Discovery District, once-sleepy, gets rolling
Apartments and hotel rooms with ground-floor retail space are in the works all around the Discovery District on the east side of Downtown, where OhioHealth also continues to expand around its Grant Medical Center.
But even with all the activity, neighborhood boosters say it's just the beginning.
“There's great potential and some prime sites here for a real urban, walkable neighborhood,” said Cleve Ricksecker, executive director of the Discovery District and Capital Crossroads special improvement districts. “I think the Discovery District will really heat up over the next five years.”
The neighborhood is roughly bounded on the west by 4th Street and the east by Interstate 71. It's home to several colleges and cultural institutions such as the Columbus Museum of Art and the main site of the Columbus Metropolitan Library, but underused old buildings and surface parking lots dot many stretches.
The construction projects underway in the area include a nine-story building with 93 apartments being developed at 330 Oak St. by the Stonehenge Co. and a 104-room Home2Suites by Hilton extended-stay hotel on East Main Street on the former site of a carwash.
Not far away, groundbreaking is planned in the spring for the first phase of a New York-brownstone-like apartment project on land owned by Motorists Insurance beside Topiary Park.
A couple of blocks away,
Robert Meyers, who has been making big investments in other parts of Downtown, including the former Columbia Gas headquarters and LeVeque Tower, proposes to knock down a squat, aging office building at East Broad Street and Grant Avenue to build a distinctive apartment building.
The development spurt in the Discovery District has been late in coming, after years of work being done in other parts of Downtown such as the riverfront.
But the area has great potential. Besides the library and art museum, the Columbus College of Art & Design adds an edgy, creative vibe to the neighborhood north of Broad Street. Topiary Park, built on the grounds of the former Old Deaf School, is a favorite of families and visiting travel writers, while the school itself was beautifully restored several years ago for use by the private Cristo Rey Columbus High School.
The area also has been
given a boost, Ricksecker said, by the rerouting of the Downtown exit from I-70, creating more activity around the Mound Street exit leading to the district.
“That corner of Downtown was formerly isolated and sleepy. It's now the second-biggest entry point into Downtown,” Ricksecker said.
The key to making the most of the Discovery District, he said, is to connect its amenities and attractions in a way that makes a neighborhood “more than the sum of its parts.”
For example, he sees the 7-acre Topiary Park, which re-creates Georges Seurat’s famous painting “A Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of La Grande Jatte” in topiary form, as an unique urban jewel awaiting a proper setting to complete it.
“The park really needs to be enclosed with housing to feel like a true urban park,” Ricksecker said. “It'll feel like Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia.”
Scioto Peninsula
On the opposite end of Downtown from the Discovery District, the area dubbed the Scioto Peninsula continues to take shape under the direction of the Columbus Downtown Development Corp.
The National Veterans Memorial & Museum, on the north side of Broad Street and the western bank of the Scioto River, is less than a year from opening. Its bold, curving outline has taken its final shape as structural concrete has been completed in the past week.
By September, the glass-curtain wall system is expected to be in place, completely enclosing the building so that work on the interior can begin. Outside, a 325-foot Memorial Wall and water elements have been completed, and 40 American elms have formed the foundation of a tree grove where visitors may relax and reflect.
Across the street, the corporation is putting the finishing touches on major enhancements to COSI, Columbus' nationally known science museum. A 600space underground parking garage is nearly finished. Topsoil will be spread atop it, giving root to park space with a fountain, swings and other amenities.
Inside, a new 22,000square exhibit hall inside the Belle Street entrance is primed and ready to welcome a new dinosaur exhibit in partnership with the American Museum of Natural History. The dinos are set to arrive in October.
And a few weeks ahead of the dinosaur unveiling, the corporation expects to announce the next steps in its plans for a $500 million mixed-use development on long-vacant land across from COSI. Four development teams were named in April as finalists to work on the project, which is expected to get underway in the spring.