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Started 5 months ago by News
Latest reply from sundown

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News
Columbus Underground
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Brice Road retail area showing signs of life
By Marla Matzer Rose
The Columbus Dispatch
Sunday December 25, 2011 7:42 AM

The Brice Road area on the Far East Side has become a leading example of a once-prosperous retail hub where vacancy rates have risen over the past decade, causing an overall decline. But things could be looking up. The latest property to be bought with an eye toward redevelopment is the former Meijer store on Chantry Drive, just off Brice. The 32-acre parcel and the 210,000-square-foot store, built in 1986, were bought for $429,000 this month by an affiliate of Steve Lindsay, whose Lindsay Acura and Honda dealerships are near the former big-box store.

READ MORE: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/business/2011/12/25/brice-road-retail-area-showing-signs-of-life.html

PREVIOUS NEWS: http://www.columbusunderground.com/retailers-check-out-from-brice-road-corridor

Posted 5 months ago #
cc

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Signs of life =

A car salesman bought the 32 acre lot with 210,000 sq ft store at a humongously large discount and is now trying to sell it...

Posted 5 months ago #
Coremodels
Really close to Explorer's Club.
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32 acres and a 200k square foot building for under a half million dollars.

Those are signs of something, but I'm not sure its life.

Posted 5 months ago #
sundown
Merion Village
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A lot of the businesses that used to be at Consumer Square and the adjoining areas have moved east. Best Buy and Target moved two freeway exits east, to the suburban-blob known as Taylor Square at 70 and 256. Meijer moved to 33 and Diley, where a hospital eventually popped up next to them. Talking about the former along the Reynoldsburg-Pickerington line, is it possible that in another 10-20 years, that interchange might suffer the same fate as the Brice Road corridor did, and it might look like Scarborough Blvd does now?

Edit:
Thinking a little more about it...One of the points that Stephen Tucker brought up was the possibility of getting residual business from Reynoldsburg and Pickerington. Now, traffic along Brice Rd can be pretty ugly during rush hour, with people heading down into, or coming back in from, the Gender Road area. But it's still a helluva lot better than the gridlock at 256 and 204, or 256 and Taylor Park. Maybe folks would be willing to give it a second look? The other think I'm wondering about is the Hamilton Road area between say Refugee Rd and Whitehall. When all the stores started leaving Brice/Chantry/Scarborough, it really accelerated some of the crap that happened along Hamilton. Maybe the residual argument carries some weight?

Posted 4 months ago #
Porky
C-Bus' East Side
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What's ironic about the whole of Brice Road decline is that there is more traffic that comes down Brice Road today than when the area was built up. I remember reading somewhere, can't remember now, that when the area was built Brice Road had about 30,000 cars a day traverse it and today that number is over 100,000 cars per day. So it's not like there has been a decline in traffic.

Posted 4 months ago #
GCrites80s
5xNW
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^There's a good chance that all that volume actually killed the area by making it too congested. They built a ton of sprawl in Canal and up Gender beginning in the '90s. People are getting to 70 or 33 by taking Brice and Gender. The same thing is happening on Beechmont Ave. east of 275 in Cincinnati -- businesses closing because it sucks too much to drive through there. They don't want to have to get off of the main road.

Posted 4 months ago #
mrsgeedeck
Castle of Lions
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GCrites80s said:
^There's a good chance that all that volume actually killed the area by making it too congested. They built a ton of sprawl in Canal and up Gender beginning in the '90s. People are getting to 70 or 33 by taking Brice and Gender. The same thing is happening on Beechmont Ave. east of 275 in Cincinnati -- businesses closing because it sucks too much to drive through there. They don't want to have to get off of the main road.

Yet people still frequent Sawmill Rd. which between people actually trying to get home vs. trying to get to shopping locals is a nightmare.

Posted 4 months ago #
jpizzow
580 N. Park St.
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It's called sprawl. The top tier businesses (Wal-mart, Target, Best Buy, etc.) follow the consumers, mainly middle and upper income. As soon as outer Reynoldsburg and Pickerington began to boom over the last ten years, it set in motion the exodus from Brice Rd of businesses catering to mass consumerism to S.R. 256. The evidence of this happening is all over the city, S.R. 161, Bethel, Morse, Hamilton, W. Broad, etc. etc. etc. It's a classic sprawl symptom and it's not exclusive to Columbus. You can find these run down corridors in virtually any midsize or large city.

As far as S.R. 256 emptying out anytime soon to say perhaps, S.R. 310, I don't see that happening anytime soon, if ever in my lifetime. I don't see the suburbs will sprawling out with the same intensity as the past 50 years.

Posted 4 months ago #
johnwirtz
Evanston, IL
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Wow, I can't find a 1,500 square foot house where I live for $429,000. 210,000 square feet for that price sounds like a deal, even if it is on Chantry Drive/Brice Road.

Posted 4 months ago #
johnwirtz
Evanston, IL
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Porky said:
What's ironic about the whole of Brice Road decline is that there is more traffic that comes down Brice Road today than when the area was built up. I remember reading somewhere, can't remember now, that when the area was built Brice Road had about 30,000 cars a day traverse it and today that number is over 100,000 cars per day. So it's not like there has been a decline in traffic.

I'm seeing 53,000 cars per day in 2009 and 61,100 in 1999 just south of I-70. Both are huge numbers, but it drops off a lot just north or south of there.
http://morpc.ms2soft.com/tcds/tsearch.asp?loc=Morpc&mod=

Posted 4 months ago #
johnwirtz
Evanston, IL
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mrsgeedeck said:
Yet people still frequent Sawmill Rd. which between people actually trying to get home vs. trying to get to shopping locals is a nightmare.

I think it's more about incomes in the surrounding area than traffic volumes on any particular road. There is more money in Dublin and on the Far NW Side than in Reynoldsburg, so Sawmill Rd does fine. There is also more money in Pickerington than Reynoldsburg, so that's the retail went to 256.

Posted 4 months ago #
Pablo
Crestview Addition
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johnwirtz said:
I think it's more about incomes in the surrounding area than traffic volumes on any particular road. There is more money in Dublin and on the Far NW Side than in Reynoldsburg, so Sawmill Rd does fine. There is also more money in Pickerington than Reynoldsburg, so that's the retail went to 256.

Sawmill has its share of vacant space too - Dublin Village Center.

Posted 4 months ago #
somebuckeye
Franklinton
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jpizzow said:
It's called sprawl.

You're right about that. The sad thing is we have buildings from the 1800s on N High street still in use, and retail built in the 1980s is worthless.

Posted 4 months ago #
Analogue Kid
5th by West-Northwest
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Porky said:
What's ironic about the whole of Brice Road decline is that there is more traffic that comes down Brice Road today than when the area was built up. I remember reading somewhere, can't remember now, that when the area was built Brice Road had about 30,000 cars a day traverse it and today that number is over 100,000 cars per day. So it's not like there has been a decline in traffic.

Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded

Posted 4 months ago #
Walker
The KLD / Downtown
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Porky said:
What's ironic about the whole of Brice Road decline is that there is more traffic that comes down Brice Road today than when the area was built up.

Same could probably be said for 70/71/670/315 Downtown. More traffic now than ever before.

Posted 4 months ago #
johnwirtz
Evanston, IL
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Pablo said:
Sawmill has its share of vacant space too - Dublin Village Center.

Good point. Must be too much retail space for the existing population, even if they are middle/upper-middle income.

Posted 4 months ago #
cheap
Westgate
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Brice blows,it's the Morse Rd of the east side.

i lived in the bethel/sawmill area before moving to westgate.

i actually liked it.the population is very diverse.

not all white bread like Dublin.

lots of good restaurants within a 5 minute drive

i loved Marc's for groceries(hate Giant Eagle & Kroger)

we still make a trip to D'Arini's & Spud's every now and then for dinner.

Posted 4 months ago #
alexs
Limestone bluffs of the Scioto
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Pablo said:
Sawmill has its share of vacant space too - Dublin Village Center.

And on the other side of the road is the Olde Sawmill center anchored by a vacant Kroger. I once fooled around a bit with GIS software to measure that site: it has about 22 acres of impermeable surfaces draining into Wright Run.

Posted 4 months ago #
Walker
The KLD / Downtown
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johnwirtz said:
Good point. Must be too much retail space for the existing population, even if they are middle/upper-middle income.

Too much space, or just old/outdated space?

I watched pretty closely as Kroger picked up and moved from their location near Hard Road to just a mile up Sawmill. The old Kroger space is still empty, and I imagine it's put the hurt on the other little retailers in that strip that are still there. It's kind of ridiculous to see this type of big box relocation when it's only a mile or two away, and leaves a zombified wake behind it.

Posted 4 months ago #
Walker
The KLD / Downtown
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cheap said:
Brice blows,it's the Morse Rd of the east side. i lived in the bethel/sawmill area before moving to westgate. i actually liked it.the population is very diverse.

Morse is a little grittier, but more diverse than Bethel in terms of ethnicity. If only we had that bridge across the river to connect the two... ;)

Posted 4 months ago #