Columbus City and Suburban Development News (Clinton: violent crime, trees, streets)

[jbcmh81]

New 11-Story Office Building Proposed for The Short North | ColumbusUnderground.com

An 11-story mixed-use office project is being proposed for the surface parking lot at 711 N. High. This is the last city owned lot south of 2nd Avenue that has not, until now, been either developed or proposed for development. There are a handful of smaller private lots, particularly the one just south of the UDF as well as parking just south of Greystone Apartments. The project would include ground floor retail/restaurant space as well as space for a rooftop restaurant, something that does not exist in the Short North, surprisingly. The project will have some garage space, but a garage will be built for the project at the surface lot at the intersection of Pearl Alley and E. Lincoln Street in Italian Village. The garage will be faced with residential units similar to how the Hubbard garage was, so you won't really be able to see the garage itself. How many residential units is not known at this time.

This would also be the 3rd 10+ story project in the Short North to be built or proposed in the last 2 years. The first was the 11-story Joseph project just to the south, and the 2nd is the 11-story White Castle project at 2nd and High, which is still going through design approvals.

[jbcmh81]

Originally Posted by jbcmh81

New 11-Story Office Building Proposed for The Short North | ColumbusUnderground.com

An 11-story mixed-use office project is being proposed for the surface parking lot at 711 N. High. This is the last city owned lot south of 2nd Avenue that has not, until now, been either developed or proposed for development. There are a handful of smaller private lots, particularly the one just south of the UDF as well as parking just south of Greystone Apartments. The project would include ground floor retail/restaurant space as well as space for a rooftop restaurant, something that does not exist in the Short North, surprisingly. The project will have some garage space, but a garage will be built for the project at the surface lot at the intersection of Pearl Alley and E. Lincoln Street in Italian Village. The garage will be faced with residential units similar to how the Hubbard garage was, so you won't really be able to see the garage itself. How many residential units is not known at this time.

This would also be the 3rd 10+ story project in the Short North to be built or proposed in the last 2 years. The first was the 11-story Joseph project just to the south, and the 2nd is the 11-story White Castle project at 2nd and High, which is still going through design approvals.

More details on the garage portion of the project for Italian Village: Mixed-Use Parking Garage Building Proposed in Italian Village | ColumbusUnderground.com

The garage would be 5 stories and would be mixed-use in nature. 125 spots would be included, as well as 13 residential units. Retail space would be included on the ground floor as well as a rooftop terrace.

[Mplsite]

Interesting that the Short North is getting taller buildings than Downtown. That SN parking garage is as tall as most residential developments Downtown and just shy of the 6 story development proposed further down the same street at Gay just a stone's throw away from the heart of the city at Broad and High. When you think about it it does make sense, since for all intents and purposes the Short North really is Columbus' "downtown" in the sense of a traditional downtown: blocks and blocks of high density residential and commercial uses. Downtown proper is still largely a suburban high-rise office park, not a "downtown" in the true sense of the word.

Blocks with several storefronts all right next to each other without gaps are few and far between and even where they do exist, like N 4th, it's only offering half of what it should. Instead of at least as many destinations across the street you have a huge parking lot offering nothing to do. It's a very incomplete block, yet passes as a downtown success story in Columbus. Even on Downtown's best street, Gay between Pearl and 3rd, it's missing 1/5 of its potential with the corner of 3rd where patrons of Tip Top and Plantain Cafe still to this day just have a view of a drab parking lot, not one other people enjoying themselves on more restaurant patios across the street.

And on top of that is the fact that lots of developers don't know how to properly create a good urban storefront and in the case of Highpoint there are good examples of properly executed storefronts all sitting directly across the street, which makes it all the more puzzling as to how they mucked that up and are now sitting largely boarded up to this day. When you add up how many real city blocks Downtown has vs the Short North it's no competition; the Short North wins hands down as does Old North, even Clintonville if you can forgive how ridiculously wide High St is over there. Hell, Downtown is barely able to go toe to toe with Weinland Park in this department let alone other cities' downtowns, so is it any surprise then that developers aren't willing to commit to going vertical Downtown and spend exponentially more to do so where there's very little "there" there? If Columbus can get it together enough to add more real city blocks that are all connected together and not tiny isolated islands then we can expect to see some high-rises, but these will likely be built in the outskirts of Downtown by then since mid-rises will be already filling in everything around High.

[jbcmh81]

I have been putting together some before and after pages of Columbus development since 2007. I have done this for the Brewery District, most of Downtown and the Arena District. Most of the maps are only updated through 2014 unfortunately, as Google maps has not updated for 2015 yet, which would show even more changes. In any case, these are an interesting visual of how Columbus neighborhoods have been changing.

Before and After Google Special: 2007-Present Part 1 | All Columbus, Ohio Data
Before and After Google Special: 2007-Present Part 2 | All Columbus, Ohio Data
Before and After Google Special: 2007-Present Part 3 | All Columbus, Ohio Data

I will be doing the Short North next, followed by Grandview, OTE/King-Lincoln, Campus and a few other areas.

[jbcmh81]

http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/...inchester.html

Some renderings of the Brewdog Brewery going in Canal Winchester.

Some recent good news with this is that they're planning an actual restaurant/bar near Downtown, but no specific site has been announced. "Near Downtown" for them can mean New Albany.

[jbcmh81]

http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/...ob-growth.html

Columbus saw the Midwest's best job growth the past year.

[jbcmh81]

Hotel and Office Development Proposed for Park Street | ColumbusUnderground.com

A pair of 8-story mixed-use buildings have been proposed for the northwest corner of Park Street and Spruce. The buildings would include a hotel, office space, ground floor retail and a garage.

Unfortunately, the project would require the demolition of existing historic buildings that are in great shape and are in current use. Hopefully, development officials will push for the existing buildings to be incorporated into the project instead. The design is still just preliminary.

[Mplsite]

Originally Posted by jbcmh81

Hotel and Office Development Proposed for Park Street | ColumbusUnderground.com

A pair of 8-story mixed-use buildings have been proposed for the northwest corner of Park Street and Spruce. The buildings would include a hotel, office space, ground floor retail and a garage.

Unfortunately, the project would require the demolition of existing historic buildings that are in great shape and are in current use. Hopefully, development officials will push for the existing buildings to be incorporated into the project instead. The design is still just preliminary.

Funny how I was just talking about how few of these kind of blocks there are Downtown and now they are looking to keep it that way.

[Mplsite]

I'll also add that it's telling that despite how plentiful the parking lots are Downtown they still want to build on top of a block that's thriving with several businesses. It points to something very wrong in a city's urban policy that it makes more sense to build new buildings over existing ones that are fully in use over seas of available parking lots. Columbus is certainly not the only American city where this occurs (I've seen it happen here too), but in a city where so few such blocks exist it's to such an extent that any loss is devastating. The city really needs to ask itself why this is the case that they've made developed lots much more attractive to build on than empty lots not requiring additional demolition of existing buildings. If it ever hopes to see all those parking lots go away, that is, otherwise existing blocks like this will just be cannibalized for newer, albeit denser ones in the future and further hamper infill where it actually needs to go.

[logongst]

Columbus needs to step up the development downtown no doubt. Columbus may be the most underwhelming downtown in the country for its size. The housing is not really affordable either. No 800 month studios in buildings like the Atlas.But to the people that think downtown sucks now they shoulda seen it in 1998... I love downtown though always have and always will.

Would love for The city to focus on rebuilding up the east side strips like Long, Main, Mt Vernon even Livingston. Those strips would be classy streets if the city didn't deliberately tear them down... Looks like park street will suffer the same fate but atleast the buildings are replaced with something mordern and large in scale. East side was left vacant...