New City of Columbus Eight-Story Office Building Proposed Downtown
November 18, 2014 11:51 am – Walker Evans

The veil has been lifted from one of the most secretive development projects in Downtown Columbus today, as the design for a new City of Columbus office building was presented at the monthly Downtown Commission meeting this morning. The presentation includes an eight-story 180,000 square foot office tower design by local architectural firms Schooley Caldwell Associates and DesignGroup. Additionally, local firm MKSK is leading the landscape architecture side of the project.

READ MORE: https://www.columbusunderground.com/new-city-of-columbus-eight-story-office-building-proposed-downtown

I guess I’m relieved but not impressed. I would have like to have seen the other options. Something that houses the department of development should be a bit more inspirational in my view, set the standard. Again, not a bad building, but I would have liked to see it break out of the rectangle a little bit.

San Francisco is building a new public utilities commission building that I really like.

IMO, it’s not bad and certainly could be a lot worse. I think it’s miles ahead of the bizarre green glass ‘wrap’ they added recently to the old police HQ. I also like it better than both of its stylistic cousins, the courthouse and the miranova office tower.

Walker Evans wrote:

Really? I think that it looks just fine.

Yeah, architecturally it’s just not my cup of tea. I am glad they were able to reuse the old building though, and overall the ‘city campus’ will definitely be an improvement for this part of downtown.

Hoping that we hear some news about the proposal across the street moving forward next! ;)

The police HQ building wrap is a LOT more distinctive than this, which is just a low-budget version of the Cuyahoga County HQ.

Josh Miller wrote:

Agreed I like the wrap. It will actually be a bit more on display now with the park they plan to put in.

I also would have liked to have seen them either bury the parking garage under the park, or incorporate it into the tower. Lobby on the first floor, floors 2 to 5 parking and then offices on top. Then your 8 story building becomes 12 and doesn’t require a separate dead garage. You can also build it in such a way that if you need additional office space you can convert the garage floors into offices. That’s what the plan is for the DunnhumbyUSA center in Cincinnati. Plus it’s possible to hide the garage levels well with good design. I think it’s a option they should have considered. A little more height would add to the skyline a bit too.

More height would always be welcomed but I think the tradeoff of getting pedestrian traffic is worth the separated garage.<br>
Edit – The addition of street level retail in the garage building would be even better, which I thought I remembered hearing was something already proposed. Haven’t been able to track down where I read it though.

From page 4:
CITY HALL CAMPUS: Finance Committee chair Priscilla R. Tyson is sponsoring ordinance 2190-2014 for professional architectural and engineering consulting services for the new Front and Long Street building.

The building will house, among other City services, the Building and Zoning, Development, and Public Service departments. The ordinance authorizes a contract modification to address changes in the scale, scope and location of the building’s parking garage and will include plans for street retail.

Sounds like everything cleared the DT Commission – a couple new renderings released too:

http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/news/2015/04/28/newest-city-of-columbus-office-building-gets-ok.html