Two posts today on two separate blogs on how mass transit fits into a renewed downtown Columbus. First up is John Kazalia from About.com, comparing Columbus to Portland:

Portland has lots of transit. LOTS OF IT. Light rail from east suburbs through downtown to west suburbs. A north-south streetcar line. Busways and busses everywhere. And most of it goes 24/7. And their ridership numbers show it–Portland transit gets as many riders in two months as COTA gets in a year….

What is there in downtown Columbus to ride a streetcar past at this point? Pretty much a dead mall and state office towers.

Of course, would the streetcars be the catalyst to bring things back to downtown Columbus? I don’t have a definite answer, but having seen downtown Portland I can say that Columbus has miles to go before our downtown is like theirs. Much, much, much more than just building streetcar lines.

Jamie Fellrath of Bike Commuting in Columbus (and into the blogroll with ye) left an interesting comment:

If Columbus could emulate them we would be in so much better shape. But it’s going to take more than just a trolley or some bike lanes - it’s going to take MUCH stricter zoning laws and greater cooperation between Columbus and the suburbs than we have now.

As long as Dublin, Gahanna, Hilliard, Delaware, etc. are pulling businesses outside of city limits, all the trolleys in the world won’t make a lick of difference.

It seems as if Jamie is asking for those satellite cities to cooperate in the destruction of their own business base, which of course is never going to happen. I believe Jamie’s view is based on the old paradigm of the downtown area having all the businesses, be it jobs or destinations like stores and restaurants, and the surrounding areas having all the homes- bedroom communities, as it were. This supports the classic urban mass transit model- all tracks lead downtown. It works best in New York due to that city’s unique geography. But even there, it works best if you work in Manhattan. It’s a real bitch to travel from Brooklyn to Queens, for example. So you can see how mass transit would be easier if businesses were coerced into operating downtown. But it’s a non-starter.

The other post is from Columbusite, whose point #5 on improving downtown is:

COTA, if it is to be useful at all, needs to stop serving sprawling suburbs which were built with total disregard for mass-transit. They aren’t wanted there and they cannot serve these areas well anyway. COTA needs to focus on proving good serve in urban areas, where they improve service like shortening waiting intervals. Streetcars would still be preferred since they don’t have the stigma that buses do, it’s hard to get lost on them, and they attract economic development which buses don’t since those routes could just disappear, negating any investment related to there being mass-transit.

This is the minimalist plan: the streetcars go downtown and to surrounding urban neighborhoods, but don’t really serve the larger metro area- not directly anyway. This is actually Columbus’s current streetcar plan, whose three lines would connect downtown to the Short North, Arena District, and German Village.

Like John, I’m agnostic on whether this would help. It really is a chicken and egg problem for downtown. Can new downtown destinations survive without an extant transit system to deliver customers? Will building a light rail or streetcar system spur downtown development? Columbusite says:

A very general observation but for a city our size to start becoming a 24/7 city we need around 10% of the total urban population downtown, which would be 30,000 people. Streetcars have proven themselves in spurring such development.

If such a plan works, and downtown becomes a much bigger destination, there then might be a call for a metro-area transit plan involving heavier rail. But even so, it’s going against the urban decentralization trend of the last 50 years.

From NBC4i:

Seven separate incidents created a busy Thursday for the Columbus Bomb Squad.

Columbus police said that multiple calls were made for suspicious packages left at various sites downtown. The calls were spread out throughout the day, NBC 4’s David Wayne reported.

Police said that the suspicious package incidents were spread out over the city. The first incident occurred late Thursday afternoon when two suitcases were found at High Street and 5thAvenue.

In all the empty boxes, lost cases, and one hoaxed bomb threat, there were no actual bombs.

In case you missed it, the telegenic Eddy Monday (it can now be told) has a good interview with Columbus Young Professionals diva Rebecca Ryan. The post at columbusING is here, but the links are bad, here’s the video.

One thing that Eddy touches on, and we’ve previously agreed on this, is that trying to attract young professionals by direct appeal is probably not the best way of going about it. As with Austin or Denver, a city needs to create a buzz to attract people, and it’s not something that can be done with a marketing campaign designed by a consultant. It’s more art than science, and there aren’t any guarantees.

Rebecca Ryan did say that the “Young Professionals” focus was a part of her company’s mandate from the city, which explains a few things.

Also on the topic of what Columbus should be or could be, Cap City Savvy has a post, “Keeping Up with the Joneses“, which just leaves me cold. The prices on all those Portland condos average pretty high, and they all look the same- sleek and modern. What does Columbus need to cut in on that action?

The obvious peice were’ missing is the sleek mass transit connection. If you click around on the links provided, you’ll quickly see how hard the developers are marketing the lifestyle change that comes with disassociating cars from our lifestyle. They’re all touting close proximity to the streetcar line, bike path, and car-free connectivity to anything you’d ever need. I’m sure our local developers would love to do the same.

That would no doubt benefit the city’s tax base. But would it benefit the city?

I have the feeling that Columbus’s drive to attract yuppies is unhealthy in the long run. I’m uncomfortable with it. Do families and working class people fit into these plans? I guess that’s what the ‘burbs are for.

From Business First:

The median sales price in 2006 for downtown housing was $296,845. Just 21 percent of sales in 2006 were under $200,000. Bringing units in at lower prices could fuel an annual sales increase of up to 60 percent, the study projected.

Interesting post by Joe Peffer at Columbus Real Estate Notes:

In the wake of a hugely successful City-Hop, One must still ask the question: Is the notion of first time buyers and young professionals snatching up all those groovy urban digs just a media-induced smoke and mirror trick?

Yes, it is, for the most part. Baby Boomers and Empty Nesters have been the bulk of the buyers in the Downtown Columbus Condo market so far and they probably will be for the foreseeable future.

He point to this article in the Other Paper in which he’s interviewed.

The suburban slump has created a vicious cycle, said Rob Vogt, a partner at Vogt Williams & Bowen, a Columbus company that provides national real estate market-feasibility information.

“The profile of the buyers Downtown tends to be empty nesters who are moving from the suburbs,” Vogt said. “When you’re trying to sell your $400,000 house in Dublin and there’s no buyer, you’re not going to be able to close on your condominium Downtown.”

With most Downtown condo price points traditionally starting near $350,000, Vogt said developers made the mistake in the first round of building of bypassing many first-time home buyers.

“The lion’s share of the market isn’t being served by the current supply of Downtown condos,” he said.

So you just start building cheaper ones, right? Joe Peffer, a buyer’s agent specializing in urban real estate for Coldwell Banker, said it’s not that simple because young buyers’ expectations of a luxurious Downtown pad clash with their limited bank accounts.

“For $250,000, they want to buy excitement, and all the upgrades have to come standard,” he said. “It can happen, but they certainly won’t get more than seven to eight hundred square feet.”

Speaking of downtown condos, Cap City Savvy dissents from the hoopla surrounding the announcement of “the new downtown neighborhood“:

So why aren’t I doing backflips like everyone else about this project?

1) We only get one chance with all of our surface parking lots. They’re a blank canvas and leave us with huge potential. Residential doesn’t just go away. You don’t get any mulligans. You can’t just kick residents out and decide that you want to build something with more density.

2) The project is being pitched as “affordable”, which combined with the favorable city financing package (in addition to the tax abatements), makes me think that there might be some handshake deals going on here. Look at it this way, when is the last time you heard of a developer selling units below market rate? One bedroom units for $150k with private greenspace in a premium location don’t make sense. Developers letting things go below market rate doesn’t smell right.

3) Density brings amenities like corner markets, clothing shops, restaurants, etc… We’re not helping ourselves much in that regard by only adding 260 units on 9 city blocks.

It does seem a bit un-downtown-like.

Action-packed weekend in Columbus coming up. In addition to Comfest all weekend in the Short North, the annual gay pride parade will be held on Saturday, which goes from the Short North to downtown.

You might want to kick things off with the free Taco+Beer night, which will be held tomorrow evening at the Ringside Cafe downtown, from 5-7.

Much more in the latest edition of the Restaurant Widow’s excellent weekender feature.

Two local bloggers feature in a post on the Dispatch’s Columbus Alive the other day:

Clearly, Columbus is a city that has transformed within the past decade.

But do fancy buildings mean better living? Is there an infrastructure—grocery stores, public transportation, entertainment—around the new complexes? And if you buy one of these new units, what’s it like to live Downtown?

“I think we’ve got more infrastructure than people think,” said Eric Wittine, who has lived for two years in the Brewery District’s Sterling Lofts. “Downtown and its surrounding neighborhoods have a lot to offer in terms of livability.”

Wittine maintains the CapCitySavvy.com blog, which analyzes urban living in Columbus, and noted that Downtown offers plenty of coffee shops, restaurants, post offices and other needed enterprises.

“That said, we’re really lacking in transportation,” Wittine added. “It’s downright scary to ride a bike Downtown, and COTA leaves a lot to be desired.”

Many Downtown residents would like to see better public transportation and a new plan for City Center, but Downtown living is becoming easier and more enjoyable.

“I think people are given the false promise that if you live Downtown, there will be 1,000 restaurants and you can walk to everything,” said Walker Evans, who founded ColumbusUnderground.com, a message board that often discusses urban living. “People who move Downtown are ready for things to open tomorrow—like streetcars and a new City Center.

“I think as more residential stuff fills in, the commercial stuff will follow. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

No links though. Typical.

Cap City Savvy has the story on the story here, and Columbus Underground has it here.

Festival Latino starts right now (11 am to 10pm), with the same hours tomorrow, at W Town St and the Scioto river. It’s on both sides of the river- behind COSI on the west bank.

There will be food, music, and cultural stuff.

That’s a picture from the 2006 event, taken from their official website, which is here.

Cap City Savvy is plugging streetcars for downtown:

I haven’t blogged about how enthusiastic I am about the proposed streetcar plan yet, but I just received this email and thought I’d pass it along. I STRONGLY urge everyone to get educated about the plan HERE, and if you find yourselves to be as enthusastic as I am, do whatever you can to support it!

Streetcars would displace the downtown bus routes, but would streetcars in themselves actually drive more businesses and residents downtown? I remain vaguely skeptical.

The Dispatch has a good graphic trying to explain how the proposed 70/71 split redesign is going to work. Mound, Fulton, Lester, and Parsons will become collector roads. From the article:

The scheme relies upon two pairs of one-way streets to usher vehicles into and out of Downtown.

On the eastern edge along I-71, Lester Drive will expand to carry southbound traffic and a feeder street will be built to connect Parsons Avenue with the freeway northbound. Paralleling I-70 on the north, Mound Street will be one-way westbound and Fulton Street will be one-way eastbound.

“The whole thought process is being reversed,” ODOT managing engineer Thom Slack said. “Instead of building the freeway and then working in the city streets, we’re looking from the city streets down to make the freeway fit it.”

It’s too bad they can’t undo the split- and the combining of the two highways- altogether, but that would probably cost a trillion dollars. Whoever designed that ought to be rapped on the head. There will be a couple of public meetings next week on two proposed designs; more here.

(Graphic: Tom Baker|Dispatch.)

From the Dispatch:

If you want to see justice at work, you won’t need to flip on Court TV come 2010. You can just stand on a sidewalk at Mound or High Street and gawk.

Commissioners told designers they want their new Franklin County courthouse to stand as a symbol of the transparency of the American justice system. Architects took them literally.

That looks kind of nice. The building is to be built on the parking lot at Mound and High across the street from the current courthouse. It’ supposed to be completed by 2010 and cost $105m, but you know how that goes.

Cap City Savvy has some pics and words about the Broad & High development on Broad and High Streets. In addition to studios for NBC4, it’ll have both a coffee shop and a cafe. Sweet progress.

Cap City Savvy is writing about that big gash that separates downtown from German Village:

Am I being naive? I hope not, but the sad fact is that this project is almost 4 years behind schedule. I think we reached the “paralysis by analysis” stage way back in 2005.

That said, I’m glad they put the brakes on the project once they realized that city leaders and residents weren’t going to stand for uncapped freeways, or a wider divide. There’s been quite a bit of resentment towards the split since ODOT built that moat separating German Village and Old Towne East from Downtown in the 60’s.

ODOT has an article up:

ODOT TO SHARE RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FIXING DOWNTOWN “SPLIT”

The Ohio Department of Transportation will hold public meetings in June to share its recommendations for narrowing the two options for rebuilding the Interstate 70/71 “Split” along the south side of downtown Columbus.

ODOT considers the highway one of the most congested, high-crash freeway locations in the state. It was built more than 40 years ago, and carries about 175,000 vehicles a day — about 50,000 more than the highway was designed to handle. As a result, the highway experiences about two crashes each day or 800 a year.

For the past six months, the Department has been comparing two alternatives — Mound/Fulton and Livingston/Fulton — to determine which option does a better job of improving safety and travel with fewer negative impacts to the public.

The ODOT site has maps, a pdf presentation, and is taking comments. There will be two public meetings:

WHEN & WHERE:

June 11 and 13
Open House from 5 to 7 p.m.
Columbus Health Department Auditorium
240 Parsons Avenue (corner of Parsons and Main)
Free parking in rear

Also at RetroMetro.

Caps like the one connecting the Short North to downtown are not a part of ODOT’s plans. This will apparently be a discretionary matter to be decided later. Moving the on and off ramps is a good idea, but any solution that doesn’t address reconnecting the city above is only half a solution. Here’s a 2003 post from City Comforts on the Short North cap:

You say big deal: a city street. Exactly. But it is a city street which is crossing a freeway. I say, yes it is a very big deal.

The American freeways changed the world through which they ran. They facilitated a vast expansion of suburbs and ripped asunder many city neighborhoods. The project… started out, in the mind of the Ohio Highway Department as a simple widening of the I-670 as it rolls through Columbus, Ohio. But the adjoining neighborhoods put up a fight. (This is my casual from-a-distance understanding of what happened.)

The compromise proposed by some local genius was to make the new overpass (neccesitated by the wider freeway) into a city street by lining it with shops to “link rather than divide.” It is under construction now.

In terms of the daily lives of potentially millions, this is architecture at its finest. This is significant, this is meaningful. This is re-building, re-forming the world. Starchitects might well pay attention.

We need that on the south side of downtown too.

Nice little nostalgic obit of Charles Y. Lazarus, who died last Monday, in the Wall Street Journal:

For generations, F. & R. Lazarus & Co. was the temple of commerce in Columbus, Ohio.

Covering four downtown blocks, the family-owned department store offered everything from ready-to-wear clothes to appliances to chocolates to banking services. Also popular in the early 1900s were its touches of whimsy — songbirds in the mezzanine, alligators in a tank on the main floor, window displays of U.S. presidents from Ohio, a steam whistle that warned of approaching snow.

The store was among the first to add an escalator, in 1909, though it was removed in 1914 because “it evidently scared the daylights out of people,” Charles Y. Lazarus, the last of four generations to run the store his great grandfather founded, recalled in a 2004 interview. (More-modern escalators were installed in 1948.)

There’s more.

Here’s another story from earlier this week. Republican mayoral candidate Bill Todd’s “Tear down this mall” demand:

He said he meant “tear down” rhetorically; his plan won’t necessarily include razing City Center.

Oh. It was just to get attention then: I didn’t mean that. I just said it!

Todd offered no specifics for his City Center plan beyond saying he thinks the mall should remain an entertainment and shopping area….

He also said he’d move to seize control of the mall through eminent domain, if need be.

Yes, because Republicans love Keloesque government land grabs. I think this is a sop to presumably Democratic downtown urbanists. I doubt many of them would consider voting for a Republican in any case. And why bring it up if he has the barest of ideas himself? I’m calling this one a misfire.

Also at Right Angle Blog.

And P.S. I don’t know if it’s just my particular poorly installed Windows arrangements, but I consistently have difficulty with the Quicktime videos on Todd’s site. Apple’s always wanting me to download something else so I can play it, and I hate Quicktime and it’s insistence on running in the background and taking over everything. Use Flash like YouTube for god’s sake. In fact, just use YouTube.

There are some good posts around today about changes in a few Columbus neighborhoods. First, in the Dispatch, a story about the Brewery District calming down after the heady 90’s:

The Brewery District is growing up.

A decade ago, the tiny neighborhood south of I-70, between the Scioto River and German Village, was the homecoming queen of the young singles scene.

But the spotlight has moved elsewhere, and residents say they’re happy to have a quieter neighborhood of familiar, friendly faces. Now, people take their dogs to bars and softball games, and poker nights have replaced ladies’ nights.

A once-hot condominium market has cooled to the point that homes remain unsold for more than six months.

The downtown market is similarly not red-hot, according to Columbus realtor blogger Joe Peffer (via Columbus Underground):

Downtown Condos aren’t flying off the shelf like much of the mainstream media seem to have portrayed, but they are slowly selling. What’s currently active on the market? About 141 properties representing just over 50 Million in list price, not even counting the FSB builders like North Bank.

I’m always surprised at the perception of who is buying downtown vs. the reality. It’s not all young professionals like many assume. There are far more empty nesters than most people think. Much of that is a result of the high costs of buying downtown. Affordable means something different to everyone but, for the most part, the youngsters are finding the affordable too small. Maybe they aren’t buying the whole, “Downtown is my back yard” mentality.

Moving out to the ‘burbs, ThisWeek has an outstanding story on the history of Canal Winchester and Pickerington:

Back then, in 1958, little differentiated the community from the homesteaders who settled in the northwest corner of Fairfield County a century and a half earlier, according to Gary Taylor, president of the Violet Township Historical Society.

As modern residents denote neighborhoods by the name of the subdivision, Taylor said in his youth, he could walk along the dirt roads and point out each farm by the name of the family.

It’s the first of three parts. I’ll be sure to check up on the next installments.