Mike Wolanin | The Republic An exterior view of the former Sears building recently owned and occupied by Cummins in Columbus, Ind., Friday, May 24, 2024. The City of Columbus recently purchased the building from Cummins.
Mike Wolanin | The Republic An exterior view of the former Sears building recently owned and occupied by Cummins in Columbus, Ind., Friday, May 24, 2024. The City of Columbus recently purchased the building from Cummins.
Columbus is moving full speed ahead with its new downtown strategic plan, with at least 39 of the plan’s 60-plus recommendations already in the works, officials said this week.

The Columbus Downtown 2030 Strategic Plan, released in September, aims to spur renewed energy and investment city’s downtown in the near and long term. Officials provided an update on the plan’s progress during a presentation to the Columbus City Council this week.

A couple months before the final plan was released, the city formed four implementation teams, who have been working to prioritize the 60-plus recommendations in the plan developed by urban planning and design firm Sasaki and subconsultants SB Friedman and Storyboard.

The teams include a steering committee, as well as teams focusing on economic development and real estate, programming and activation and public realm and infrastructure.

“They started meeting in August,” Bonnie Boatwright, project manager for the Downtown Columbus 2030 plan, said during the presentation. “They meet monthly. We have prioritized the 60-plus recommendations. We completed that in December. As teams, we’re supporting engaging stakeholders, so we’re not doing this in a vacuum or work. …Lots and lots of work is going on right now by a lot of different people.”

‘Four-pack’

One of the top priorities of the team focusing on economic development and real estate involves what officials referred to as the “four-pack,” officials said.

The “four-pack” refers to sites around the western part of Fourth Street, including the former Sears building and adjoining parking lot, U.S. Post Office and Hotel Indigo, that officials have said could serve as development opportunities to create an activated, pedestrian-friendly gateway to and from Mill Race Park.

During the presentation, Jake Sipe, the city’s director of community development, said officials the development of the “four-pack” is being guided by a market-driven strategy that they hope will integrate development and support more housing in the area.

Figures presented by Sipe showed that 1.8% of Columbus residents live downtown, while 30% of Columbus-based jobs are located downtown. Officials hope that increasing the population downtown will spur more retail development in the area.

Sipe said part of the market-driven strategy includes asking Gov. Mike Braun to designate the Census Tract that covers the city’s downtown as an “Opportunity Zone” to help attract investors.

Opportunity Zones are an economic development tool that provides tax benefits to people to who invest in certain areas in the United States, according to the Internal Revenue Service. The purpose of the zones is to spur economic growth and job creation.

“Our intent would be make that recommendation to the governor to have Census Tract 108 designated as an ‘Opportunity Zone,’” Sipe said during the presentation. “And the reason why that’s important is because if we can get that designation, it opens up additional types of capital from the private sector to invest into the downtown (area) to support new housing construction and a hotel.”

“You’re going to start to see some things start to happen here in the next 60 days, probably as it relates to the ‘four-pack,’” Sipe added later during the presentation.

Sipe said it may be possible to incorporate the Irwin Block into other development efforts downtown.

The Irwin Block site is made up of two parcels totaling a combined half-acre northwest of the intersection of Fifth Street and Franklin Street. The 1892 Queen Anne-style building on the western side of the site was demolished after a fire in 2022, while the shorter 1925 building — at one time home to The Republic — on the eastern site remains, damaged and vacant. The Columbus Capital Foundation owns the Irwin Block.

Last month, students in IU’s J. Irwin Miller Architecture program devised ideas meant to spark conversation for what may become of the Irwin Block site.

Other priorities

Boatwright said during the presentation that other priorities among the implementation teams include, among other things, the refurbishing of the Crump Theatre, traffic calming at Fifth and Lindsey Streets and a Mill Race Park Master Plan, which the parks department is expected to kick off shortly.

Columbus Mayor Mary Ferdon also briefly addressed the council before the presentation and thanked the teams of volunteers, consultants, city staff and others who have been involved with implementing the plan.

“This is a community-driven project, and it will continue to be,” Ferdon said. “…There’s a lot of planning that’s already started and a lot of smaller projects have started, and we’ve seen the results. So, the community is very much engaged in this, and so I’m really pleased with how far we’ve come and, again, excited about where we’re going to be able to go with this.”
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