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Time to build a middle-outer-outerbelt?
The Columbus Dispatch wrote
Suburbs beyond 1-270 top growth
Aging populations, expensive houses and high real-estate taxes explain population losses in the inner-ring cities of Bexley, Grandview Heights, Upper Arlington and Worthington, while Pickerington, Powell and New Albany boom
Thursday, June 28, 2007
By Lisa Halverstadt and Jim Woods
When Nancy Kopaczewski moved from Pickerington to just outside New Albany three years ago, she wanted a small-town atmosphere.
Then the development followed her.
Powell, New Albany and Pickerington — which not long ago were farming towns — added people faster than any other communities in the state from 2000 through July 2006, according to estimates that the U.S. Census Bureau released this morning.
Housing starts are down locally and nationally. But the suburbs are prospering outside I-270, where they have room to grow and popular school systems.
Older, inner-ring suburbs in central Ohio — Bexley, Upper Arlington, Grandview Heights and Worthington — have declined in population by about 7 percent.
The population in those cities is aging, said Nancy Reger of the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, and they have limited space. Although the school districts retain their reputations, houses are expensive, property taxes are high and graduates tend not to move back to their hometown.
Still, central Ohio remains Ohio’s fastest-growing region and Columbus remains the nation’s 15th-largest city, with the population growing nearly 3 percent from April 2000 to July 2006.
No, please… no.
And honestly, even WITH all the construction boom, I don’t see the need. Feeder roads to 270 will likely grow larger, but a whole new outerbelt? Yeesh.
Also, the overall market should continue to regulate – if people aren’t moving there, then those crazy high house prices in Upper Arlington and Worthington and Bexley will come down to more reasonable levels, which in turn should cause folks to start moving there once again…
Taxes also are high in those neighborhoods. That doesn’t help.
The need for another outerbelt won’t materialize unless a lot of business moves even farther out. Residence-to-residence commuting alone isn’t enough to justify a beltway. As long as those communities remain primarily bedroom communities, there won’t be the need (or the funds) for another beltway.
Feeder roads to 270 will likely grow larger, but a whole new outerbelt?
And even that shouldn’t happen with state or county dollars! I’m sick of subsidizing people’s obsession with living on farmland by extending roads, sewers, etc… If people want to live out there, that’s fine…it’s America…you can live wherever you want. Just don’t cry about high gas prices or about your commute when the state doesn’t help out with road widening and highway building. We need to reach an equilibrium and stop accomodating sprawl.
Not to get this off topic or anything, but does anyone have a link to a break down of the latest census stats released today? Haven’t been able to find much yet.
This is a much larger debate… is the government there to serve the people, or to tell the people what to do? Is the fact that state & local governments serve the needs of their constituents by improving roads in the places they want to live really any different than the massive tax breaks on all the downtown development? Subsidizing is subsidizing…
It’s definitely a high-level policy decision just like any other budget call. It’s time to get smart about the way we grow.
it’s under estimates:
[url]http://www.census.gov/popest/estimates.php[/url]
Good luck getting better feeder roads as well. Look at 315 past Worthington Hills… The residents with homes along 315 opposed widening the road about 7-8 years ago before all this new development and look at how much that road is used now and what a bottleneck it has become at the Powell Road intersection. If you notice there are alot of For Sale signs up along that road now. Plus if you close it in the next few years to widen it, look at where the traffic will get dumped…23 and Sawmill Parkway. With them adding new intersections and lights to those roads everyday…it pretty much sucks to drive anywhere.
I drove down Hard Rd. to 315 for the first time in quite awhile last week and noticed that all the houses on the right (South) side of Hard as it approaches the dead man’s curve there are all boarded up with big city “No Tresspassing” signs up. Looks like the widening there is pretty imminent.
I think it’s too late for another outerbelt. There’s just too much buildup for it to happen. What we’ll probably see is more divided highway feeders popping up everywhere along existing highways. I know the 161 expansion (New Albany to Granville/Newark) project has begun in full earnest already this summer…
I love the old inner-ring suburbs more than the newer outer-ring suburbs. There is just something about places like Upper Arlington, Bexley, Grandview Heights, and so on, that the newer suburbs can’t compete with. The time it takes to commute from places like Pickerington(I-70), New Albany(161 and I-270), and Powell(315) are more than enough to make me stay away. My mom and her fiance(once they get married) are going to be moving and are going to be staying within I-270 because they don’t want to deal with the traffic and what not that comes from living in the outer-suburbs.
it’s a vicious cycle….more roads opens up opportunity for more development which in turn creates more housing, offices and retail, which in turn leads to the need for more roads. it doesn’t help that the state has to spend so much money a year on roads, because if they don’t they get less the next year. it also pisses me off when i see some of columbus’ biggest companies expanding into the cornfields (Huntington, Nationwide, The Limited, etc.) i look at a competing city, namely Charlotte, whom is currently kicking our butt in downtown development and their biggest companies are building high rise towers while expanding downtown. maybe this is one reason, along with a mass transit friendly government, that Charlotte expects to add some 15,000 residents within it’s downtown core within the next 5-10 years. they have 16 TOWERS proposed, approved or under contruction over the next five years, when we get a measly one every couple of years. sorry to get off topic, but they are doing something right. it kind of helps that it’s a little warmer down there, but still. but in the end, it comes down to changing the mindset of our government and the people and the way we live.
Well, the main story in this article that seems to just skim the surface, is the fact that Columbus and its metro is growing. We can shoot ourselves down by comparing us with the sunbelt cities (a lot of people go to b/c of the climate), when we can easily be comparing ourselves with Cincy and Cleveland. Glad that we show signs of continuous growth. If the state can work out its issues maybe we can excell faster. Compared to all other metro areas in the state, we should be proud that we are doing the best of them all.
Honestly, I say bring it on. The traffic in Columbus needs to get worse before we’ll see the public ready to support mass transit.
And I can’t help but laugh at the woman quoted in the beginning of the article. Anyone moving into a new housing development in a smaller suburb expecting it to stay small is extremely shortsighted.
More graphics from the article:
The huge drops for Worthington, Upper Arlington and Bexley are really surprising to me – those have always been the “upper crust” of Columbus ‘burbs. I guess the house prices & taxes really are doing a number on the populations there…
I think it’d be cool if the “Columbus” 3% general number were broken down a bit more by part of town — I’m guessing downtown and the urban areas around it would show a pretty good sized-increase. Maybe not Powell 83%-psycho-sized, but still solid.
I think the losses in Bexley, UA, Grandview et. al. can be attributed to: 1) kids going off to school and 2) spouses dying.
It’s not like houses are sitting abandoned in those neighborhoods, but houses aren’t going up at a breakneck pace like the exurbs either. The housing stock is good…it’s there…it’s just that fewer people are living in the houses.
Houses aren’t sitting vacant, or being bulldozed due to high taxes. That doesn’t make sense.
Yeah, its totally not the fact that the average home in UA goes for $324,200 (2005 Census) or that older homes tend to need updating, whereas, you can buy a home for the same price built to your specifications(within reason).
Yeah, its totally not the fact that the average home in UA goes for $324,200 (2005 Census) or that older homes tend to need updating, whereas, you can buy a home for the same price built to your specifications(within reason).
They go for $324k because there is demand. Homes in withering cities don’t sell for big bucks and those cities don’t have sky high taxes. They are expensive because people want to live there (demand) and they stopped making developable land there decades ago (supply).
Seriously…do we think that people are just getting priced out of an area, and just selling their houses to some strange entity that lets them sit vacant? Or is the strange entity bulldozing them? :?