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Context and transparency are important, and they will continue to be vital to any discussion of the considerable efforts underway involving multiple parties and interests to retain the Columbus Crew SC.

For The Dispatch, a primary element of the big picture is that we all benefit by keeping this founding franchise of Major League Soccer in Columbus, where it belongs.

The context also is important in analyzing the costs and benefits of this ongoing development — both the $50 million the city of Columbus initially pledged toward retaining the Crew and nearly $64 million more it will invest in the area around a new Downtown stadium to host Crew matches beginning in 2021.

It was welcome news on Thursday to witness the official groundbreaking for a new stadium west of Nationwide Arena for the Crew and to learn, just hours before the ceremonial event, that the club had finally reached agreement with Nationwide Realty Investors to purchase land for the stadium and related development.

We say “finally” to underscore the rare hurried pace at which such a large project has progressed. It might seem like we have been waiting a long time for the property to be purchased, but this point actually was reached fairly quickly.

It’s part of the overall context that decisions and agreements which normally might take many more months, even years, to accomplish were greatly compressed to keep previous Crew owner Anthony Precourt from relocating the club to Austin, Texas.

It was not that long ago, in fact, that bidding farewell to the Crew seemed inevitable. Precourt had reached a deal with city officials in Austin for a new stadium there, and a lawsuit pending here to invoke the untested Art Modell Law (enacted after the former Cleveland Browns owner spirited that team away to Baltimore in 1996) was viewed as little more than a “Hail Mary” bid for a miraculous intervention.

Then, just a year and a day ago, #SaveTheCrew diehard fans’ dream came true.

MLS announced a new ownership group had stepped up with a plan it approved to keep the soccer club in Columbus. And we learned the buyers — current Browns owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam, and the family of longtime Crew team doctor Pete Edwards, a Columbus orthopedist — would have to move lightning-fast to iron out details with city and county officials and others to consummate their plan and keep the team in town.

Central to the overall context of keeping the Crew in Columbus is that Major League Soccer was intent on securing a new Downtown site to replace 20-year-old Mapfre Stadium, the first soccer-specific stadium built for a MLS team. The 30-plus-acre site now being developed as Confluence Village will include a 20,000-seat stadium, mixed-use development with housing for senior citizens and a 600-car garage.

Most of the $50 million the city initially pledged to help save the Crew is going to redevelop the old stadium north of the state fairgrounds as a community asset, including additional soccer fields and a Crew practice facility. The city also said it would help with land acquisition and infrastructure to develop the new stadium.

As documented by reporter Bill Bush in last Sunday’s Dispatch, we now know the city will be spending more than twice the original obligation, as much as $64 million more, toward the stadium and related mixed-use development in the surrounding Confluence Village.

We’re fine with the additional costs, though we would have preferred complete transparency — to see the city acknowledge the integral role that the new stadium plays in the total investment it is making in the area rather than, as city documents showed, attempting to tie some of the costs to projects that appear to be a bit of a stretch.

For instance, city officials attribute the expense of burying overhead power lines near the new stadium, estimated to cost up to $10 million, to a new headquarters being built for Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. almost a half-mile away. But Bush reported city documents show it was attorneys for the Crew who sought that work.

We understand that development doesn’t happen in a vacuum, as Mayor Andrew J. Ginther’s spokeswoman, Robin Davis, said. In this case, the city sees its payoff as a $300 million investment by the Crew in the new stadium project, plus another $748 million in nearby private development, allowing the city to project 3,200 new jobs over 20 years with an additional $6.5 million per year in city income taxes.

It would have been more credible for the city, as it projects that large return, to be as transparent about what it will invest beyond the $50 million initially pledged to save the Crew. Plans for the $25 million garage next to the new stadium were not being discussed publicly before a draft contract was released in June between the city, Crew and Franklin County.

The county is expected to finalize its stated intent to contribute $45 million for the Crew projects, with $20 million from the state and another $25 million or more in public bonds issued by the New Community Authority created earlier this year to assist with the project.

Saving the Crew for Columbus is important, and the additional development it stands to attract will be a welcome extension of the Arena District west into what has been unsightly vacant land.

It also is important for taxpayers to be informed about how much public investment goes into any major initiative.

The Dispatch is willing to say that the benefits the community will derive from keeping the Crew in Columbus are worth significant public investment, even above the $50 million city officials originally said they would invest. It was good to see Mayor Ginther boldly own the full extent of the city’s investment in that development on the day ground was broken for the new stadium.