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The second public meeting for the 2010 Downtown Columbus Strategic Plan took place this evening, and the presentation focused on 12 ideas proposed as possible catalytic projects that could reshape our Downtown over the next decade. Those ideas ranged from alternative transit implementation to river dam removal to the development of a new sports field house.
The public meeting was kicked off by City Councilmember Andrew Ginther and led by Keith Myers from MSI Design. “Sometimes Columbus suffers from too much Midwest Modesty,” said Myers shortly after taking the podium. “We need to check that tonight and instead be inspirational.”
Myers went on to outline the 10 Principles that were used to lead the process in assembling ideas out of the hundreds of pieces of input gathered from the first public meeting as well as online over the past month:
- Connect Uses, Districts and People
- Maintain Downtown’s Status as the Employment Center of the Region
- Embrace Transit as a Competitive Advantage
- Control Building Form, Design and the Quality of the Public Realm
- Increase the Amount and Variety of Downtown Housing
- Continue to Develop Signature Parks and Public Spaces
- Invest in Arts and Culture
- Prioritize Sustainability and the Greening of Downtown Columbus
- Continue Collaboration Between the Public and Private Sectors
- Celebrate the Urban Experience that only Exists Downtown
After those principles were laid out, the 12 individual projects were explained in detail with the assistance of maps, renderings and similar projects in other cities.
1. “The Southeast Gateway“- With the reconfiguration of the 70/71 Split and the new jobs and development emerging at Children’s Hospital and Grant Hospital, two new Gateways between Downtown and the Schumacher Place area could serve to connect the southeastern end of Downtown at Parsons Avenue and at Grant Avenue. A new mixed-use neighborhood featuring office, residential and retail would emerge bounded loosely by Main, Grant and 70/71.
2. “Topiary Park Infill” – The parking lots bordering Topiary Park to the north and east have been targeted as a location to consolidate parking into a garage that could accommodate daytime office traffic as well as nighttime residential traffic that would be densely developed atop the garages.
3. “The Creative Campus” – Using the new Columbus Museum of Art expansion as leverage, create a development plan that would consolidate neighborhood parking for the CMA, CCAD, the Jefferson Center and other neighborhood uses to fill in surrounding parking lots with infill residential and retail development. Similar parking garage consolidation was mentioned for lots at Columbus State between Spring & Long that would include additional mixed use development in front or on top of the garages.
4. “Broad Street” – (Rendering Below) Taking a cue from historic photos of Broad Street, this thoroughfare would undergo a “road diet” and shrink from eight travel lanes to five and would receive a dual-median streetscaping similar to it’s original historic layout. The new tree-lined travel areas would be intended for bike and pedestrian use, be constructed with permeable surfaces and rain gardens for making the street as “green” as possible.
5. “High Street” – (Rendering at the top of the page) The focus would be to restore High Street as a commercial corridor. Restore on-street metered parking for retail use, add new green streetscaping for beautification, divert some bus traffic to a transit station for transfers and plan streets for light rail or streetcar usage.
6. “Downtown Transit Station” – Attention was brought to the poor use of Broad & High as a bus transfer zone with poor bus shelter conditions, and noise and congestion brought on by regular bus lineups that clog the area with five to eight buses at a time. A new, modern bus terminal station would service people in a cleaner, indoor environment. Attention was drawn to multiple examples of modern bus terminals in other cities including Durham, NC’s New Multimodal Bus Station (pictured to the right).
7. “3C Corridor Transit Station” – Placement of the 3C Corridor transit station was proposed at the Convention Center bridge over Convention Center Drive on the east side of High Street. The station would service 3C riders from the tracks below and local bus, streetcar or light rail riders on High Street on the main level. Emphasis was given to making this a world-class facility to welcome visitors arriving into Downtown via high-speed rail.
8. “Biking Infrastructure” – New bike facilities were proposed for locations all throughout Downtown which include bike storage, bike rentals, shower facilities and other bike-friendly amenities.
9. “Downtown Field House” – Some data was shown to highlight the growing use of Convention Center space as indoor sports facilities and provide information on the money that it generates for the city. To capitalize on this, a fully equipped Field House was proposed as an addition to the Convention Center that would serve both conventioneers and residents alike for everything from volleyball tournaments to indoor soccer leagues to gymnastics competitions. The Field House location was proposed on the current large Convention Center Parking Lot located to the east of the Convention Center between Third and Fourth Streets.
10. “Pedestrian/Bike Bridge” – To provide connectivity between the Arena District and Franklinton, a pedestrian and bike bridge is proposed to connect existing paths on both sides of the river between Vets Memorial and North Bank Park.
11. “The Scioto Peninsula” – The entire portion of Franklinton located east of the railroad tracks was proposed as one large new mixed use neighborhood development. The riverfront would be re-purposed into an arts & science river walk promenade anchored by COSI. The southern end of the peninsula would become home to a new collaborative research center. The existing parking lot areas for COSI would be consolidated into parking garages and filled with “Podium and Tower” that would keep streets walkable and human-scaled while still adding residential density to the neighborhood. The entire neighborhood would have a focus on sustainability.
12. “River Greenway” – (Rendering Below) This multi-part idea started as a proposal to remove the Main Street Dam and return the Scioto River to a flowing, functional river at its original width and depth. The plan would likely lower the water level 5 to 7 feet and narrow it to around half its current width, and add 45 acres of new green/park land along the banks. The idea was then expanded to also remove the Fifth Street dam so that the river would be restored from OSU to Downtown and could function for kayaking, canoeing and rafting. The idea was then expanded again to remove all five dams between Highbanks Metropark and the Scioto Audubon Metropark to create over 15 miles of a new river greenway that would be functional for recreation and environmentally cleaner due to the return to a natural flow.
The meeting was wrapped up with a round of applause and attendees were then encouraged to visit stations displaying all 12 ideas to provide feedback, criticism, and other forms of input.
Additional input will be sought via online surveys that can be found online at each of the individual idea pages here: www.downtowncolumbus.com/plan/ideas. Once this round of input has been gathered, alterations will be made and the final proposed plan will be presented on May 25th at a location TBA.
Are there price tags attached to any of the 12 ideas or even estimates at this point?
Jimbo – The 2002 plan covered a lot of individual projects, just like this plan is aiming to do. Different parts were funding in different ways. Some of it was public development funding through bond packages… some of it was private development incentivized through tax abatements… some of it was public/private partnerships… some of it received state & federal grants and funding. Essentially, each piece of the puzzle was tackled in a different way. I’d expect the same for this.
The Executive Summary of the 2002 Downtown Plan can be found here: http://www.downtowncolumbus.com/publications/2002DTPlan_ExecSummary.pdf
gk Says: Are there price tags attached to any of the 12 ideas or even estimates at this point?
No. They’re just ideas at this point. Feedback is being requested from the public before anything more concrete is announced.
Lots of great ideas and plans. I would love to one day see some of these items come to fruition.
I really think a huge boardwalk development could go a long way in paying for #12…probably entirely.
As “corny” as it sounds, it could resemble Coney Island with a big wheel on the river – but classy, of course. Would be nice to see a fishermans market and seafood restaurants fill this area. Actually, would be nice to see a putt-putt course, ferris wheel, and paddle boats – could be a youngsters, date/hangout place.
Regarding funding, if the citizens showed a lot of support for these ideas then the politicians would follow and they’d work to find the money. If everyone’s just apathetic because of potential hurdles then it’ll be easier for the powers that be to shortchange us on these great ideas. By the way, the Dispatch online has this matter as their “Hot Issue”, interesting responses there too… http://tinyurl.com/y7hfxrc
i LOVE #12. I have always wondered why we don’t use our rivers as more of an attraction!! We have the benefit of all these beautiful waterways and we just build bridges over them. Lots of cities embrace them; building restaurants, concert sites, all sorts of cool stuff along the banks. I really hope this part of the plan really happens!
Oh, and the idea of taking out the dams and putting in more watersports is also awesome. I’ve always wondered why we don’t have paddleboats and stuff for rent at North Bank park. It seems like such a natural idea to me.
Very good ideas in all. Look forward to the comments and how these finalize. I think this is farther and more in depth than 2002′s plan ever became. #11 and #12 seem to have the most potential of completely changing the face of downtown. I would love to have the complete sketchup file of this downtown plan.
For what it’s worth, I have no problem with these ideas; some of them sound interesting. But I’m not interested in paying more tax dollars to the city to fund these projects. I”m sorry, but I’ll relocate if it comes to that.
Um… They may want to consider that the descriptions should match the illustrations. That last graphic also includes a new (pedestrian?) bridge over the river at COSI over to the justice complex. The mystery bridge isn’t described in the text. So I think that Downtown Columbus might consider including a line item for the bridge. Unless I missed something in the presentation that is not included here?
Why do we need two different transit stations? One for buses and one for trains? The term multi-modal means more than one mode.
I agree. One nice transit stop at the convention center would suffice.
@Jimbo Jones
okay, see ya later
#6 and #7 need to be consolidated. If they are looking for a “BIG” transit center, then why would they split it into two and have people transfer buildings from 3C to local transit?
Besides the transit center, I think #4 and #5 should be the most immediate. Visitors probably judge us on our main arteries and we’d truly be a greener city if we included more trees, a separate path for bicycles, and less lanes for traffic. (at least less lanes on Broad)
Regardless of visitors, I think revamping High St and Broad St would be one of the most beneficial ideas to our residents.
#12 is by far the most epic project and I’m happily surprised to see the support on this thread.
I too agree #4 and #5 make most sense to accomplish first. They are also very doable.
Yes, option #4 and #5 should move forward immediately. The roads downtown are TOO wide. Split roads would help make downtown more pedestrian friendly and improve the downtown image.
The reason there would be a bus-specific stop is so that it could be at Broad and High, where the majority of Columbus’ bus traffic intersects, and where there is consistently a backup of buses.
This is exciting stuff. Thanks Walker for helping spread the news.
I’m basically just echoing what Walker said. I like all of these ideas, but what is the city going to do differently to make these ideas reality, especially little ones that could be implemented ASAP? For example, the plan suggests reinstating on-street parking on High to bring back a retail presence that was lost once the parking was removed. So do it and work with COTA, perhaps replicating what COTA was already doing when there was on-street parking here. That’s the problem that the city’s hired consultants at MSI say needs to be corrected and it doesn’t require a huge amount of money, so can they just get that done in a timely manner?
Love #12 and #4 also. ColumbusMike is spot on – we need something to attract vistors downtown. In addition to the boardwalk, what about large scale art projects? The art found in parks in Minneapolis comes to mind.