the urban news for the week ending Sunday, May 25, 2008
 
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People talk about master plans, grand visions and unified goals when it comes to planning for downtown. In the past I've been one of the advocates of the planned approach of revitalizing downtown, always feeling we lacked a cohesive vision. As of late though, there has been a subtle shift in my thinking as I have watched certain events in the city unfold over the past 4 years. It's not about the plan, it's about the story.
Paul Bonneville  
 If the Columbus Symphony Orchestra hopes to resurrect itself for a fall season, it might have to do so without funding from the Greater Columbus Arts Council.
Hours after leading the Columbus Symphony and renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma in a classical-season finale, Hirokami sat alone on a steel bench at Port Columbus, waiting to return to his native Japan.
Columbus Symphony Orchestra musicians have cued up a cost-cutting proposal they say would allow the struggling group to open its season this fall, including a concession to trim their salaries by about 7 percent.
We are envisioning COSI better serving the community by going from a stand-alone science center to a multi-tenant, partnership-based center of science, he said. "This is all about making the facility work by working with other partners in helping us tell the story of where the economy's going."
Almost half of 1,725 college students surveyed by Collegia said they would leave the city because their job prospects were in other cities. Most of the students surveyed attend Ohio State University, Otterbein College or the Columbus College of Art & Design
The new two-year, $1.3 billion state construction budget contains about $120 million for community projects. Franklin County is in line to get $18.1 million of that money
The state Controlling Board has approved a $2 million roadwork grant for NetJets Inc.'s Columbus expansion, part of the multimillion-dollar public incentive package that helped keep the company rooted in Columbus.
Safety ambassadors on foot and bike canvass more than 70 square blocks of Downtown. Connected by radios and backed up by two special-duty police officers, 10 of them are out until 11 p.m. on weekdays and 2 a.m. on weekends to reduce crime and make people feel safer.
Well it's fairly old news to most by now, but The Queen Bee spot has already found a replacement.
It's taken months for the City of Columbus to decide what to do with the large property. Currently, the mayor's spokesman, Michael Brown said no official decision has been made -- and that the city is still in talks with several developers on what exactly to do with the area.
The German Village Society last week wrapped up an appeal hearing to have its Meeting Haus ruled tax exempt.
The Sustainable Grandview citizens group will host an energy seminar and open house May 22 at Watt Works, 1078 Goodale Blvd.
"There's a huge gap between the number of affordable housing units and the need," said Amy Klaben, the Housing Partnership's president, who says the county needs 17,000 more units for families making less than $15,000 a year.
Where will they go? If the federal government approves a plan to tear down half of the city's public housing, then approximately 2,700 low-income residents must find answers to that question.
What they saw wasn't always pretty. Some homes were boarded up, and there were unkept properties -- the result of foreclosure.
National Community Builders would build a 52,000-square-foot building first, then one or two more buildings with 98,000 square feet. Recchie envisions 300 jobs moving to Jeffrey Place, while the physician groups create another 300
The Columbus Compact Corporation ("the Compact") announced today that it is opening Phase One of the Heritage Square Marketplace "a new shopping center on the Near East Side of Columbus" on May 21, 2008.
Neighborhood and city leaders packed into the parking lot of the new Save-A-Lot on the East Side today to celebrate the opening of the discount grocery chain's latest Columbus location, at 1170 E. Main St.
With the first 19,000-square-foot phase of Heritage Square completed, Columbus Compact expects to break ground this fall on an additional 12,000 square feet of commercial space east of the Save-A-Lot and Simply Fashions stores. A vacant eight-unit apartment building on Wilson Avenue was demolished to make room for the expansion...
Construction of new homes increased by the biggest percentage in more than two years in April, a rare spot of good news amid the worst housing downturn in more than two decades.
To continue running the district as-is while maintaining a positive cash balance for four years, the district will need a levy that would cost the owner of a $100,000 home about $254 a year, Treasurer Michael Kinneer told the committee of residents and school officials yesterday.
The Columbus schools treasurer announced the first potential price tag for a levy that probably will go before voters in November, showing taxpayers' bills would have to grow to stave off impending multimillion-dollar deficits.
Update on the health status of Julie Liu and Rachel Widomski, Community's response and next steps, Opportunities for Greater Columbus community to engage and assist
An exciting phenomenon that has been sweeping the country (and the globe) is headed for Columbus July 18-20. Registration (which is limited) is currently underway for the Columbus Startup Weekend, which will bring together the community's brightest entrepreneurs and software developers to launch new businesses from idea to application in just 52 hours
Best kept secret in the Columbus blogosphere. Not. But now it's official. Startup Weekend will be coming to Columbus this July 18 - 20. And it will be held at the awesome TechColumbus facility. I was there last Thursday with the other local organizers. And the place is killer. Columbus should be proud to have TechColumbus, and I know that the participants will be equally impressed.
Cooperative housing, common in many large cities but foreign to Columbus, is being proposed to help spur the renovation of a South Side neighborhood.
About $20 million is required for the first phase, the Bicentennial Bikeway Plan, which has a target completion date of 2012. That money would come from the city's capital budget and the Bicentennial bond package, which will be on the November ballot.
As more Ohioans join the state's "Transportation Conversation" by saying record-high gas prices have changed their moods about alternative modes of transportation, the conversation over Ohio's future is set to grow even louder in the coming weeks at a series of regional meetings of the Ohio 21st Century Transportation Priorities Task Force.
Come to the Columbus Chamber's YP Exchange, a free, issue-oriented forum for the young and talented, to learn about a transportation plan to move our city and state forward! The YP Exchange on May 20th will focus on the Ohio Hub Plan (passenger rail).
High-speed rail could use some of this pampering and pandering. With regular gasoline approaching the $4 mark, and air travel becoming more frustrating than ever, more and more Americans are taking the train. According to news reports, Amtrak ridership, despite its chronic underfunding, is up 20 percent since October in North Carolina and up 19 percent between Chicago and St. Louis.
...It's the kind of neighborhood in which people don't have to drive a lot, but it's also a kind of neighborhood that barely exists in America, even in big metropolitan areas. Greater Atlanta has roughly the same population as Greater Berlin " but Berlin is a city of trains, buses and bikes, while Atlanta is a city of cars, cars and cars...
What demographers call a natural decrease has been occurring for years in tiny rural towns and in some retirement meccas in the South. But the phenomenon is relatively new in metropolitan areas in the Northeast, the Rust Belt of the Middle West and Appalachia.
Although this practice of not accommodating street parking is now routine, there has been little research done to assess its impact on urban centers. However, a growing number of urban planners have pointed out that centers that have retained street parking, along with other compatible features of pre-1950s town centers, are some of the most successful downtowns in the country.
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