Inside 43215: Downtown Lifestyles
CITY CENTER TRILOGY: PAST, FUTURE AND PERFECT TENSE
Has the passionate debate about the City Center come as a surprise? It’s not a state monument; it’s not City Hall. It’s not even a local hangout these days.
Surely no private property on the face of the planet has attracted as much attention.
It’s been an honor.
The pieces of the City Center fell into place almost exactly twenty years ago. In the era of shop-til-ya-drop, nothing beat its joys of shopping in a sterile temperature-controlled environment.
People change, lifestyles change and (believe it or not) bricks and mortar can change too. Before its demolition, City Center continued in its honorable journey, not as a mall, but as a temporary training ground for local heroes; city firefighters have trained to save lives inside. The Fire Department’s Don Barlow explained the exercises,
“Of the training that was performed, approximately 500 firefighters attended from 34 engine companies, 32 medic vehicles, 15 ladder companies and five rescue vehicles… Several steel and wood doors were forced and countless interior walls were breached to provide the valuable practice of life-saving entry and exit methods.”
There’s still more in store for the structure. Demolition and salvage is the original recycling art. The glass, the metal work – the mall’s parts will all be recycled and put to good use. Even the concrete walls can be used as aggregate to build roads.
There is a unique dignity to a purposeful existence. Thank you, City Center, for your past and future service.
http://www.downtowncolumbus.com/progress/columbus-commons
Tags: City Center, Downtown Columbus, recycling