Local Entrepreneurial News
From The Dispatch:
Planners unveil convention hotel
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
By Barbara CarmenThe planned $140 million Hilton-Columbus Downtown convention hotel will start to rise above N. High Street next August, a project team told Franklin County commissioners this morning.
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colinperkins said…
“I’m supposed to get to the meeting I came to town for. But instead I will go to the Char Bar. Thank God I walked outside and saw that.â€Â
I already live in Columbus, so the Char Bar wouldn’t be a new find for me, but I can tell ya…Char Bar and Martini are two reasons I’ve never made it through a full day of any conference down there…
Ooops.
surber17 Says: Was thinking about the skywalk and it might be a necessary evil. If you’re staying at the hotel and need to haul stuff over to the convention the last thing you want to do is battle traffic and the weather.
It works the other way around though too as a detriment… if you’re looking for food, drinks, and entertainment, the last thing you want to do is battle traffic and the weather. It might sound a bit silly, as many people would be willing to inconvenience themselves while visiting another town, but I’m willing to bet that there are a lot of folks who don’t live in that mindset at all.
A perfectly good opportunity for a green roof was missed here!
too much red brick..bleh…i will agree with walker that the skywalk in city center was a TON bigger than this holding actual parts (or whole?) of stores in it, this one wont be as bad especially if it is glass…i dont particularly like the visual of it espec. in the rendering but being at a convention in cincy recently i remember the skywalk being pretty helpful.
Anyone notice the span from the hotel to the convention center? Seems like a large span. Is that going to take a lot of view-impeding structure to build, ie very thick beams and/or cross bracing? It cannot be all see through and glassy as the rendering shows… I like the tunnel idea (if possible) as an option to get to the hotel, as it would promote sidewalk traffic and preserve the corridor street view.
Did Downtown businesses know that they’re going to deal with higher meter rates for this big expensive block of blah with a side of skywalk to keep the conventioneers out of our crime-ridden downtown? Send them back to the drawing board. $140 million and that’s the end result?
New article today from the Dispatch, see below -
Bigger Hilton hotel to open early, by fall 2012
The Hilton hotel to be built across from the Greater Columbus Convention Center is going to be bigger and open sooner than originally planned, local leaders learned yesterday.
The $140 million hotel is expected to have 532 rooms, up from the original 500, and to be completed by early fall 2012, a couple of months earlier than previously expected, consultant Jeff Sachs and architect Todd Holamka of HOK told convention-center officials and Franklin County commissioners.
…
One design feature shown yesterday — an elevated pedestrian walkway across High Street connecting the hotel with the convention center — generated some reaction.
Curt Moody of Moody Nolan said Mayor Michael B. Coleman was not thrilled with the idea but was “open” to considering it.
“He said, ‘I just brought one down,’ ” said Moody, referring to a pedestrian bridge that was connected to the Columbus City Center mall, which is being leveled.
READ MORE
Between the new hotel and the casino, this will create a ton of jobs for the next two years. Add in Columbus Commons, the riverfront, Flats on Vine, Children’s Hospital, Grandview Yard, OSU hospital expansion, and various other small projects. That’s alot of construction jobs. I could go even further and speculate on additional jobs from the construction of Ibiza (hahahaha) and a new transit station.
I like the idea of placing the walkway underground. JRemy is right, the building will already be sitting below street level. Perhaps they could create a covered walkway that utilizes the High St bridge over Convention Center Dr?
I wonder if such a connection is possible on the Convention Center side?
i contacted HOK when they got the contract and BEGGED then to consider an enclosed “ground walk”. If you want people to get from the hotel to the convention center without getting wet/cold, you could connect the two under the viaduct instead of the gerbil tube above the street.
glad they listened.
Great call – what was their response?
I totally understand the need to provide an easy, dry access path between a convention hotel and a convention center. Why not make it arched rather than straight across, though? They can install those flying sidewalk things they have at airports. Keep it in line with the neighborhood, and make it a little more fun for guests.
You guys do realize that the skywalk was probably not the architect’s idea, right? That most likely came from the client or from whoever manages the convention center. There is always the chance that it was the architect’s idea but I doubt it.
And I can tell you what the response was when some random person (I’m assuming that you’re not officially involved with this project, cmhcow) called HOK and starting talking about what they would like to see happen with the project. The person hung up the phone, thought to themselves ”That was fucking weird”, and went on with their life.
awful.
i really hope the victorian village and italian village commissions hold strong and keep this kind of architecture out of the historic districts.
This hotel is located Downtown, not in Victorian or Italian Village. I believe their boundaries only go as far south as 670.
If anything, it blends in with the Hyatt and Convention Center. Which … isn’t necessary a good thing. But yes, this by no means falls within any historic or commission or areas.
i never said they were within the historic districts. as someone who used to work in the historic preservation office, i know that. however, that doesn’t mean it should completely ignore the scale of it’s surroundings… which it does.
the whole idea of the convention center is that it allows a large scale building to fit in with scale of high street and the short north (which is north of this… i know) and allow the facade to bleed across the street allowing the building to integrate itself within the community.
this building on the other hand is basically a massive shoebox that dwarves everything around it therefore destroying any kind of connectivity that the area once had.
look at rendering two, that north wall…
even if it’s not technically zoned within a historic district and/or it’s in downtown that portion of high street certainly reads as though it’s an extension of the short north and the building should have been designed as such.
what i mean when i say i hope VV and IV hold strong is that they do not allow this kind of destructive architecture to start permeating into the continuity that exists within their districts.
Ah, gotcha.
Personally, I don’t mind the size or height of the building. While it may dwarf the Char Bar, or even the height of the main Convention Center, it is neighbors with the Hyatt Hotel and Nationwide One as well.
Visual aesthetics aside, the added visitor density should be well received Downtown.
The height and size are fine. Given the scale of units that make up hotels, bigger means denser, and that is a *good* thing…we need density. If you don’t get the size/density equation then you don’t get cities. The issue to be more concerned with here is design, and the design of that thing is just bad. Looking at it makes me feel as destitute as I do when looking at the wallpaper architecture of the Arena District. Bottom line, the civic and business leaders of Columbus have low aspirations for great design and this project is just another example of the lame mushy-middle architecture that populates this town. When people build things like that they are telling us: you don’t deserve any better. And we start to believe this so we think its fine…â€Âit’s good…for Columbus.†Look no further than those new garages without any retail and that absurd lifestyle communities residential development. You can’t even call it provincial because it doesn’t reflect our “province.†And I don’t agree that you can’t blame the architects. Let’s face it, the selected HOK/MN design team is not a stellar one. While I know that architects are only as good as their client, they are also responsible for leading them and cajoling them a bit. I’m not looking for signature work, I just want something that captures the imagination and stimulates the senses. Trust me, it’s not that hard. Is that really that much for us to expect? And enough with the red brick already, Columbus; please, can we call a truce?
About the skywalks: when the decision makers are suburbanites to their core, this is what you get. All the arguments for the skywalk posted border on the indefensible. Unfortunately, this is an argument that you can’t win in Columbus.
Here is a cool picture I found. It shows the future site of the Hilton from the above. http://www.aboveallohio.com/images/stock/big/nationwide_arena_columbus_ohio_aerial.jpg