New neighborhood group wants Eastland Mall fix
Community leaders and residents hope the new Mideast Area Commission will give the 51,000 residents of that area of Columbus more clout with City Hall.
They’d also like more say in how several corridors along the foundering Eastland Mall — including East Broad Street, East Main Street, Livingston Avenue and Hamilton Road — will be redeveloped.
“Because these corridors cross so many neighborhoods, we wanted to be aware what was happening with other neighborhoods down along the way,” said Quay Barnes, who co-chaired the task force created to form the commission.
Carla Williams Scott, director of the city’s Department of Neighborhoods, said forming an area commission helps residents be part of the zoning process.
“It helps shape what their neighborhood looks like, and gives those residents a voice at the table,” she said.
The new commission is the city’s 21st. It grew out of the Mid-east Area Community Collaborative, which Barnes has led. The collaborative was started in 2004 by the police liaison in the area at the time, Napoleon Bell, who wanted to merge eight community meetings a month into one, Barnes said.
One big concern for area leaders and residents is the future of the mall, which has four empty anchor stores, a fading exterior, and weeds popping out of the islands in the parking lot.
“Nobody wants it to go back to a traditional mall,” said Barnes, who is serving as interim chairwoman of the new commission. “Some housing and office space. That’s what we’re looking for.”
The property owner is based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and bought the 240,000-square-foot mall at auction in 2015 for $9.7 million.
The mall manager, Danielle Starr, said there are plans to redo the mall, but she wouldn’t provide specifics.
“More than retail,” she said. “We plan on rebuilding and bringing Eastland back, with something that other malls don’t have.”
She said plans do not include turning the mall site into a truck terminal, warehousing or storage units.
The Eastland area is now part of an “opportunity zone,” an area that local and state officials have deemed blighted and in need of investment. Investors in such zones can reduce their federal taxes.
City officials have reached out to mall representatives, but they haven’t received much information about the mall’s future, said Steve Schoeny, the city’s development director.
Meanwhile, the city plans to begin resurfacing Hamilton Road between Groves and Refugee roads, including the stretch alongside the mall, by early next year. The $15.2 million project includes sidewalks, new traffic signals and turn lanes at the Hamiltonrefugee intersection.
The new Mideast Area Commission’s boundaries do not include the central Eastmoor neighborhood, which is between Broad and Main streets just east of Bexley. Michelle Santuomo, who leads the Eastmoor Civic Association and Block Watch, said she and others worried that their neighborhood’s concerns would get lost in an area including other neighborhoods now totaling 10.2 square miles.
“Overall, it was just too big, too much,” she said.
Scott Hurlburt of the Leawood Gardens Neighborhood & Homeowners Association, said he hopes the new commission gives area leaders and residents more clout to talk to developers and the council.
He said Eastland Mall is key to the area’s vitality and survival as a community.
“It’s decimated down there. It’s a void right now,” Hurlburt said. Barnesis ready to get going. “This has been a long road,” she said. “We’re looking for a bright future.”