List of 10 Buildings that should be Demolished « Columbus Underground Messageboard

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List of 10 Buildings that should be Demolished

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Started 11 months ago by Graybeak
Latest reply from Walker

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ExileOn6thSt
Weinland Park
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Pickerington_Kyle said:
Lets get a little more fantasy here.

Ten Things you would change if you were Mayor

1. Transit. Make it less car dependent and focus on other forms such as light rail, bus, and biking

2. Removal of on street surface parking lots. Makes the city look less dense.

3. Completely revamp West Broad Street with Bike lanes, Light rail track, and bulldoze all structures that are violation of codes.

4. Encourage more Condo/apartment skyrises in the city. Minimum 150 feet.

5. More cultural or artwork concepts along the river with more shopping. Downtown Aquarium between Rich and Main Street south of COSI that encourages late night hours Thursday-Saturday.

6. Push for Companies and sport teams relocation. To encourage more private or major companies to move into downtown and not out in the burbs. Try and get a basketball team to relocate into Nationwide Arena to have activity in the Arena District 24/7 365 days a year.

7. Create more large public places that encourages people to come downtown.

8. Create stronger neighborhoods near downtown to encourage more inner city growth (KLD, Olde Town East, Franklinton, hilltop, and Driving Park).

9. Cap or remove major highways around downtown. Also to landscape highways and use cost savings methods that doesn't need grass or branches to be cut monthly.

10. Create a big, creative WELCOME TO COLUMBUS! sign with pictures of Ohio State, Columbus Zoo, State house, Blue jackets, Clippers, Crew, Festivals, German Village, and everything else that makes Columbus Great.

If you want to change things in this town, you wouldn't want to be mayor. You'd be better off owning the Dispatch or having Wexner as your last name.

Posted 11 months ago #
David
East side exile
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Pickerington_Kyle said:
Actually it was on the West Side of Neil Avenue, where the LC Pavilion and Huntington park currently are.

Sorry, but this is incorrect.

Posted 11 months ago #
Cbusbill
Columbus
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David said:
Sorry, but this is incorrect.

http://www.forgottenoh.com/Counties/Franklin/Pen/op-presentdaysite.jpg

Posted 11 months ago #
melikecheese
Merion Village
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Interesting, I would not choose to demolish any building in good condition, some are not the prettiest, but a skyscrapper that's taken care of looks better then a surface lot or some ugly broken down place.

How about the Wonder Bread factory, empty large square warehouse...? No one mentioned that but we mentioned the arena and the casino which is not even built?

Posted 11 months ago #
Walker
The KLD / Downtown / Gay Street
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melikecheese said:
How about the Wonder Bread factory, empty large square warehouse...?

It won't be empty for long...

http://www.columbusunderground.com/forums/topic/wonderbread-building-redevelopment/page/2#post-443195

http://www.columbusunderground.com/wonder-bread-lofts-will-be-home-to-mixed-use-redevelopment

Posted 11 months ago #
Graybeak
Hunky Town
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As I drove past last night, I noticed some wit had scratched out the letter R and part of the letter B, making the sign appear to read "wonder d ead"

Posted 11 months ago #
dbincbus

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4. Encourage more Condo/apartment skyrises in the city. Minimum 150 feet.

I completely agree. For a city of 800,000 people, Columbus has a shockingly low amount of sky scrappers. In fact, how many 10+ story buildings are there outside of downtown? Four? Five? I would like to see Columbus designate high density corridors, say for instance, along High Street, from downtown through North Broadway in Clintonville. Allow developers to build tall buildings to grab that student population, and others. Unlike in the German Village, there's really nothing historic or aesthetically pleasing along that stretch (especially in Clintonville). And then, one you get some projects going, move forward with the street car project from Clintonville to German Village, since you'll finally have the density to support it. That seems to be the biggest stumbling block for mass transit in Columbus - too many low density neighborhoods. Fix that.

Posted 11 months ago #
buckeyecpa

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Skyscrapers are a waste at this point. That boom has come and gone. Think about the arena district buildings. 5-7 stories max is ideal for Columbus. Even look at gateway as an example. If you build buildings like that and cluster them it will get a better feel while adding density to the downtown area.

Posted 11 months ago #
Pablo
Crestview Addition
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buckeyecpa said:
Skyscrapers are a waste at this point. That boom has come and gone. Think about the arena district buildings. 5-7 stories max is ideal for Columbus. Even look at gateway as an example. If you build buildings like that and cluster them it will get a better feel while adding density to the downtown area.

+1

Posted 11 months ago #
Pickerington_Kyle

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I'm all for infill of the cities parking lots, but I feel as if some taller buildings should be built. I'm not saying do what Dubai does, but for every 10 (5-7 story building) there should be a tower that is at least 200-250 feet. That's just my two cents..

Posted 11 months ago #
buckeyecpa

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How do you fill a tower once it is built when we already have extremely large vacancy numbers in the towers we already have?

When you build at a 5-7 max it will give the illusion that you're in the middle of very large buildings unless you do an aerial picture. Skyline photos are great but so is a picture of a tropical island. When building at a 5-7 range it will spur growth to downtown. With a tower its upward and the reason they were originally built was to add density to an already dense area. You won't see downtown growth if you build upward in this city. There will still be too many dead spots and lack of excitement for possible tenants of the area.

Posted 11 months ago #
Walker
The KLD / Downtown / Gay Street
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I agree with everyone advocating for low-to-mid-rise rather than towers. 10 five-story buildings would do more to activate street-level vibrancy than 1 thirty-story tower.

Towers look nice on postcards, but people don't live on postcards.

Posted 11 months ago #
Go Green

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What I'd like to know, is how do the potential demolishers plan on recycling and/or disposing of the waste created by said demolitions? Here is a thoughtful and interesting read on how they can and should minimize the negative environmental impacts of building demolitions by reusing/recycling some of the waste. Ultimately, this should be a requirement rather than just an encouragement.

http://www.ppgbuffalo.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/deconstruction.pdf

Posted 11 months ago #
buckeyecpa

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There are already enough requirements to demolish a building and already enough for renovating. If we continue to add new rules by the minute the costs will be driven to the point that we'll see properties either rot in place or random fires set to the property so they circumvent the process. The cost for demolition is already higher than most think. If you continue to drive cost up by trying to please every organization nothing will be accomplished in terms of growth.

Posted 11 months ago #
Go Green

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While I can appreciate your stance, your statement that "there are already enough requirements to demolish a building and already enough for renovating" is awfully subjective. I'm fairly confident that we could rebut each other's points all day long, but to prevent this from turning into a back-and-forth ad nauseum, I will just say that I believe there could be some tightening up of the requirements in a way so as to not inflate costs any further.

Posted 11 months ago #
Cbusbill
Columbus
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as the city continues to grow, the larger towers will follow. tall towers convey an imaage of 'big city', but columbus is doing just fine with the 5-7 story in fill projects underway downtown. be honest, what would you rather...a 'tall' tower that fills in one vacant lot, or a half dozen smaller buildings fill in 6 vacant lots. downtown columbus is honestly a vast area, for a city our size. we desperately need to get rid of the surface level asphalt and keep moving the feel of downtown towards one of continuity.

Posted 11 months ago #
somebuckeye
Franklin Park
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Agreed about the towers. Columbus had many more 3-6 story buildings downtown in the early 20th century which were demolished and replaced with high density skyscrapers and highly profitable surface parking in the 1960s-1990s.

Posted 11 months ago #
Walker
The KLD / Downtown / Gay Street
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Cbusbill said:
be honest, what would you rather...a 'tall' tower that fills in one vacant lot, or a half dozen smaller buildings fill in 6 vacant lots.

The Arena District is a great real world example of this. It's an entire neighborhood of offices, apartments, condos, entertainment, retail and garages. It would look nicer on a postcard if it were stacked up into one 50-story building, but it would only have a footprint of a single block and much less ground-floor retail. It works much better as an entire district of shorter buildings.

Posted 11 months ago #