The creators of Columbus Food Adventures and Columbus Brew Adventures are introducing a new way to experience the city. Through a partnership with Jeff Lafever from the Columbus Historical Society, co-founders Andy Dehus and Bethia Woolf will offer opportunities to explore Columbus’ history, architecture and development through Columbus City Adventures.
“It’s an exciting opportunity for us,” Woolf said. “Our other businesses have been using food and the local microbrewing and distilling scenes to tell stories of the city, and this really allows us to work with a broader pallet. There’s a lot of stories in Columbus that don’t revolve around food and drinking.”
To start, Columbus City Adventures will offer four different tours. The Central City Tour will cover sites and amenities of Columbus’ urban core, including Downtown and the adjacent neighborhoods, and focus on “cultural attractions, entertainment districts and preservation sites.” The Past, Present & Future tour will look at the city’s heritage and connect it with its current state of development and its evolving trajectory. Tourists will get a comprehensive view of Columbus’ built environment with the Architecture Tour. Lastly, the German Village Walking Tour —the only walking tour— will examine the aesthetics and preservation efforts of the area.
The tours aren’t just for tourists. New residents to Columbus — of which we’ll get another million by 2050 — can take advantage of them to learn more about their new home.
“But, we’re also hoping that some of the more unusual pieces of history will, you know — anybody, even people who’ve lived in Columbus a long time will learn something on the tour,” Woolf said.
Once Columbus City Adventures is established, they’ll add a few more themed, specialized tours. To start, they’re considering three areas of interest, including the city’s military history, LGBTQ history, and African American history.
For expertise, they’ve turned to Lafever, whom they met though a historic restaurants tour they did in partnership with the Historical Society. Lafever was looking for a change, and a way to use his talents to do more tours. When he brought the idea to Woolf and Dehus, the two saw it as the perfect opportunity for them to expand.
“We saw a real opportunity here since, to the best of our knowledge, Columbus is the largest city in the US without regularly scheduled city tours,” Lafever said in a press release. “With the explosive population growth in Central Ohio, and growing tourism/convention traffic, we expect our tours will be useful for helping visitors and newly relocated to understand the city and ‘hit the ground running.’”
For more information, visit columbuscityadventures.com.