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The last of a series of public input meetings on the new 2010 Downtown Plan was held last night at CCAD, and the finalized plan is now moving forward. If you’ve followed the updates from the second meeting where the “12 Big Ideas” were presented, then last night’s meeting contained little in the way of alterations, as the finalized version of the plan will be moving forward with all 12 of those ideas included.
Several speakers including Guy Worley, Mayor Michael Coleman, Keith Myers and Andrew Ginther spoke about the finalized plan and the next steps that would be taken to start moving forward, though Mayor Coleman was quick to explain that this project would not have been possible without the input from these public meetings.
“This plan isn’t about Guy Worley, the CDDC, Mayor Coleman, or City Council… this is about you,” said Mayor Michael Coleman at last night’s event. “I’ve said from beginning that Downtown is everybody’s neighborhood. It’s the one thing we all have a vested interest in and if it works well, then everything around it works well too.”
All of our ongoing coverage of the public meetings and exclusive interviews with the leadership involved can be found here: 2010 Downtown Strategic Plan.
This plan is much more in depth than the 2002 plan. It seems they have learned a thing or two since then about how to go about building a comprehensive plan. I hope developers are ready to step up to the plate and help move some of these strategies forward. The sooner the better. Let’s get this started. Which do you guys think will be the first plan implemented?
jpizzow Says: Which do you guys think will be the first plan implemented?
I think a lot of these 12 ideas will be broken down with multi-stage timelines, so it may be tough to say which will be partially completed or fully completed first. But if I had to take a guess at it, I’d say that some of the bike rental/storage infrastructure will be online within the next year or two due to the fact that the Capital Crossroad SID is already working on it, and the Main Street dam will come out around the same time to be followed later on by the rest of the dams upstream.
Im curious about the Broad Street project. It sounds like a great idea but is the city thinking long term when the time comes for light rail or streetcars? Will there still be room on Broad street to add a line? Did this even come up? Just curious..
What’s missing in all 12 of the big ideas is URBAN public space. The city of Columbus already has a decent amount of not-so-decent green spaces, especially with the addition of the Columbus Commons (which learns no lessons from the historic ‘Common’ model) on the old City Center site. The existing green spaces of Columbus need to be capitalized upon and surrounded with dense programs (housing around Deaf School Park, Office/Retail around the Commons, etc.) so the green spaces are utilized to their full potential. Rather than start infilling with new green spaces, why not offer Columbus its first URBAN space, a pedestrian-oriented hardscape with clearly defined edges loaded with amenities such as retail, a market, and cafes/bars spilling out onto the public space for people to use day and night. Columbus has always had green space. In fact its initial 1812 plan was largely defined by one. But never has it had an urban public space.
As an example, if Ideas 11 (The Scioto Peninsula) and 12 (River Greenway) go through, the future residents of the Scioto Peninsula will have an enormous amount of recreational green space at their disposal (the Scioto River corridor). So why is the current plan for them to also live in a park? The Scioto Peninsula should be an urban neighborhood, not a suburban one. The idea is that it could be a ‘green’ or ‘sustainable’ neighborhood. But that doesn’t mean it literally has to be surrounded by green. MSI’s current plan is more or less a 1960′s towers-in-a-park scheme, with a lack of organization, clear focus, and thoughtful public space.
Any mention of international architecture/landscape architecture design competitions? Competitions are an incredibly insightful way of generating new ideas for a city, a district, or a single building or public space. For instance, Idea 11 (The Scioto Peninsula) could gain a lot of speed and interest if it were the subject of a design competition. Since the city already owns this land, anything could happen. The organization of its streets and parcels can be completely re-examined and new lines can be drawn. A successful design competition could also draw some international attention to Columbus. It’s time to show that Columbus is as progressive with its built environment as it is in its spirit.
Urbanboi Says: Im curious about the Broad Street project. It sounds like a great idea but is the city thinking long term when the time comes for light rail or streetcars? Will there still be room on Broad street to add a line?
Streetcars and Light Rail typically share travel lanes on-street in urban areas rather than having dedicated separate lanes. So with that in mind, any street with room for cars (all of em) also has room for urban rail transit.
gdelaney Says: What’s missing in all 12 of the big ideas is URBAN public space.
I like that idea a lot, and it’s been discussed a few times here in the past, most recently with keeping a portion of Columbus Commons as a hardscape and using it for an urban marketplace/cafe/pedestrian space. Since none of these 12 ideas have been fully designed out yet, I can’t imagine it would be too hard to fit spaces like this into multiple parts of these plans.
@gdelany
I completely agree! It is ridiculous how much green space we throw around just imagining that it is going to do some good. Like every patch of grass brings another person downtown? Of course it doesn’t. And they can only really be well used in the summer whereas hardscapes can be used much more frequently. The whole Scioto Peninsula looks particularly poorly planned. There are no main avenues or squares. There are towers in parks. I thought we had learned that Corbusier was wrong. Ug. And with the whole ‘greenway’ we just found acres of perfectly beautiful riverways and rather than add any type of better planned urban space they want to waste it on a park? where we will have another one across the river and one in columbus commons? Let’s build something cooler and better used.
Oh… I had to cut out early, so I overlooked this part of the presentation, but according to the last few slides, the 3C Multimodal Rail station is the one identified solely as “Short Term”. Several others are identified as Short-to-Medium Term or Short-to-Long Term which I assume means that they will be incremental projects that will see partial completion in the short term.
More here:
http://www.downtowncolumbus.com/docs/10%2005%2025%20PUBLIC%20MEETING%203.pdf
Only our City Government has to have another grand plan to do the obvious and what has been planned and discussed for twenty years; like-Broad Street, High Street, Parking on Street. Another that was recommended, planned, discussed–Opening the alleyways that were always there.
I think the whole “grand plan” thing is actually to get our citizens excited about a possible change in our downtown, because a lot of people in Columbus are conservative-thinkers and need more selling to get on board with something as big as this.
Other than that, last night I was looking through the 3rd public meeting presentation. I love how healthy and futuristic the city looks could look on the last page…
Hi everyone. I was wondering about these 12 plans. Ive heard about them all and Im for them all but I really dont know alot of the details about them. But I most importantly liked the plans for the I-70/I-71 Split. If I could get my hands on some more details please let me know. Thank You and Columbus Rocks!!!
Details on all 12 of the ideas can be found here: http://www.columbusunderground.com/12-ideas-laid-out-for-downtown-2010-strategic-plan
Thank You Walker.
2010 Downtown Columbus Strategic Plan Approved by Downtown Commission
by Jeffrey J. Pongonis
The Downtown Commission unanimously approved the 2010 Downtown Columbus Strategic Plan today. Over the past several months, MSI has worked with the Columbus Downtown Development Corporation and the City of Columbus to create a new, comprehensive plan for Downtown Columbus. Four public meetings, more than 50 stakeholder interviews, and 1,100 public comments helped shape the 10 Principles, 12 Ideas and 8 Strategies that provide the framework and inspiration for the continued revitalization of Downtown Columbus.
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