market,” he added. . . . City Council must approve a sale to Campus Apartments.

New Horizons Housing Columbus, a division of Philadelphia-based CKS & Associates Management LLC, proposed a conversion of the Deaf School into 63 apartments. The developer in September purchased the Market Mohawk apartment complex as it builds its own portfolio in Columbus.

Bret Adams, co-developer of the Bar of Modern Art on East Broad Street, joined Bob Hoying of Crawford Hoying Smith Real Estate Services and Columbus attorney Gary Gitlitz in a bid for the building. The trio proposed building as many as 55 condominiums at the site.

“All were capable of doing their proposal,” said John Rosenberger, Capitol South’s executive director. “Campus Apartments just had the stronger proposal.”

Columbus Historic Preservation Officer Randy Black said Campus Apartments’ expected use of federal tax credits for the project means the developer must adhere to strict guidelines when redeveloping the site. “…. good, effective reuse of a historic building,” said Black, who served on a Capitol South panel evaluating the competing proposals.

He also liked the courtyard that Schooley Caldwell Associates Inc. designed for Campus Apartments to connect the building with Deaf School Park, where other buildings in the former Ohio School for the Deaf complex once stood.

“The park is a critical piece of that building,” . . . . the renovations wouldn’t begin until fall, after the last of the office tenants leave and the developer’s design and construction plans are finalized.