Christopher Columbus Park faces renaming
Tiny site will be changed to Warren Park
In the city that bears his name, Christopher Columbus Park appears headed for a name change.
The Italian Village Society, which represents homeowners in that Columbus neighborhood, requested through an application to the Columbus Recreation and Parks Department that the tiny, pie wedge-shaped park be renamed to Warren Park, after the street it’s on. Letters of support to rename the park also came from the Short North Civic Association and the Short North Alliance.
Based on the application request, an internal city Recreation and Parks Department committee has voted to change the name of the park, which is near St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, the site of this past weekend’s Columbus Italian Festival.
According to the city Recreation and Parks Department’s administrative policy, the recommended name change will be forwarded to the department’s director, Bernita Reese, for approval. If that happens, the director will then recommend the name change to the Columbus Recreation and Parks Commission for approval. The matter would not come before Columbus City Council.
David Sharvin, vice president of the Italian Village Society, said the request was made because there were concerns about Columbus’ role in the Americas, especially in light of the Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd by convicted Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in May 2020.
Columbus, an Italian explorer, had long been heralded in history books for his discovery of the “New World,” or the Western Hemisphere, when after a two-month journey across the Atlantic Ocean he landed on Oct. 12, 1492 on an island in what is now part of the Bahamas. He named the island San Salvador. At the time, the native Lucayan people called the island Guanahani.
But scholars now believe the Vikings first discovered the Western Hemisphere in the 10th century when they landed in what is now the Canadian province of Newfoundland.
And others blame Columbus for opening the door for the genocide of indigenous peoples as Europeans made their way across the Atlantic to the Western Hemisphere, including what is now the United States.
“People were just kind of saying they didn’t want our neighborhood associated with Christopher Columbus,” Sharvin said. “The name of a park doesn’t accurately describe the effect
of his actions on the residents of this country, the indigenous people.”
But members of Columbus' Italianamerican community wonder why they weren't given a say in the matter before the Recreation and Parks Department's internal committee moved ahead with the renaming recommendation.
“When you have a community that takes a lot of pride in their history, you just ask to be part of the discussion,” said Ed Hastie, a member of the Columbus Italian Club.
Joseph Contino, a spokesman for the Columbus Piave Club, called it “a total slap in the face.”
“Our ancestors built those houses,” Contino said of Italian Village. “We built that neighborhood, and they took it upon themselves to change the park's name.”
The tiny, pie-slice shaped park that has been named for Columbus for decades actually serves as a small median on Warren Street between Hamlet and Summit streets.
“When I moved there, it looked like a berm. You couldn't park two cars in that space,” Sharvin said.
According to the city's Department of Recreation and Parks, the other options (besides no name change) that were submitted for consideration for renaming Christopher Columbus Park were:
● Amici Park
● Hopewell Square
● Piccola Verde (Small Green) Park
● Sciotta Village
● Totzke Triangle
● Wonder Park
In a March 23, 2022 email to Sharvin, Tina Mohn, natural resource and asset manager for the city Recreation and Parks Department, wrote: “Warren Park is consistent with our Naming Policy, as it is the legal adjacent roadway.”
According to a 2018 Columbus Recreation and Parks Department policy about the naming and renaming of parks that Sharvin provided to The Dispatch, a park name can be discontinued if “the individual or organization of which a facility, park, or feature, has been named or renamed, comes into disrepute in relation to the community at large.”
In a May 20, 2022 letter, Betsy Pandora, executive director of the Short North Alliance wrote: “Continuing to celebrate the challenging legacies of the past through the names of our parks is an area where improvement is needed toward fostering a more inclusive community.”
In an emailed statement, John Panico, president of the Columbus Italian Club, said, “As a member of the Italianamerican community I believe our voices should have been considered in
this situation, and to my understanding our community did not have meaningful input.
“For me, Christopher Columbus, specifically Columbus Day, has always been a celebration of my heritage and the Italian immigrants that came before me. This is why renaming the park concerns me,” he said.
Monday was the federal Columbus Day holiday. But others observe it as Indigenous Peoples' Day; President Joe Biden proclaimed it as such. While federal and state employees had the day off, the City of Columbus and Franklin County Commissioners no longer recognize the day as a holiday.
Hastie said he would think that city recreation and parks officials would consider the city's proud Italian-american history, particularly in Italian Village, before renaming the park.
“The idea is supposed to take in input from the community at-large. I don't know that's been done,” Hastie said.
The internal parks committee, made up of staff members, voted to change the name in September, said Dominique Shank, a spokeswoman with the city's Recreation and Parks Department.
The Italian Village Society started the process to change the name last year, after the membership of the society held a virtual vote in the neighborhood in March 2021 to rename the park. Shank said the group started collecting submissions for new names from the community in June 2021, and then opened it up for voting in August.
The top three choices were revealed in October. Warren was one of the three.
Reese said she knew there had been discussion of the name change and knew about the survey.
Mayor Andrew J. Ginther told The Dispatch on Monday that he knew nothing of the name change when asked about it.
In June 2020, Ginther ordered the removal of the Christopher Columbus statue outside City Hall. Ginther said the statue remains in storage as an advisory committee considers the future of the statue, which was a gift received from Genoa, Italy, in 1955.
In July, Columbus City Council tabled an ordinance for a $253,000 contract involving the statue with Designing Local Ltd, which creates policies and plans for placing public art. The work was to be for “facilitating community education and engagement and developing contextual materials that would accompany” the “potential reinstallation of the statue in a new public location.”
In 2014, the city removed the replica of Columbus' ship, the Santa Maria, that had been moored on the Scioto River Downtown and dismantled it. The 10 pieces of the ship sit at the city's tree nursery near the Southerly Wastewater Treatment Plant off South High Street on the Far South Side.
mferench@dispatch.com