An increasing number of developers in Columbus are turning their attention to what they see as an untapped resource in the region — large parking lots serving aging retail centers.
With a small number of projects completed and more on the way, the practice of building residential and mixed-use developments right next to existing, suburban-style retail centers appears to be slowly taking hold in Columbus (the trend has been well-documented in other places).
The Heights at Worthington Place, from Dublin-based developer Crawford Hoying, added nearly 200 apartment units to the back corner of that mall’s parking lot. Taylor House on Bethel Road, from Preferred Living, is a 325-unit development that replaced a vacant K-Mart and its large parking lot. A one-bedroom apartment in that complex, which occupies the eastern portion of the Olentangy Plaza retail center, starts at around $1,000 a month.
Braxton on Bethel is a proposed development featuring 114 apartments immediately behind Bethel Center off of Godown Road. That project uses a similar strategy as Taylor House – they are both technically extended-stay hotels, not apartments, which means that no rezoning is necessary to build them on a commercial site.
Crawford Hoying also has plans to eventually redevelop the Kohls at 3360 Olentangy River Road. The developer has said that a new, redesigned Kohls would likely be incorporated into any future development, and that they envision a significant mixed-use project on the 16-acre site.
Matthew Starr, Crawford Hoying’s Director of Development, said he thinks this particular infill trend is only likely to accelerate in the coming years, especially given changes in the way people in the region get around and the potential for online shopping to change retail spending habits.
“Retail just keeps getting smaller, and I think with things like driverless cars coming soon…there’s no reason we can’t have that continued density on some of these parking lots,” he said. “All these surface parking lots…the stores need it maybe one month a year, so I don’t know why we can’t keep doing that sort of thing.”
A recent study from OSU professor Jennifer Evans-Cowley seems to add weight to the argument that Columbus is over-parked. Her team analyzed nearly 400 Google Earth images from 2004 to 2014, counting the number of cars in the parking lots of 104 retailers across the Columbus metro area. They found that the average parking lot was only 28 percent full.
The City of Columbus has also been tracking the issue, and sees the potential for new residential construction to help revitalize some of the city’s aging retail corridors.
“We’ve long used a mixed-use designation for older commercial corridors, but recent plans for more suburban portions of the city have included this designation as well,” said Planning Administrator Kevin Wheeler, citing the Northland I Plan, the Far North Plan, and the Northwest Plan, which is currently under development.
“We view residential development as a good fit with many of the larger shopping centers that either have excess land capacity (often empty parking lots) or that may struggle to remain viable as strictly retail sites,” added Wheeler. “While it doesn’t makes sense for all shopping centers, residential within walking distance of retail services, with good transportation access makes sense.”