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From The Dispatch:
Small enhancements can make big impact Downtown
By Mark FerenchikOne day, while walking Downtown in Lynn Alley at the Pearl Market, you might gaze up and see a large, artsy chandelier. Maybe you’ll stop to study other public art along the way. And if you pedaled there, you might find parking spots for bicycles inside nearby garages.
Those are some of the ideas a local design company came up with for the Capital Crossroads Special Improvement District to spruce up Downtown’s core.
I think the point I was trying to make was the less surface parking lots we have the better. My worry is that if you hide them with landscaping the lots will be here longer. They are a cash cow for the owners of those lots and they have no incentive to develop it. A property tax or zoning change can be the solution? I don’t really know. I do think that street scaping and small projects like the above mentioned are exciting. I love what is going on at neighborhood launch. The parking lots are being replaced by a parking garage on 4th street. I think this is ideal.
It Looks better, but I don’t see this making anyone want to hang out around the bridge over Long St ,or attract more people Downtown after hours. For real change the city needs adopt new policies to discourage surface lots and empty buildings whose owners are sitting on them and not bothering to fix them up.
I agree with Columbusite. I am not sure on how much average rent is on storefronts downtown but I am guessing it is a little to much for the area. We def need at least 10 or 15 clothing stores and other shops downtown.
I agree with everyone that we need to get more of those surface parking lots developed, but from everyone I’ve spoken to at the city, the types of incentives and policies that you can put in place to encourage development are somewhat limited. A private owner running a private business is many times grandfathered into new policies. And unless we’re going to go to the extreme of eminent domain, then it’s really up to a private land owner to determine if they want to continue to run their business or if they want to develop it into something else or sell it off to someone else. You can’t always force someone to do something with their private property that you want them to.
And just to put things in a completely different way… if I want to have guests over to my house for dinner, I can either spend an hour cleaning up the house with $1 worth of cleaning supplies and have them over tomorrow night… or I can hold off on inviting them over for a year, demo my entire living room, and spend $10,000 rebuilding it to make it absolutely perfect.
The long-term solution may be what I have in mind… but that shouldn’t prevent me from making the quick/cheap “clean-up” improvements that can at least have a smaller immediate impact.
well put Walker
I was in Indianapolis this past weekend on my way to Chicago. I stopped off in downtown to check it out. While I am more for downtown Columbus, I must say a city like Indianapolis has more retail than you could think of for a downtown that size other than the large indoor mall they have many other well known retail and restaurants line the streets. I am wondering how much longer we are going to let downtown go.
i found it interesting that they said,
“Central Ohio Transit Authority officials already have been talking about placing more upscale bus shelters along High Street, said Doug Moore, COTA’s vice president of planning and development.”
didnt they just put in those new bus shelters on high a year or two ago with the ads as replacements for the ones from the 80s? Im all for improvements downtown but it seems like a waste to replace brand new bus shelters. How about actually putting some shelters or signs with arrival times on a street besides high?
Why not simply flush our tax dollars down the toilet?