cbussoccer

A 7-story height reduction would usually suck, but going from 35 to 28 isn't going to make a huge difference visually. It may not even lead to much of a reduction in terms of actual height as they could have slightly changed the height of each floor, made the atrium space taller, etc. In terms of design, I love it. I think this will actually add more volume to the skyline than the old version due to the variations in height which almost makes it look like two or three different buildings. I also love the plaza area on the north side of the development. They did a great job of maintaining some open space closest to the North Market to help maintain its character by moving most of the massing to the opposite sides of the lot.

Yep, I'm assuming it's 28 floors if you are standing on High Street, but there will be one floor below that.

It took me a second to figure out how Chillicothe had such a high density...lol

Exactly my point. There will be a debate every single time a comparison is attempted because there is no proper way to do it. Although I think we can all agree that using city limits population numbers is by far the worst way to compare two cities lol.

It's definitely fun. I could spend all day slicing and dicing different cities and comparing them. Your first paragraph is exactly what I was getting at with my previous post though. You were forced to move your radius around because city X has grown and expanded in a different way than city Y.

I don't think you can arbitrarily determine a specific radius and then compare all cities to each other using that set radius because cities differ so drastically in the way they are have been built up over the years. Why not use 20 miles instead of 25? At that distance, the 3Cs are practically equal in population. Why not 15? At that distance, Columbus is actually than Cleveland and Cincinnati by a decent amount. There is really no real way to perfectly compare different cities when it comes to population because there are way too many variables. All you can do is look at multiple different metrics and consider the differences between each city across all metrics to get a feel for which city is larger or smaller.

This is a bit interesting, although somewhat meaningless. A 50 mile radius is quite a large radius. If you go 50 miles northwest of Youngstown, you are in Cleveland. If you go 50 miles southeast of Youngstown, you are in Pittsburgh. The portion of the '50 mile radius from Youngstown' population that lives in Cleveland and Pittsburgh is pretty meaningless to the city of Youngstown because they aren't interacting with Youngstown for much of anything. On the flip side, the portion of the '50 mile radius from Columbus' population that lives on the outer edges of that radius do actually have an impact on Columbus because many of them regularly travel to Columbus for work, recreation, etc. It's an interesting metric to look at nonetheless. For some perspective, here are the stats for the tiny town of Sparta, Kentucky. As you can see, the 50 mile radius population is not much smaller than Columbus and Youngstown; however, the town is so small it doesn't even have a stoplight. It's 2.3M 50 mile radius population is a result of its proximity to Cincinnati, Louisville, and Lexington. For even more perspective, here are the stats for good old Newark, Ohio. Nobody would ever consider Newark to be anywhere near the size of Columbus, but when looking at a 50 mile radius, its population is only about 100k smaller than Columbus. Now excuse me while I waste way too much time playing with the Circular Area Profiles for various locations lol.

Application was filed today for the foundation. Can't wait to see this project get started. https://portal.columbus.gov/Permits/Cap/CapDetail.aspx?Module=Building&TabName=Building&capID1=19CAP&capID2=00000&capID3=00ONL&agencyCode=COLUMBUS&IsToShowInspection=

It definitely will. At least until Hilton 2.0 and North Market Tower are built. Being next to two 30-story towers will probably diminish its impression just a bit lol. All of these 6-12 story buildings have recently been built or are in the process of being built are really doing wonders for our city. The tall towers are fun but these types of infill are just as important.

So I was just reading through this CU article about Hilton 2.0 again and I noticed in the comments section that a user by the name of 'michaelfromcolumbus' was claiming to have a bit of info about North Market Tower. He says the tower went through a complete design overhaul but is definitely still moving moving forward and should be presented to the commission by the end of the year. He says it will definitely still be 30+ stories tall but they have been tweaking some things to make the numbers work best. Finally, he says they plan to break ground during the first half of 2020. Hopefully we get some real news soon, but that's the latest random internet rumor on this project.

When you understand the state of downtown Columbus just ten years ago it really puts the current state of downtown in perspective. Things have come a long way in just 10 years.

^ It sure would be nice if we could bury those utility lines...

While this is true, Columbus also has a few small areas around campus that are more densely populated than any other areas in the state. But yes, you can cut each city up in different ways to show that X is more dense than Y and A is more dense than B.

Awesome link. Thanks for posting. After just a few minutes of messing around, I have noticed how much smaller the Columbus urban area is than Cleveland and Cincinnati. It's about 250 square miles smaller but is about 800 people/square mile more dense than Cincinnati and about 700 people/square mile more dense than Cleveland. It will be interesting to see how the urban area density in Columbus changes as Delaware County is built up and included in the urban area as well as other ever-expanding suburbs. Also, Columbus is very fertile.

What's the status of Parkside on Pearl? They still need final approval, correct?

The May stats have been published. CMH continues to see strong ridership growth with a 7.2% YTD growth over PY. The current rate of growth to date is slightly ahead of the rate at this time last year. If we continue seeing this type of growth, our total ridership should be close to 9 million by the end of the year if you include the Allegiant numbers from LCK. Now if only we could get that European route... On the new rental car facility front, I checked in on the construction video feed this morning and noticed the base of one of the cranes is in place while the other two bases are on site but not yet in place. I'm not sure when the cranes will be up, but it can't be too far away. Hopefully sometime this week.

It's going to be really cool to see this building rise, especially when driving down 670. On somewhat unrelated note, anyone who thinks construction has slowed down in the Columbus area needs to check out all of the construction photos posted over the last few days. We don't have 30-story towers under construction (yet), but the amount of infill going on is impressive.

If we ever get some sort of rail transportation (which I think we will), I have to think Easton would be somehow included in that whether or not Wexner pushes for it. I also think it would benefit the city greatly to connect both Easton and downtown to the airport. So, at the very least, I think Easton would end up being connected to downtown via the airport.

^ I was just about to post the same thing. I think Easton could turn out to be much more walkable than The Domain, but it sounds like the same general concept.

^ I think his point was more of emulating the general concept of the layout and use as opposed to mirroring the two different areas. It specifically says "dense midtown neighborhoods of high-rise office and residential buildings around a shopping core that allows residents and office workers to serve all their needs without getting into a car." Regardless of what you are comparing the vision of Easton to, if you can accomplish that description it will be a great addition to the city. At least commend the guy on being aggressive. He could easily just fill the remaining parcels with more suburban strip malls and giant parking lots and be done with it. Maybe Buckhead isn't the crown jewel of urban planning and developing, but it's a heck of a lot better than Polaris.

He also likened it to Buckhead in Atlanta. Here's Buckhead:

I think there is plenty of opportunity to make this a walkable area even with 20-40 story. In one of the articles that came out this past week, they talked about how the parking garages were built to be convertible into residential or office space in the future, or to built up from. Additionally, many of the two story buildings were built to be able to be expanded upwards. Based on that, it seems like a lot of density can be added in the pre-existing core of the area. On top of that, there are still surface lots abutting the existing core to the east of Easton Loop West between Worth Ave. and Gramercy St. that could certainly hold two or three large mixed-use towers. You also have the Easton South Garage (next to the Cheescake Factory) and Easton Lot G (next to Barnes & Noble) that would be great location for towers as they are right off of Easton Way. And finally, you have all of the undeveloped area North of Easton Way between the Hilton and 270 that is a blank slate and could be developed in many different ways to be walkable and dense. I wouldn't write off any of these plans/visions that have been laid by Wexner & Co. Sure, this may not be our idea of a traditional "downtown", but that doesn't mean it can't be wildly successful and an excellent addition to our city.

^ 20-40 story buildings? Holy crap! I'll believe it when I see it, but that would be insane! There's also the following quote from further down in the article: "Wexner likens the next phase of Easton to the areas around Lenox Square in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta or South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, California — dense midtown neighborhoods of high-rise office and residential buildings around a shopping core that allows residents and office workers to serve all their needs without getting into a car." Imagine if this actually happens the way he is talking about here...

Thanks pal!