OHIO STATE
New Yorkers decamp for Ohio capital Columbus for better jobs and bigger houses
BRYAN Williamson had studied interior design and learned furniture-making in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, while his NJ-born wife, Catherine, slaved at an accounting firm.
They were paying $1,600 a month for a one-bedroom in Sunnyside, Queens, when a 2012 trip to see Bryan’s family in the Worthington suburb of Columbus, Ohio, led to an epiphany.
Driving around the city’s German Village, Short North and Old Towne East neighborhoods, they noticed the city’s positive energy — and the refreshing degree of homeownership. “We started thinking, ‘There’s a momentum here,’ ” says Catherine, now 33. “And we could makmake something for ourselves thatthat we wouldn’t be able to do in NYCNYC. That was the turning point, and we moved six months later.”
ToToday, their company, Mix DesDesign Collective, renovates comcommercial and residential real estate. For their own home, the couplec paid $204,000 for a 1,201,200-square-foot, two-bedroom dupduplex in German Village, which is ParkPa Slope-esque (walkable and filled with independent busibusinesses). The cost of their primarmary residence is about $1,400 per month — about $200 less thathan in New York City.
They rent out other fixeduup homes, whose purchase pprices ranged from $59,000 to $220,000, on Airbnb.
The Williamsons aren’t tthe only New Yorkers to find professional opportunities, affordable homes and a high quality of life in Ohio’s capittal city (population 861,000).
According to a 2014 census, ababout 1,000 New Yorkers (or 2,02,000, if you count those from NewNew Jersey and Connecticut, too) relocated to Columbus betwbetween 2011 and 2014, and the figufigure seems to be growing.
“I can say anecdotally that we frequently hear stories of travelers who, upon visiting, begin looking at the city as place where they’d like to live and put down roots,” says Megumi Robinson, PR director for the city’s tourism board.
Among the new arrivals are Jeff Excell, 38, and Lauren Culley, 34. In late 2013, the couple left their respective jobs as store and pastry manager for Blue Bottle Coffee in New York — and a 400-square foot, $1,500-a-month studio in Clinton Hill — to start their own coffee shop, Fox In the Snow. They chose Columbus, Culley’s hometown.
Today, with two busy Fox locations and a third in the works, they’re paying off a gorgeous $455,000, 1,875-square-foot, threebedroom house, also in German Village, largely thanks to Culley’s runaway hit egg sandwich: souffléd egg, Swiss cheese, candied bacon, arugula and Dijon sauce on ciabatta. The item ($7) has a following.
“When we did the business plan, I figured we would sell 20 a day and added it on at the last minute,” she says. “We sell 400 a day at each location, and it’s paying for the mortgage on this house.”
Some Columbus transplants, like Culley, returned to their birthplace. Baker Sarah Black is another one.
She spent 30 years working with Amy’s Bread and other top-notch bakeries. She rented a one bedroom in Long Island City for $1,500 a month between 2010 to 2015, then relocated to the Columbus area (specifically, into her family home) to bake and teach bread-making classes at Flowers and Bread, a bright concept café she helped open that specializes in pastries and flower arrangements.
Citing a February Foodod and Wine article about chefs decamp-amping to Columbus, Blackk says, “So many New Yorkers are leaving for these civilized destinations!”
“Right now, it feels like a test city for entrepreneurs,” Excell adds. He points to curated plants and pottery shop Stump, Nashville-style fried chickenhicken outpost Hot Chicken TTakeoverk andd Two Dollar Radio, a vegan café/ bar/small publisher’s flagship bookstore, as recent local hits.
Columbus, meanwhile, is known nationally for other brands. Beloved ice cream purveyor Jeni’s was born in Columbus’ hopping Short North district, now chockablock with new apartment construction, while Victoria’s Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch, Bath & Body Works, White Castle and Wendy’s have built headquarters in the area.
The city has also performed well on quality-of-life rankings. Money magazine, for example, named Columbus one of the six best big
cities in tthe US in 2016. AAndd theh property scene is in the spotlight, ranking No. 8 on Trulia’s top “markets on the move” list and No. 15 on Realtor.com’s 20 hottest real estate markets.
Another runaway from the Big Apple — Tibet-born Phuntso Lama, 49 — moved to Columbus in 2014 and opened dumpling stall Momo Ghar in the back of the sprawling Saraga International Grocery store two years later. (The city’s ethnic food scene is exciting, with Somali, Persian, Sichuan, Mexican and other cuisines, partly thanks to populations of new immigrants.)
Momo Ghar was featured on Guy Fieri’s “Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives” on the Food Network. (Fieri is a Columbus native; past and present residents include actors J.K. Simmons and Josh Radnor, “Goosebumps” author R.L. Stine, and Piper Kerman, memoirist of “Orange Is The New Black,” who moved in 2015.) Lama opened a second stall last year, with a standalone restaurant to follow later in 2018.
Lama paid $1,600 a month for a two-bedroom in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. She now resides with her husband, Pranod, a 49-year-old government employee, in a 2,300-square-foot, fourbedroom brick house they bought for $300,000 in 2017 (monthly payments total about $2,000).
Decorated with Tibetan textiles and decorative pieces bought in Thailand and Nepal, “it’s going to be a great investment in the next few years,” Lama says. “Prices are competitive, with some great bargains.”
The numbers line up. According to the Columbus Board of Realtors, average rent for an apartment is $865, and the median sales price of a Central Ohio home was $172,500 (up 7.8 percent from January 2017). By contrast, according to the Elliman Report, average Manhattan rent in March was $4,089. In the first quarter of 2018, the median sales price of a home was $1.07 mil- lion; in Brooklyn, it was $795,000.
Former New York City Ballet dancer and choreographer Edwaard Jiang, and his partner John Kuijper shelled out $400,000 for a 1,942-square-foot, three-bedroom fixer-upper near German Village’s Schiller Park in December 2017.
The couple, engaged to marry this June, moved to Columbus in 2013 when Jiang, 43, was hired as artistic director of its BalletMet. The pair was occupying Kuijper’s one-bedroom, one-bathroom Chicago apartment, paying $1,350 a month. “Our mortgage now is only $150 more than that,” says Kuijper.
They’re spearheading about $150,000 into renovations, which include a crystal chandelier, an enclosed porch, an in-law suite and a fireplace with a remote control.
As for the Williamsons, their latest project is a 3,000-square-foot former crack house in the rapidly gentrifying King Lincoln district, which resembles parts of Astoria.
Bought for $142,000 in February 2017, they’re spending more than $200,000 on an overhaul. It will rent for about $300 a night when complete. Adds Catherine, “We would be in a good position to sell any of [the Airbnbs] and make a profit.”
A 48-year-old assistant principal, Kuijper has likewise witnessed Columbus’ growth. Houses in “a historic district like German Village are going for 20 to 30 percent more than about three years ago,” he says, “which is an incredible clip for the middle of flyover country.”