Sawyer Towers Demolition: A Community Commemoration
On the morning of December 25, 2022, Commissioner Erica C. Crawley was the second person to arrive at Sawyer Towers on Columbus's near east side. Pipes had burst inside the 16-story building. Every elevator had failed. Firefighters were carrying seniors down stairwells because there was no other way to get them out.
What she saw that morning set the course for everything that followed.
"Nothing prepares you to see water pouring through the ceilings of a 16-story building," Crawley said at the May 21 demolition commemoration. "Nothing prepares you to watch firefighters carry seniors down stairwell after stairwell because there is no other way to get them out."
The building, known over the years as Bolivard Arms, Sawyer Towers, and Latitude 525, had been in decline long before that morning. Residents had filed maintenance requests and gone to court. Broken elevators, mold, no heat, no hot water. Management companies that, as Crawley put it, "ignored court orders rather than fix a pipe." The Christmas collapse was the final result of years of strategic neglect.
That morning, 309 families were displaced in the middle of winter. Most of them had nowhere to go. Rick Hammond, a veteran who moved in through the VA after losing his wife, packed one duffel bag and evacuated. Diana Prisock left behind her five cats and a family Bible filled with generations of births and deaths.
The county and city responded immediately. Franklin County Job and Family Services, the Office on Aging, Justice Policy and Programs, Child Support, and the Family Stabilization Unit were all called in. CODA, Red Cross, Legal Aid, and the Community Shelter Board responded alongside city departments. Chief Pryor stayed late at Dodge Recreation Center because, as Crawley later said, nobody who loses their home on Christmas should wake up surrounded by strangers. County teams returned the day after Christmas because a one-week gap in benefits can sink a family already in crisis.
A court case followed. With Legal Aid attorneys and the city's law department arguing on behalf of residents, $10,000 in compensation was secured for each resident who left. Councilmember Tiara Ross, then a city attorney, described it as the first time residents had ever been able to recover money for what they endured, and she called it a small measure of justice in a situation that deserved far more.
That response was the starting point for a redevelopment process that took nearly three years. On May 21, 2026, with demolition of the towers underway, Commissioner Crawley described the arc from that Christmas morning to this day plainly: "After that day, I had two choices: follow through or become another person who let this community down. I was not going to be next on their list."
In the ground where Sawyer Towers stood, 380 affordable apartments are now planned, the cornerstone of the largest affordable housing investment in the history of Columbus and Franklin County.