Right Now Downtown

PARK IT HERE

The Parking Meter Advisory Team made final recommendations to the City of Columbus last week, so changes are coming soon as you pull up to park.  More meters.  Simplified rates.  Extended hours.

More importantly, you’ve arrived and it’s where you want to be.  Forget your worries and park it here for a while to see what Columbus has to offer…

(And never fear, if you need more information on where to park it downtown, just click here.)

Park It Here from Downtown Columbus on Vimeo.

My 16-year-old daughter and I recently traveled to Manhattan to look at colleges.  We stayed with my brother, who lives at 113th Street and Broadway.  His local grocery store is Westside Market, located at 110th.

The store is stunning.  Imagine walking down a sidewalk and seeing a 100-foot wall of produce.  The wall of produce is the exterior of the store.  Inside is an amazing assortment of high-quality food, stacked floor to ceiling and beautifully displayed.

The City offers so many exquisite pedestrian experiences.  Sidewalk cafes are everywhere.  There is a flower district in Manhattan where stores put so many plants on the sidewalk they create a jungle-like experience.

New York is a reminder of the potential that all cities have, including Columbus.  It shows that density is good and has rewards.  People love mixed-use living above or next to stores, jobs and institutions.  Walking, biking and transit are preferred forms of transportation.  The public realm is as important as the private realm.

Columbus will never be Manhattan.  As more central Ohioans move into downtown and adjacent neighborhoods, however, they will see more and more rewards.

ARE YOU STRONGER THAN A SIXTH GRADER?

It’s that time again: downtown’s kickball league is just getting fired up.  Are you going to stand on the sidelines this year, wishing you had run with the ball?

Or, are you going to get down with downtown and PLAY BALL?

Honest, you don’t even need to actually “run with the ball” by corralling a team of eight members for Capitol Square Kickball.  Our crew can help any player find teammates to join.  This sport is fun, it’s healthy and it’s addictive.  And kickball is here, NOW.

Not a jock?  No worries, this game is for everyone.  Misti Crane has been on board since the beginning with the Columbus Dispatch team, the Fishwrappers.  She’s got a great gift for explaining the nature of the league.  Crane says, “When they started up the kickball, a couple of us figured, ‘Why not?  If sixth graders can do it, so can we.’”

Crane continues, “That said, I’m sure sixth graders might clobber us on any given day, but we have a good time.  It also happens to be a fine excuse to have a couple cold ones with some friends after work.”

Speaking of sixth graders, the rules for Capitol Square Kickball are the same game rules you remember from grammar school:  there are some common-sense provisions for kicking and running, and provisions for something called by the technical term “bouncies.”

All of the rules are posted here, and it’s the job of head referee Matt Maynard to make sure everything runs fairly.  The ref’s biggest worry?  Maynard says, “We go through fifty or more balls a season, and lose at least one every game.”

The referee explains, “Whether it gets stuck in a tree, explodes on contact, or gets run over by a COTA bus (the most common type of loss) – I’m there to make sure that the fun never stops and that there is always a bright red ten-inch kickball to be played with.”

The league is filling up fast, so get on the ball and get on board!  You can find the details about registration and game dates here.

The deadline is May 20, 2010.

 God bless Orin and Lili Hemminger and Josh Baca.  On April 13, The Columbus Dispatch ran a feature story on a start-up business called Yellow Brick Pizza at 892 Oak Street started by Orin, Lili and Josh.

Yellow Brick is a first retail venture for the three partners.  Lili and Josh have worked together in restaurants, but have never owned one.  Brother Orin has no restaurant experience and is a graduate student at The Ohio State University.

The article caught my eye because Orin and company decided to open a restaurant rather than wait for someone else to do it for them.  Orin lives in Olde Towne East near a number of abandoned storefronts and in a neighborhood that lacks retail services.  Rather than complain or leave Olde Towne East, the trio decided to help fix the problem.  They have an attitude that can make Columbus a great city.

Yellow Brick is a fabulous place to eat and drink, an attractive storefront and a community gathering place in Olde Towne.  It is one of a number of great new businesses in the area, including Urban Spirit Coffee Shop and Zanzibar.

YET ANOTHER EXPERT

When it comes to downtown, everyone’s an expert.

That wasn’t sarcasm; the public knows what the public wants.  That’s why the city is hosting public meetings, to gather information about the community’s needs and interests.

When it comes to downtown’s planning and design, MSI Design enlists experts too.  The team is wholly invested in studying cities and development and human behavior.  What do the fulltime experts say?  MSI’s Andrew Overbeck has a few ideas of his own about the future of downtown.

First and foremost, he maintains, “We’ve got a great fabric to work with.”

What does that mean?  He continues, “Downtown has the Arena District, CCAD and the art museum, the Scioto Mile Project and COSI; we have great things here.”

What downtown needs is something to tie all this greatness together.

MSI favors what Overbeck terms “small interventions” when it comes to downtown Columbus.  Designed to improve walkability and livability in the community, Pearl Alley has already gone through a “small intervention” process and now it’s a hubbub of activity.  It’s proof positive that the right modest moves can make giant impact.

And although those small interventions make the magic, Overbeck still urges us to “dream a little bigger” for our city.  He points to statistics like the fact that 25 percent of downtown’s turf is devoted to surface parking lots:  “Every one of those represents an opportunity for us (as a community) to design and define what it means NOW to live in an urban setting.  We have the fabric; we just need to fill in the gaps.”

Our community will have the opportunity to make those big dreams a reality this week.  At the upcoming April 15 Strategic Planning Meeting to be held 6 – 8 p.m. at the Columbus State Conference Center, we will get a chance to learn more about the planning process and share our own insights and expertise.

Given the suggestions from the last meeting (and from the 500 surveys that have been completed), downtown Columbus is excited to build a new future. For more information about the public meeting, visit downtowncolumbus.com/plan.

Cars are expensive!  The Columbus Dispatch reported on Friday that the average cost to own and operate a car is $8,487 per year.

I remember the sticker shock I experienced when I bought my first car in 2007 (earlier I married into a car, had kids and got divorced).  With joint custody of three school-age kids, taxicabs did not meet all of my needs, and the closest Zipcar location was a 30-minute walk.

Prior to buying into the “American dream” of owning a car, transportation had cost me $60 to $80 a month.  Expenses included a car rental about once a month and a cab ride about once a week.  My employer paid for my bus pass.

Living in Columbus without a car was easy.  From 1977 to 2007, I lived in Bexley, German Village, Short North and University District.  All of these neighborhoods offered life’s necessities within walking distance, including groceries, pharmacies and bars.  I have always worked in or near downtown.

In seven years, I will go carless again.  The money I save will go toward something more pleasurable than sitting in traffic.

SPEECH SPEECH!

Have you seen the Street Speech newspaper vendors, hawking their wares on downtown corners?

If you’ve purchased a paper, you already know what it’s all about.

If you’ve walked on by, here’s a risk-free chance to learn a little more about the newspapers and the program.  As it turns out, the publication is the best education that one slim buck can buy.

Street Speech is published by the Columbus Coalition for the Homeless.  The vendors you’ve met are local homeless people.  They are participating in a program that blends education and employment:  selling the newspapers offers work experience and it generates a little income.

The sellers aren’t the only ones getting an education.  As readers, we can learn valuable lessons too.  According to Coalition member and Outreach Specialist for Discovery Special Improvement District, Jim Rose, “Some of the articles are from national sources, some are locally written.  A number of authors write from the perspective of being homeless – or formerly homeless, while others take advocacy positions.”

Its diverse content makes the newspaper especially interesting – so much so that the group has increased distribution exponentially.  Only 400 copies of the first Street Speech were printed; these days the group turns out 8,000 – 10,000 copies per month.  Each vendor invests twenty-five cents per copy, and sells them to patrons for one dollar.

You can support the program by buying a copy of Street Speech, and there are many other opportunities to get on board with the Columbus Coalition for the Homeless.  Their great work is possible only with the help of many volunteers.   To learn more, check columbushomeless.org.

Living in the city offers many advantages.  One of them is a lower cost of living.  Columbus has many beautiful, safe and extremely affordable neighborhoods with access to good schools, including Merion Village, Westgate, Eastmoor, Olde Towne East and King Lincoln, to name only a few.

The cost of living, however, includes more than the cost of housing.  Geoff Binkley called my attention to a Web site called fastcompany.com, which allows people to compare the real cost of living in various Central Ohio communities by factoring in the cost of transportation.

The site not only allows cost of living comparisons from community to community, but vehicle miles traveled, use of public transit and greenhouse gas emissions per household.  It also shows relative vulnerability of Central Ohio communities to high gasoline prices.

To be considered affordable, the cost of housing plus transportation should be less than 45% of household income.  The cost of housing and transportation in my neighborhood, Victorian Village, is 33.91%, well below the recommended maximum.  To see your neighborhood, go to fastcompany.com.