City can build on success of Arena District

By: Walker

8 Comments

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  mellotron March 12, 2007 10:53 am

  “These sports centers are important to generate emotional ties to the city,” and will help keep young professionals from moving away, he said. He said 60 percent of incoming OSU students have won letters for sports in high school.

  Good article, but at risk of derailing this thread, I thought this line was amusing if not completely irrelevant! I mean, for a Clippers game to become the social event to keep YPs around, I think you’d have to create the Wrigley Bleachers feel – and anyone whose been there knows that half the people there hardly realize there’s a game going on! Not exactly an activity reserved for HS jocks.

  The thought of an OSU football season away from Columbus is probably a lot more effective than anything else sports-related to retain YPs! :D

  Of course the idea of a Neil Ave. trolley is an interesting idea that I don’t think I’ve heard before. Don’t think it would offer the same as a High St. service (and thus have lesser ridership), but then maybe he’s proposing something similar to the Campus/Brother-to-Spice shuttle service.
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  Walker March 12, 2007 11:16 am

  I think a Neil Ave streetcar line would be great. There’s a pretty dense residential area through Victorian Village (just as much as through German Village anyway) and the connection from OSU to the Arena District would be great. I think this could easily be built as a parallel to a High Street line as they’d both serve a large group of people without being too close together and cannibalize the riderships.

  Perhaps an east-west line at the North at Lane to connect them, and an east-west line from the Arena through downtown to connect them there as well.
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  Brewmaster March 12, 2007 11:31 am

  If you lived in Cleveland during the 90′s, you’d probably think a little differently. Indians games became the ultimate date night to the point where it annoyed real baseball fans. You couldn’t find a seat in the stadium where you could escape two gossiping women on thier night out, two people awkwardly working their way through their first date, or a person behind you who yells “balk” before the pitcher even toes the rubber.

  I think the lesson here is…build something new and pristine and people will catch a bad case of “keeping up with the Jones’”. It’s no different than what happens when any new mall is built.

  Hopefully that will also happen when they see a shiny modern streetcar zipping around town. It certainly was the case in other cities where tax increases were easily passed to fund mass transit extensions of the original starter system.
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  shroud March 12, 2007 12:41 pm

  I was wondering about the streetcar line down Neil… it almost seems TOO residential, since rather than stopping on edges and serving people there, it would be cutting right through Victorian Village and such…

  Doesn’t seem to fit with hopes/plans for commercial development along the line people have been talking about in the real streetcar plan…?

  Maybe more of an express-line kind of thing or something?
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  Walker March 12, 2007 12:48 pm

  I guess I’m just imagining it as a much smaller equivilent to the St. Charles streetcar line in New Orleans. A good portion of it rolls through a mostly residential area filled with large renovated houses, many of which have been divided and turned into apartments. St. Charles is much wider than Neil, but both are very old streets with a lot of old trees hanging over creating a lot of summer shade and a very similar experience to travel on.

  Anyway, there’s a few commercial areas along Neil, including of course the Arena District at the southern end, the plaza with Giant Eagle just north into VickyVille, the handful of stores and restaurants that are walking distance from potential stops at 5th, 3rd, and/or King, as well as the commercial buildings on the south end of campus around 11th & 12th.
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  scottlitch March 12, 2007 1:04 pm

  sounds like a good idea. the high street line could be slower having more stops for shopping and the neil line could be more for getting people to commute without cars. i hope they can have all the rail systems in place by 2009 when the baseball stadium is open. i really want to see a line connect campus to german village…
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  gramarye March 12, 2007 3:12 pm

  The Neil streetcar line could be a good idea for later, but remember the streetcar presentations and planning documents that have been released publicly have universally emphasized that the streetcars are not envisioned primarily as a means of commuter transit; they’re primarily intended to be internal circulators. That’s not to say that some could be used by some people as daily commuter transit, but building a line that would be all but exclusively commuter is not in keeping with the theme at the moment. Coleman’s push–and I believe justifiedly so–is to run lines that will touch a solid mix of developing, developed, and developable areas, as well as a mix of residential, light commercial (e.g., Short North along High St.), and heavy commercial (e.g., Capitol Square). That’s where the upside for economic development is, and Coleman is staking a lot right now on the notion that the streetcars are not just going to be a novel amenity or a pork project for affluent urbanites, but are actually going to spark enough economic development to pay for themselves by attracting jobs and development. Not much room for that along Neil.
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  Brewmaster March 12, 2007 3:26 pm

  In addition, Huntington Park is only a 4 minute walk from High and Nationwide where the streetcar route is currently planned. If I were to go to a baseball game, I’d definitely take the streetcar to avoid parking problems. You can probably count in all of the other residents of the Brewery District and German Village. If the line gets extended to campus in the future, you can count on a number of students and residents on the north side doing the same thing.