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Downtown Columbus is a nice place to visit

Today in the Columbus Dispatch... an article about City Center the downtown Columbus mall that the city wrestled away from the company that was mismanaging the mall a year ago.

When I moved to Central Ohio in 1990 I loved City Center. I lived in northwest Columbus just inside 270 and tried Northland and Westland and for me the only place to shop in Columbus was City Center.... I am not much of a mall shopper anymore... I was at Macy's at Polaris last night but did not make it out into the mall from the department store.

In May I went downtown for the Real Living Convention (Momentum 2008) for an oversold continuing education class the first day, paid for valet parking and spent the morning roaming around downtown Columbus killing time. I did a little shopping in the museum shop at the Statehouse. I bought some things at a CVS. I thought it was odd that Real Living would invite people from all over the US to a conference in a downtown with no shopping but they pulled it off.

I go downtown for Red, White and Boom, usually First Night Columbus (I skipped it in 2007) and a few other events. I occasionally go to COSI... I go to the Short North occasionally for a Gallery Hop. I showed homes in the German Village area earlier this year. I live and work on the far north-side of Columbus, Worthington, Polaris, Westerville.... north outer-belt.

I walked through the mall a couple of times in 2007. There is a list in the Columbus Dispatch article of who the remaining tenants are. Fast food, a Dollar Store....

There is housing in Downtown Columbus now... and there's more housing in urban areas contiguous to downtown than there has been in decades. It's just ironic that there is no shopping to speak of in downtown Columbus. There will be something at City Center in the future... The Columbus Dipatch article says:

"A major factor in the mall's decline was the opening of several suburban retail developments. Georgetown Co., the developer of the most successful of these -- Easton Town Center -- has been brought in on the City Center revamp."

Posted by Maureen McCabe - Central Ohio real estate on 08/01/2008 08:01 AM

Comments (5)

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5 Comments on Downtown Columbus is a nice place to visit

Maureen, I am glad the City Center offers to rejuvenate the downtown for you. I see this in many downtown areas as a new trend.

08/01/2008 08:32 AM

by Gary Woltal - REALTOR® Dallas Ft. Worth (Keller Williams Realty)

Maureen

Someone recently said to me that Columbus actually was a nice town to take a trip to. I believe it is just a little bit bigger than Milwaukee.

Hope all is well.

Sincerely

Tom Braatz

08/01/2008 10:27 AM

by Tom Braatz, South Eastern Wisconsin (Tom Braatz)

Gary my background is in retailing. I used to work in a couple of downtowns that no longer have shopping. I worked for the local department store in both markets, both now defunct. Both were smaller cities than Columbus. The mall in downtown was built around the local department store in 1988 or 1989... and did well, when I first moved to Columbus the shopping out in the suburbs was reallly bad. Now there are now three big suburban regional malls that put the inky dinky suburban malls and the downtown mall out of business.

Tom... how is the mall in downtown Milwaukee? I think I had visited Milwaukee just before I moved to Columbus and I know I loved that mall.... I think both may have been redone by the same company... same architect or there is some relationbship between the two downtown malls. They were both redone around the same time.

There are similarities...in Milwaukee and Columbus both settled by the Germans... I think DT Milwaukee seems more urban than DT Columbus... or maybe it is just Columbus is more familiar to me. Milwaukee has the lakefront... you can't beat that.

08/01/2008 06:07 PM

by Maureen McCabe - Central Ohio real estate (Real Living HER)

Maureen,

It sounds like they are trying to bring back the downtown area. I have watched St. Louis try to bring back the downtown area and has not had much success. They have done a lot though to encourage people to come back.

Don R.

08/01/2008 09:06 PM

by Don Rogers REALTOR®, CRS O'Fallon MO & St Charles County MO homes (RE/MAX Gold)

Columbus has a really vibrant downtown in lots of ways. We have more residential than in decades. There are events downtown. People work downtown. Just no shopping which is bizarre since we had a succsessful downtown mall, City Center died when Easton and Polaris were built but I thnk if the mall had been managed better things would have been changed long ago and it would not be sitting there virtually empty.

08/02/2008 04:05 AM

by Maureen McCabe - Central Ohio real estate (Real Living HER)