By Paul Minnis, The Republic
pminnis@therepublic.com
If downtown Columbus was a footprint, a worn-out old shoe is about to be replaced with a shiny new Oxford. The tread is being created bit by bit, with the first feature completed in the form of Hotel Indigo, scheduled to open soon along Brown Street.
There will be two new parking garages, a new Commons, an extended-stay hotel and an indoor sports complex, to name a few.
"It's been going way faster than we ever could have expected," said Columbus Redevelopment Commission President Tom Vujovich. He said the commission, which heads the Vision 20/20 plan for downtown redevelopment, was fortunate that it had partners who owned land and controlled significant financial resources.
Private land deals may have taken months to reach, delaying plans under the Vision 20/20 model.
Also, the Columbus government made the symbolic step of helping pay for a new parking garage off Jackson Street, bordered by Fourth and Fifth streets.
Potential investors saw the city's commitment and realized the changes they read about in the newspaper actually would happen.
Tim Dora's decision to build Candlewood Suites as part of a new Commons kick-started the entire building's construction, Vujovich said.
"Originally, we were looking at five to eight years out," he said. "Things snowballed from there."
Plans call for The Commons block to be demolished starting Feb. 15 and for new construction to begin with Candlewood a month later.
Ed Curtin, Redevelopment Commission's executive director, talked about the new developments:
The parking garage along Jackson Street has been under construction and is expected to open in May.
It will have more than 400 spaces, of which up to 300 will be leased. The rest will be free to the public on an hourly basis.
Rebuilding The Commons will begin in late summer and finish by the end of 2009. It will have a playground, larger performance space, street-front retail, a conference center and a Cummins office complex with 500 employees.
Sears, SIHO and YES Cinema, which will remain open throughout Commons construction, will be split from the rest of The Commons when Jackson Street is extended from Third Street to Fourth Street.
The street extension should be finished by the end of this year.
Candlewood Suites, which will make up The Commons' northwest side at Fourth and Jackson, will begin construction in mid-March and open a year later.
Cummins' office complex, which will occupy The Commons' southwest corner, will start construction March 1 and open in February or March of 2009.
A second parking garage, just west of the courthouse, will be built to accommodate 500 Cummins employees.
It will be built starting in August and finished before the office complex opens across the street.
An indoor sports complex is a strong possibility at Second and Lafayette streets, just east of the expanded Bartholomew County Jail.
A Chicago company would build the complex with its own funds. Under the ideal timeline, construction would begin in the spring and end about a year later.
Discussions have continued about relocating Columbus Post Office and building housing and retail in its place off Jackson Street.
Plans have stalled because other downtown developments have taken priority.
Even if all details were in place today, building completion still would take at least two years.
"We'd still have to acquire the property," Curtin said. "It's a big job."
Non-20/20
Some development has nothing to do with the Redevelopment Commission and Vision 20/20.
Construction of a traffic loop at the Indianapolis Road interchange downtown should begin the first of spring and finish by November, City Engineer Steve Ruble said.
A part of Eighth Street that splits from Indianapolis Road and channels traffic southeast into downtown will be torn out, redirecting traffic to the roundabout.
The end of that section of Eight Street will clear the way for Mill Race Center, which will be built on the northeast edge of an expanded Mill Race Park.
Plans call for groundbreaking by year's end, with completion in 2010, said Bob Pitman, executive director of Senior Center Services of Bartholomew County.