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The Dispatch wrote
The final countdown begins for walkway
Sunday, July 13, 2008
BY BOBBY PIERCE
S. High Street will lose what some call an eyesore when the City Center sky bridge to the Lazarus building is removed this fall. The walkway connecting the mall and former department store was in vogue in the 1980s, but city leaders and urban planners now see it as a barrier to Downtown commerce.
The sky bridge lost much of its traffic in August 2004 when the Lazarus building closed; some retailers were still using the bridge at the time of the closing, but they have left.
After the walkway is gone, other work is planned around the Lazarus building: The facade will be made over into several storefronts, and two alleys on the northwest side of the building will be repaired. The sky bridge creates a visual deterrent to retail shopping on S. High Street. The area under the bridge is dark and uninviting for shoppers, he said. But new development in the area might soon bring an influx of shoppers.
Related Stories:
- Downtown Re-Development Moving Forward
Inside, not so much..
on top, on the other hand….
hrmmmm…..
Inside, not so much..
on top, on the other hand….
hmm… One very small nuke in the city center could provide one heck of a lot of “urban renewal”. Done right it could also dig it out enough for the an underground train station. “Please put on your lead underpants and remain seated until the train has come to a complete stop”.
I hear some of the old soviet states are selling them cheap. Maybe city council can put a few on the budget for next year. After all, if Cinci or Cleveland gets a bomb..
Gentlemen… we cannot allow a 3-C bomb GAP!
(sigh)
(sigh)
Oh come now.. That headline is screaming to be made fun of.. I’m guessing that the Dispatch writer is a Europe fan to boot.
On the other hand, I’d imagine that there is an engineering plan submitted with the city. Also permits filed, etc.. Anyone know how to access these?
I’d imagine they need to be public record as this affects a public thoroughfare, requires crowd control, etc.
Anyone?
I for one will actually miss the walkway. It’s too bad there’s nothing worth crossing from the Lazarus building to. In a parallell universe, hundreds of office workers cross over to the restaurants in the mall on their lunch hour without ever being exposed to the blizzards of August.
Or the throngs seemingly dirty and diseased humanity that use the bus and walk south to the Franklin County complex? God be Praised that that walkway is coming down! There has never been a finer example of a psychological barrier than the City Center walkway.
I would bet that many office and state workers downtown would guess that downtown ended near State and High Streets and German Village was somewhere beyond the void.
The bus stop was probally more problematic to the mall and the vibe on the street than the walkway. Don’t get me wrong, removing the walkway will be a good thing, but the problem of the bus stop remains.
There are bus stops all up and down High. Every block has one. Why is this one a problem while the rest are not?
I pass through there on my bike commute and my gym is on that block, so I see the police there often. I don’t know the nature of the all the disruptions, but I have noticed that some people are uncomfortable walking by there because of the occasional rowdy teen.
I know it’s just harmless teens engaged in hip hop street posturing, but to some people it’s scary. In the past there have been some high profile crimes near that bus stop (a shooting in the former Wendy’s). Police cars are often sitting in the middle lane there. That’s the only bus stop on High Street that gets that kind of treatment.
It’s been better there since the police seem to have stepped up their presence, probally because of the OSU Arts Space and Lazarus building office traffic.
I know it’s just harmless teens engaged in hip hop street posturing, but to some people it’s scary. In the past there have been some high profile crimes near that bus stop (a shooting in the former Wendy’s). Police cars are often sitting in the middle lane there. That’s the only bus stop on High Street that gets that kind of treatment.
It’s been better there since the police seem to have stepped up their presence, probally because of the OSU Arts Space and Lazarus building office traffic.
I agree. I walk past there twice a day and am never completely comfortable. The police are present more often than not, though I blame the liquor store more than the bus stop. People curse, spit, fight with each other, drag babies around, smoke, smell like marijuana. Not a lot you can do about it, but it’s not a good area and I agree that it’s much more of a barrier between North and South High Street than the walkway.
Police cars sit in the middle lane on High during rush hour all up and down between Gay Street and Rich Street to bust:
- people trying to turn during restricted hours
- jaywalkers cutting across traffic to catch buses
- people driving in the bus lanes during restricted hours
I’ve seen them bust people for all three of those reasons. Rarely are they there to keep an eye on people hanging out around the bus stops.
I’d say the liquor store on the corner at Rich and High is a bigger detriment than the bus stop as far as these things go.
The dynamic under that overpass is interesting. We used to go to Max & Erma’s at City Center just in hopes of catching a good fight outside the windows. More often than not we were satisfied with our front row seats. Our waitress said it happened daily, however the times were never as easy to predict. I can’t honestly say I’ve ever walked underneath of it either, come to think of it.
Yeah that bus stop is always full of holligans. There tends to be a paddywagon in the middle lane every-other time I pass by. And it smells like black and milds along that whole block which is pretty cool.
The second holligan bus stop on a smaller level is the #2 stop in front of 14-0.
I don’t think liquor stores are to blame. Maybe people just like to hang out with each other. I do.
That’s absolutely not true. Walker is right to mention the stop near the liquor store, but stops on the South Side and near the Kroger just south of Campus get far more attention.
Also, I don’t see bus stops — or the people who use them — as a problem. But, then again, I don’t think our poor people should be shipped off to camps.
these bus stops are at a convinient juncture for low income and other peoples to make transfers from the cota number 1 livingston/cleveland to the 2 east main (the two busiest bus routes in the city) as well as a host of others like the 9 leonard/brentnell, the 11 st clair to pointdexter, or the 16 out long street. these are the first stops on high after some of the buses turn off rich, mound, or main as well as the fact they are less crowded and can get you a better seat heading north than from broad and high (which is usually packed). i just see the liquor store, the wig outlet, and “pieces for wear” as added bonuses for already being in the area rather than being attractions with some kind of regional draw for “holligans” or “trouble-makers”.
It seems to me that they handle shipping themselves off pretty well via these cota routes to the government projects on the east side, in franklinton, or general low-income areas of town, and these are just the best stops where the bus routes to these areas come together.
I think this thread is headed in the wrong direction….
Def. seen some arrests/altercations at the bus stop we are talking about.
That being said, I have never had a problem, except for the occasional aggressive pan handler.
I know females who don’t feel comfortable walking through that bus stop alone.
High street has been entirely closed in the CC overpass block every night this week on my way home from work at 12am. Last night the overpass had power, tonight it appears to have been cut. Must be getting close!
so when is the deadline to tear the mall down.