Personally, I love the old rusted steel railroad crossing the river. It lends character to the skyline and also a bit of grit. Also, I'm not sure building a road thru North Bank Park would be the best thing to do. I agree with Walker, taking Broad isn't that much farther. I would like to see the pedestrian bridge move ahead sooner rather than later. If anything, i think the 3rd proposal would work the best, but maybe not as close to the railroad and a little farther west. However, I don't see anything like this happening for a very long time, if at all. I'm not sure we'd have enough of the increase in a need for vehicular access to Franklinton to justify spending millions more on another bridge.
Since this is an idea thread, I'll throw one out there that I've been thinking about for a while now and actually did a project on at OSU. In a nutshell: bury the North Market surface lot, build a plaza on top, extend the kiosks, buy out Yankee Trader, constuct semi-covered walkway on south side of park connecting old market with market extension, cover walkway with solar panels that provide power to both markets, tear down that building next to Hampton Inn, construct residential/hotel/retail midrise of same height as hotel, paint mural on back of Novak's building, spruce up the parking garage (that pink whatever "south beach" color is horrible).
I would love to see this done. Just imagine sitting on the Bar Louis patio and looking out onto something like this. Think of the thousands of visitors that walk by this lot every year. What would you rather them see? I absolutely hate seeing surface parking, especially in a dense urban location like this. It just does not belong.
I appraised a two family owned by the Executive Director, David Wible, and mentioned the idea to him. He seemed somewhat interested and did say they have considered expanding at some point, although there's nowhere to expand. He did say if Brother's or Gaswerks ever became available, those would be considered as acquisition targets. That seemed a little off-the-wall to me as I suspect those places would not become available for a very long time. The Park St. bar district is there for the long haul. Anywho, I think his main concerns were the cost and the loss of some parking spaces due to columns and whatnot within the garage. I don't think the loss of a few spots would hurt, not with the garage next door and the growing residential population and tourists with new hotels and conventions.
Thoughts?
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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.