jonoh81

Minimum is supposed to be 10 stories, I believe. Only 250 High has met that.

If so, it would again violate the development standards the city has for High Street.

To be fair, Columbus doesn't have near the public transit that NYC does. I wish it did. Even so, continuing to build for the car is a good way to never improve that situation. And let's be honest, Downtown realistically already has enough parking, but people just get triggered by having to walk further than the length of an average Walmart parking lot, so every project is required to have its own. Columbus leadership is super regressive on this issue.

So as far as I can tell, I made exactly one comment in the Harmony thread saying it was great news and said it was better than another, much smaller project I incorrectly was thinking had been proposed for the site. The project I was thinking was going there was a 12-story hotel, so a 30-story project with a mix of residential and hotel would be a significant improvement in my view. There is no contradiction in arguments I've made about this. There seems to be a lot of confusion about what my stances are. Perhaps that is my fault for not explaining them well enough, so here they are. 1. I support height, and I support height specifically because it tends to increase density, not just for the sake of height itself. I'm well aware of the fact that shorter projects can be dense. I've lived outside of the US in places where there is incredible density in relatively low-rise development. The neighborhood I lived in, for example, had density 3x-4x that of Campus (so about 60K-90KPPSM), but very few buildings over 8 stories. So yeah, I know it can be achieved. But Columbus' version of low-rise development tends to lack that kind of density and is instead heavily correlated to project size/height. If Columbus projects were being built with old European, Asian or Latin American density, you wouldn't see me complaining about height. 2. The projects that have reductions- which is what I mostly argue against- also almost universally lose density. You rarely see a size reduction with a corresponding increase in density. That's a problem for me, and that's become even more true at a time when there's an extreme housing crisis in Columbus and prices are rising for everyone- renters and home buyers alike. This inevitably leads to many people being priced out of the market, which hurts the middle and lower income levels the most and may ultimately affect Columbus' ability to keep growing. For a project like Harmony, the number of prospective units is almost certainly going to be too low for the size (notice I never commented one way or another about that in my previous, singular comment), but I do think that if we're talking about activating the street and even potentially transit, hotels can also help with that and can make up for some of the lack of more residential units. 3. "Density" is important IMO because, beyond housing prices and availability, it directly correlates to street-level activity. It helps create more of a market for walkable amenities and can help promote a better transit system, something Columbus also lacks. The best type of density for this is certainly residential because it is permanent and 24 hours a day, but hotel customers, office workers, etc. can also provide it to a lesser degree even if it's not full-time. Perhaps that's why I didn't immediately come down hard on the Harmony Tower proposal. So yeah, short version is that I don't just care about height. I care about quality, about density and how projects ultimately assist in solving ongoing situations that I consider to be problems. Not everyone has to agree with any of this, or that density is even necessary, but I do at least think I've been consistent in the messaging. Also, can I just say that there's some irony in the fact that I was positive about the Harmony project when most people complain I am never positive about anything... and I still get criticized.

You're right, that is an important point. The metro/NEO could be seeing that growth, but not the city, specifically.

It's also just one internet site. It's a very narrow, limited metric to be using for overall trends, the same as using U-Haul or any other singular company. Any good news is still good news, but I hope people aren't assuming this means the city is growing overall based on this one thing.

I would say that any parking garage should be built so that it could handle addition development over top at some point, or the potential to be converted to other uses, but who am I kidding.

It might not have been for that, but it's pretty clear that a ball field was there by 1957 based on aerial photos. There may have been some issues maintaining it or considered some kind of hazard. There was at least one story from early 1953 of some kids throwing each other in it.

I tried to find any news from the Dispatch about it that year, but couldn't find anything. It may have been to create the ball field, though. A small remnant pond remained near Dennison/Buttles into the mid-1960s.

West Lake in Goodale Park, around 1898. This lake ran along the entire western side of the park between Goodale and Buttles. It was constructed in 1891 and filled in 1953. The boathouse building on the right was on the southern side towards Goodale. The orientation is looking north. If you look closely, you can see the Sells house in the left background just left of the bridge.

Something I never understood is why it has 1929 listed on it when it was built around 1885. The only thing I can think of is that it is a date of significant renovation/alteration.

The Yukon Building in the Short North in 1984 before renovation. And 35 years later in 2019.

The decennial census counts prisoners at the location of their incarceration, not at any otherwise listed address. So there may be some discrepancy if they were counted at part of a prison population, but then were released after the count.

But it did lose density. 22 units. It's never about just one project or one reduction. Across the entire city and metro area, counting all the reduced projects, the NIMBY cancellations, the swap of multi-family to single-family, etc. all add up to hundreds if not thousands of housing units every year that are not getting built. The city and region need to double or triple total annual housing construction just to break even. So while any single project is not the end of the world and wouldn't solve anything on its own, collectively they are part of the greater problem facing the area. So yes, I am passionate about addressing this right down to the individual project, apparently rubbing some people the wrong way in the process. But if that's not the answer, I continue to ask what is. The new zoning rules will eventually come out, but based on what's happened in the past on this issue, I have my doubts that they'll go nearly far enough.

I am relaxed. I assure you that 99.99% of the time I have these discussions, I'm neither angry nor really particularly upset. I just want better development than what the city keeps getting and have strong views about it. If you think I'm wrong about what should be happening, great, but so what are the alternatives? I'm legitimately asking what you think should happen. If you'd rather take this to private or start a new thread, I'm game.

Then no one would have a problem with what I'm arguing. Are the escalating housing costs acceptable? Are the lack of transit options? Lack of walkable amenities in many neighborhoods? If they're not, what do you propose be done to fix them if the answer isn't arguing for greater density and better urban planning than what we've been getting? In all seriousness, no snark or sarcasm, if there are better options that I'm just not getting, I'd love to hear them.

It's arguably more irrational to demand everyone praise everything even as the city and residents face rapidly increasing housing costs and a continued car-dominated environment because there isn't enough density being built to support alternatives. The "good enough" viewpoint would be fine if there weren't any tangible negative consequences to so many projects being underbuilt. And the housing shortage is across the board, not just in specific types or locations. I'm not sure how it makes sense to high five over a bad situation where so little is being done to change it. If it was just this one project or just this one developer, that would be one thing, but it isn't. All that said, instead of bringing this stuff up in every development thread, perhaps there should be one to specifically discuss these types of issues and what can realistically be done about them.

Building parking into a project is very expensive. I have no issue removing that element and they probably saved money overall removing it. However, that said, there was nothing stopping them from adding a few more floors of residential units. It's not like the demand isn't there and they wouldn't have recouped the cost. Columbus is in a severe housing crisis and yet it's being built as if there's a significant surplus. But yeah, I get that my views on this kind of thing remain very unpopular here, so that's all I'll say about it.

Is there ever any other outcome? They cut it in half.

I guess we'll see. My other question is why the site wouldn't be big enough for both projects.

Upper Arlington residents must be somewhat torn. I feel like "community center" has negative associations with it for some people, especially upper middle class and wealthy, in that they only believe relatively poor people and people with some kind of issue go to them. On the other hand, those same people are also going to take issue with a 9-story building full of apartments due to "traffic" and "undesirables", similar to what's happening in Dublin. Hard to say which way they go.

ll I'd go more pessimistic than you. The 2010s, like the 2000s, were pretty full of issues. There were economic problems, the pandemic, a sustained attack on nearly all immigration, etc., all of which produced slower growth in many places nationally. Ohio has not been a strong growth state for decades, so it's hard to believe it wasn't also affected. There is also the consideration that the Census estimates recently had the state losing population- not overall since 2010, but over the last year or two, which would cut into any previous growth. The 2019 Ohio estimate was, as you mentioned, 11,689,100, but the 2020 estimate showed a loss with the state down to 11,693,217 from 2019. Estimates tend to be more pessimistic to low growth states like Ohio than what the decennial census tends to find. Provided the Trump administration didn't botch it really badly (a non-zero possibility), there's historic precedent that Ohio won't be as bad as indicated in the estimates. So all that said, I would guess that Ohio's count ends up somewhere between 11,685,000 (low end about +150,000) and 11,800,000 (high end about +250,000). I know that range is pretty large, so if I had to guess a very specific number, it would be 11,755,698- on the higher end of the range, but still less than 2% growth during the decade.

https://2020census.gov/en/important-dates.html This suggests state population will be released by April 30th and other data by September 30th. If that's true, we should get everything this year. I read a news release a few weeks ago saying state counts should be done by April 30th, so I assumed they would be released in May.

State numbers are predicted to be out sometime in May from what I've read. They expect to finish the count by April 30th at last news. States were supposed to be out in December, but given the pandemic and all the political shenanigans with the Census, everything has been delayed significantly. Hopefully we can get city numbers before next year.

Map of where racial demographics have grown the fastest by total per Franklin County census tract, 2010-2019. https://arcg.is/0qva4v0 Purple is Non-Hispanic White Blue is Non-Hispanic Black Green is Non-Hispanic Asian Red is Non-Hispanic Other- this includes multi-racial people, Native Americans and Pacific Islanders, among others. Orange is Hispanic Non-Hispanic White dominates Downtown areas and the outer suburbs, Asians are most plentiful around Dublin and West Campus, Hispanics are clustered around Hilltop and Whitehall, Non-Hispanic Black has grown the most along the northwest side near Morse, around Easton and the eastern suburbs, and Other seems to be most concentrated on the South Side and Linden.