Right Now Downtown

MORE PARK-ING DOWNTOWN!

Somehow this new Columbus Commons project seems unanticipated.  Wasn’t the City Center going to become a giant beaconing casino, with busloads of senior citizens clutching Social Security checks and the family gold?  Now it’s gonna be… a park?  Like Disneyland?

Thank you, no.  Capitol South is bringing us what the trendies call “green space.”  That’s a codeword for “park.”  No, no log ride.  It will be nine acres of lawn and sidewalks.  In Ohio-ese, that’s equivalent to about nine football fields.  Walk the perimeter and you might burn off half a Dunkin Donut.

Here’s what the park adds: It’s a place to BE.  Roads are for driving, sidewalks are for walking, bars are for drinking.  You can do whatever (legal) thing you want in a park.  You can be a human being in a park, and that means that the Columbus Commons brings a bit of pure humanity to the middle of the downtown landscape.  It’s normal, and it’s overdue.  Think about Millennium Park in Chicago, Battery Park in New York, and Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

Will Columbus Commons be identical to those parks?  Nope, its ultimate form will be shaped by our climate and our population.  Sure, there were lots of great ideas about what to do with the defunct mall, but thank heavens Capitol South thought outside the box in a very literal sense.  It’s bringing the outside to the center of downtown.

Note:  The Public Liquidation Sale for Columbus City Center is February 10 – 28, from 10 am – 8 pm

Inventory on sale includes:

• All store fixtures
• Slat walls
• Large inventory of track lighting
• Large inventory of wall lighting
• Designer showcases
• Jewelry cases
• Advertising memorabilia
• Complete store fixtures
• Restaurant equipment
• Tables and chairs
• Art
• One-of-a-kind display units
• And more

Sidewalks after a snow storm reveal much about the adjoining property owner.

As I walked last week from my office to the Peanut Shoppe, I passed three remarkable properties.  The first property was Broad & High, which is owned by the Casto organization.  Casto had cleared its sidewalks of snow and ice.  Walking past Broad & High proved to be as easy as a clear summer day.

Then I encountered the sidewalk in front of 34 N. High Street, which is managed and owned by the Tonti Organization and one of its investment groups.  Tonti had made little attempt to clear snow, and it had become packed and icy.  Walking became an orthopedic nightmare.  Just beyond the Peanut Shoppe at High and Gay lay another stretch of untended sidewalk owned by Milan High Street LLC, an investment company from Georgia.

The experience of stumbling and cursing my way up High Street reminded me how interdependent downtown properties are.  One “bad apple” can spoil the rest.  I can only imagine how much business the Peanut Shoppe lost last week because of its neighbors.

We don’t normally do these sorts of things, but this woman is looking for love in all the right places downtown…

We asked The Other Paper’s dining reviewer, Miriam Abbott, to opine on our great restaurants.  While the writer admits that she changes her mind on a daily basis, we got one vote from her this week…