In Search of a City:
Hey taxpayers! Let’s reward Dublin for bad planning. The Columbus Dispatch reported on Sunday that the city applied for $9.6 million in federal and state funds as a down payment on a $145 million interchange at Rt. 33 and I-270.
Why? To fix congestion problems created by Dublin when it allowed 1,000 businesses with 34,000 employees to locate, helter-skelter, on the Rt. 33 corridor west of I-270. This scatter approach to development is inaccessible by foot and bicycle, unserviceable by transit, and makes carpooling virtually impossible. It requires a personal vehicle to go to the bathroom.
Here is the ongoing lesson for communities from the State of Ohio: If you encourage the most unsustainable, auto-dependent, climate-changing sprawl and create your own congestion problems, you, too, can get rewarded with hundreds of millions of dollars!
So let’s enable Dublin to continue spewing Taco Bells and WalMarts all the way to Marysville! But we had better begin saving out money because any improvement to this interchange will only bring us more congestion.
November 10th, 2009 at 9:38 am
Hi Cleve,
Your rant fails to answer one question: WHY? Why did all these businesses move to or locate in Dublin? While Columbus – or even more dear to your heart – downtown – have all the amenities you desire (transit, sidewalks, toilets, etc.), these companies STILL located in Dublin! Hmmm…Columbus must be lacking something…like a good school system, or has too much of something, such as crime. Perhaps it is availability and price for land or rental space. Who do you think is cheaper? I wonder what caused all this?
November 10th, 2009 at 10:11 am
They probably moved because the federal government effectively subsidized their movement. By building a massive federal highway system (I-70,I-270,I-71) the government made it cheap and easy to move out of downtown and destroyed existing neighborhoods throughout the country (Think Bronzeville KLD, German Village… ect).
With the introduction of Urban Renewal and “slum clearance” they wiped out vast swaths of urban neighborhoods and built housing projects which concentrated poverty and crime in certain areas. A good portion of the 20th century was spent deconstructing our cities.
Now some have finally realized the mistakes that were made, but others like Dublin have not caught the drift. They keep pushing outward, making land cheaper for businesses to relocate by subsidizing the expansion with roads and tax abetments. This is a never-ending pattern for suburban areas.
Westland, Northland, East Land = Tuttle, Polaris, Easton = Next new taxpayer subsidized development. The only sustainable path is to reverse the growth and grow inward. If the subsidies for outward development were removed the cost of locating in the central city would be much cheaper because all the infrastructure and services one needs are already there.
November 10th, 2009 at 11:45 am
I can sincerely appreciate the tone of the rant (most definitely a rant), Cleve, and equally appreciate the retort from Bart. We do need both sides of the story to decide the best direction for the future. Here we see the urge for short-term gratification (Bart) versus the desire for long-term solutions (Cleve). Both are valid points when looking it it from today’s perspective. I understand the need to satisfy the consumerist notion of convenience with corresponding development. That is the general pattern of our development thus far, and VERY in-line with current economic policy. Sprawl is cheap – for now. That would be the unfettered “WHY”, but ultimately this kind of development IS unsustainable and not much of a gift to the future generations that are footing the bill for “upgrades” to keep the sprawl on life support. We have seen, and quite clearly, the limited lifespan of such sprawl. Re: Brice Road, Sawmill inside 270, Whitehall, patches of Reynoldsburg – and plenty more. We can reference the entire Northland area to see where commercial Dublin will be within 20 years. THAT is draining HUGE reserves of taxpayer monies just to take care of the scab left by Northland Mall’s predictable failure. And even after the rehab, I really can’t see any true recovery there. The sidewalks are nice now, but the real commercial money has left for good. Its literally a monument to slash-and-burn consumerism with nothing left but the glowing embers of a few scrappy businesses. This is the Columbus you move to Dublin to escape, but it WILL chase you if you allow a similar pattern to continue. I do understand the appeal of a “hands-off” approach to commercial development, but if we are truly in search of a Greater Columbus we can be proud of, then I see the need to steer development in a more sensible way. And by “steer”, I fear that means “legislate” unless we get developers that can see past their loan terms.
BTW, almost all of the businesses in Dublin are cheap-and-easy services such as fast-food, gas stations, mini-marts and big-box retailers. Those pop up wherever there is a motoring population – we are a people of impulse shopping. But we can easily have the same service sector housed in a more sensible urban-centric model of development. Malls worked because they did mimic true urban density, albeit in a completely artificial way. We all can testify that a true urban core survives fads and other economic trends because density works both for human behavior and economic models.
Dublin prospers (at least for now) by a largely illusory impression that its schools are better and crime is lower. Columbus is not some refuse dump for bad schools and crime, and Downtown is statistically one of THE lowest crime rates of all of Central Ohio. SO, “WHY?” becomes a very puzzling question indeed, at least if you are taking notes about what happens to sprawl as it ages.
MY business – notably a service industry – (Sign*A*Rama @ 39 E. Gay St.) is DOWNTOWN by choice simply because I care about our future.
November 10th, 2009 at 11:49 am
To answer your question, Bart, “all of these businesses” decided to locate in Dublin as opposed to downtown because they found that option to be the most profitable for *their* bottom lines . . . not because developing in that location was in the best interest of *our* community.
And why is developing in that location not in the best interest of our community? See Cleve’s article above . . .