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Given the hoopla surrounding today’s grand opening of The Ohio State University’s new student union, one might be tempted to believe that the occasion is one for celebration. It’s not.
The construction of the Ohio Union represents a missed opportunity of gargantuan proportions for the university and for the city as a whole.
It’s not just that the building is bad (it is). It’s just that this building could have been so much more. The Ohio State University is the nation’s largest institution of higher learning. It is also Columbus, Ohio’s most valuable civic asset. The site of the Ohio Union was one of the only remaining pieces of High Street canvas upon which we could have painted something important, something magnificent.
And we’ve failed. Magnificently.
My objections to the new building are not rooted in nostalgia for the old one. Hardly. The previous Ohio Union was a dog. Even the well-lit areas somehow felt dark and musty by the time I entered Ohio State in 1990. The old union had to go.
When I heard of the plan to replace the union, I was elated. Finally, Ohio State could build something of a stature and significance appropriate for one of the nation’s leading universities. Instead, we got a torpid behemoth that looks like the headquarters of an insurance company sprawling lazily beside an outerbelt offramp.
Imagine the impact of a student union that captured the rippling energy and soaring imagination of a vibrant, modern university – something that made a statement other than “I was designed by bureaucrats and ‘student input committees.’â€Â
Imagine something like http://bit.ly/tcKBT or http://bit.ly/dp9DYF or http://bit.ly/aqP0mj or this http://bit.ly/d3Vs89 or even this http://bit.ly/ctVxby.
Let’s do something daring. Something controversial! Something iconic.
But please, oh please, let’s not make an uninspired and uninspiring turd like http://giveto.osu.edu/images/183/story.jpg.
Oh. Wait. That’s what we got.
And we’re stuck with it for, what? Seventy years?
This is the last thing Columbus – a town with a history of tearing down and leaving fallow extraordinary architectural sites – needs.
Dr. Gee, you’re dead to me.
Launched in August 2010, TheMetropreneur.com is a local online resource devoted to small business development and entrepreneurship. Its aim is to tell the stories of Central Ohio's business community, foster regional economic development and assist entrepreneurs with its resource-heavy focus. 
