Main Street Holidays: Downtown Columbus

By: Walker

6 Comments

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  Columbusite December 3, 2008 2:15 pm

  I’m hoping they can hang in there. The city has been ignoring Main St Downtown for much to long and before they attempt to fill in High St they need to address this stretch of road first. The problem here is that; it’s a high speed one-way, never good for business, and it is separated from Gay St and from residents living Downtown. For cyclists, you have to zig zag on side streets and when you leave you have to watch out for fast traffic turning onto Main St. This road should have been turned two-way before any of Front St. The developer there obviously mandated that the streets be converted if they were to build, just like Gay St, but what about one of the only intact urban retail strips Downtown? They’ve already invested into Downtown and the city makes no effort to fix their street and make it more accessible.
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  Walker December 3, 2008 3:09 pm

  I agree that Main Street should be on the high priority list for two-way conversions. I’ve got no problem with Front being redone first, as I’m sure that was part of the incentive package to encourage some of the ongoing development there. I’m not sure if Main Street has the same sort of opportunity lying in wait.

  And I’m sure those businesses mentioned above would love the beautification but would hate the construction phase, just like many of the businesses on Gay Street did.
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  Columbusite December 3, 2008 4:10 pm

  That’s always the tricky part, no matter if it’s Columbus or Toronto, whether businesses are for or against it, they all agree it’s a painful process.

  I notice that it slows traffic considerably and like I mentioned for N High St, it makes the road much more comfortable for cyclists with all the slowed traffic. Problem here, of course, is that a stray nail, rock, or other construction debris poses an obvious problem, though I was fine on Gay St, I had to keep an eye out and avoid this stuff. If these zones were to become temporary bike-zones, I wonder if that would encourage more business. Couldn’t hurt. Thing is, it’s hard to get people to bike in this weather, even though if you dress properly most days are fine.

  Main St faces the additional problem of not being within walking distance to the immediate neighborhood not to mention having low accessibility to other forms of transportation. Maybe the city should offer developers an incentive by converting the street to a two-way (build Time Tower Mark Jones, please?).
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  Outerloop December 3, 2008 6:31 pm

  So what ever happened to Time Tower? I completely forgot all about that project.
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  ZHC December 3, 2008 7:57 pm

  Columbusite wrote That’s always the tricky part, no matter if it’s Columbus or Toronto, whether businesses are for or against it, they all agree it’s a painful process.

  Nobody like construction but in this case I don’t think we’d/they’d mind too much, assuming it was done in a timely fashion. That can be infuriating part, it’s not uncommon for road/sidewalk projects to take twice as long to complete as initially projected and for whatever reason customers seem to hate it. C’est la vie.

  The other issue would be retaining parking on both sides of the street which both sides would need, I’m rather indifferent about a median but I (and I know all the other property owners I’ve asked) do care quite a bit about retaining on street parking.

  Main Street was converted to one way to accommodate the City Center garage in 1989ish, really it never needed to be one way ever before that and it’s kind of ludicrous that it turns one way at Grant now…

  Columbusite wrote Main St faces the additional problem of not being within walking distance to the immediate neighborhood not to mention having low accessibility to other forms of transportation.

  There are three significant condo projects within two blocks in easy walking distance of my section of Main, I and CJ daniels have bike racks I imagine Dirty Frank’s will too, Lazelle is supposedly going to be part of the bikeways project and the number 2 and other COTA routes run on Main, Greyhound’s main station is a mere two blocks away…

  Maybe I’m missing something? I’m not really sure what you think is missing here in terms of alternate transportation that’s present anywhere else in Columbus? I’d say we have greater access to alternate forms of transportation than quite a bit of Columbus including some other parts of downtown.
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  Walker December 3, 2008 10:21 pm

  Columbusite wrote I notice that it slows traffic considerably and like I mentioned for N High St, it makes the road much more comfortable for cyclists with all the slowed traffic. Problem here, of course, is that a stray nail, rock, or other construction debris poses an obvious problem, though I was fine on Gay St, I had to keep an eye out and avoid this stuff. If these zones were to become temporary bike-zones, I wonder if that would encourage more business. Couldn’t hurt. Thing is, it’s hard to get people to bike in this weather, even though if you dress properly most days are fine.

  It sounds like any new road reconstruction will be following the guidelines laid out in the “complete streets” plan, so I think it’s fairly safe to assume that a revamped Main Street would be bike friendly. As to a few bike riders driving more business, I’d say that it wouldn’t be as huge of an impact as you’d like it to be. Retail thrives on customers and generally it doesn’t matter if they walk into the store after hopping off a bike, getting out of a car, or getting off a bus.

  Outerloop wrote So what ever happened to Time Tower? I completely forgot all about that project.

  I think it was shelved. Or at least put on the backburner. After the housing market started to slow down it seems like quite a few condo projects that didn’t have their financing 100% secured sort of fell by the wayside. I imagine there’s still a chance it could happen, but I wouldn’t expect to read about them breaking ground for a couple more years.

  ZHC wrote The other issue would be retaining parking on both sides of the street which both sides would need, I’m rather indifferent about a median but I (and I know all the other property owners I’ve asked) do care quite a bit about retaining on street parking.

  I wouldn’t imagine it would be a huge problem. Main is very wide through downtown. I’m sure the last thing the city would want to do in the process is reduce the number of meter locations and decrease the amount of revenue generated from people parking on Main.

  As if I need to tell you this. ;)