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Tim Fulton 00:00
Tim, welcome to the confluence cast presented by Columbus underground. We are a weekly Columbus centric podcast focusing on the civics lifestyle entertainment and people of our city. I’m your host. Tim Fulton, this week, I sat down with Walker Evans, co founder and editor of Columbus underground, to explore what’s resonating most in local media and what those stories reveal about the larger systems that we are all currently navigating, from the rise of protests at the state house to the ripple effects of new zoning policies. We covered how housing development and drone factories are shaping the future of Columbus. We unpacked the tension between growth and preservation, the impact of private equity on everything from chicken sandwiches to shopping malls, and why local progress sometimes depends on who is still in the smokey back room, whether you care about affordable housing, have feelings about paid parking, or just want to understand why Columbus works the way it does, this conversation is a reminder that the local stories matter because they’re not just local. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at the confluence. Cast.com, enjoy the interview. Sitting down here with Walker. Evans, the co founder and editor of Columbus underground. Walker, how are you I’m good. How are you doing? Tim, I’m good. It’s been a minute. It has it is time to talk about some of the most popular articles that have occurred on Columbus underground. Talk about, we did a little pre session talking sort of about, like, what’s actually important, yeah, that things are happening. For example, you guys have been doing a lot more video work of, specifically around the protests that are occurring around the state house, getting a lot of engagement. So how have things been? What’s going on? Good.
Walker Evans 02:06
I mean, you know, busy start to the year where, you know, I assume, as the time this goes up like fully through the first quarter of the year. Indeed. Yeah, 2025 2020 25% done with 2025 okay, yeah, yeah. Stumble to get that out. So, you know, we we like to look back at analytics and kind of see what, you know, what’s being well read, partly to help inform our decisions. You know, is this worthy of a follow up? Should we do be doing more of this sort of thing? Sometimes it’s a fluke, yeah, sometimes there is no follow up. But always kind of go just to reflect upon what people find important. Yeah,
Tim Fulton 02:43
absolutely, yeah. So first of all, talk about sort of your head space around the protests. And, I mean, you’re right here. You’re a gay guy, so you see them, yeah,
Walker Evans 02:53
it’s tough. There’s no, like, centralized repository of all the protests that are going to happen, because it’s just not that by nature, you know, it’s different groups of people, you know, protesting different things. But the really nice thing about having an office one block from the State House is we’ll be sitting here working in the afternoon, and all of a sudden you start hearing chanting in the background, right? And it’s like, oh, there’s a there’s a march coming by, or, Oh, that’s coming from the State House, yeah. So we’re able to pop over there pretty quick and take photos and videos, and Ashley’s been doing a lot of the photography, which has been really great, and I’ve been kind of just shooting some quick iPhone footage. And what is,
Tim Fulton 03:27
I think when, at least, I do, when I think about, like, protests at the State House, I think back to 2020, yes. How does the vibe feel? Like, is it a little bit more in the spirit of protesting and positive, or is it anger? Or what’s from your perspective? What does it feel like down
Walker Evans 03:48
here? I think people are upset, you know, by the state of things, and a lot of the protest. There was one recently that was specifically around SB, one, you know, trying to fight for, you know, the future of higher ed. So it was a lot of like teachers and students, and, you know, people who kind of oppose this bill at the state level. But some of the other protests have been very broad, and it’s, you know, you see signs like deport Elon, right? You see like, anti Trump signs. You see, you know, anti RFK signs and so. So some of the, you know, critique of the protest online is like, I don’t even know what this is about, because I see right 30 different signs and different messages, you know, and the person kind of leading chance will kind of guide people through chanting. But it’s, it’s very like, we’re mad
Tim Fulton 04:36
at everything, okay, yeah, and that’s kind of understandable right at the moment it very much is, yeah, what is getting good hits on Columbus underground?
Walker Evans 04:45
Well, we both looked back at the past three months, and it’s kind of funny. I guess we should just start with the number one article that kind of went viral. Esque, I will say, was about Easton. Um. Uh, converting some of their parking lots into paid lots, right? Which, it’s one of those examples of, like, I can’t remember the first ones to report it, or if it just kind of like, got into the, you know, the algorithm of social media and caught some traction. But you look at the comments on Facebook and almost no one read the article,
Tim Fulton 05:19
okay? Like, they are just reacting to the headline. They’re reacting to the headline and But funny enough, a lot of people did read it again. It was the analytics we are looking at is people visiting Columbus underground.
Walker Evans 05:32
Oh, yeah, yes, but like, which is probably 10% of the people Yes. Like, yeah. And that story, let me look real fast, 16,000 people read that story. Another 160,000 reacted to the headline, yeah, yeah. So it’s one of those instances of like, you know, to me, that’s a story that’s not really that important in the grand scheme of things. Do you remember what the details of it were? Because, I
Tim Fulton 05:54
mean, simply that they are going to start charging for some of their lots. They will still have free lots, yes, but some of the more centrally located ones, they’re going to, yeah, it’s, and it’s the same system as it is on city streets here. You just paint an app and yeah, you move on. I mean, it’s
Walker Evans 06:11
the same system in a lot of places where you know you want, it’s, it’s sort of like, Oh, we’re gonna have these parking meters be 30 minute meters, because we just want to turn customers over, right? Like this is in front of a coffee shop this. This is for people who just want to run and grab a coffee come out. It’s not for people who want to park all day, because they work right, somewhere nearby, right? So we’re going to incentivize, or we’re going to de incentivize the behavior we don’t want, and incentivize the behavior we want, right? This is designed to serve a different purpose well, and
Tim Fulton 06:40
I two quick things here. One, it’s sort of like how people are like, I don’t go to the short north because there’s no parking. And it’s like, no, there’s plenty of parking. There’s just paid parking. Yes. And also, a friend of mine pointed out that the there are meter there have always been meters at Easton Yes, on the streets, right? And the reason why they implemented them, and this is coming from the horse’s mouth, at least, according to my friend, is they didn’t want to store employees to park there, correct? They wanted it to be so it’s, it’s a point, it’s a continuation, yeah, that you incentivize, yeah,
Walker Evans 07:17
yeah. So the lots that we’re flipping to paid were the ones. So, you know, like, close to the Barnes and Noble there’s, like, maybe it’s, there’s, like, a Chipotle there, I’m
Tim Fulton 07:26
trying, yeah, it’s where, like, the cigar store, the PF Changs is, yeah.
Walker Evans 07:29
So there’s, there’s a surface lot right there, and it’s almost always full, yeah, you know. And it’s kind of designed for people who want to park there, and maybe they’re just going to brassica, yeah, in and out in 20 minutes. Yep, you know. But if employees are parking there, then all of a sudden that spot is taken up for eight hours. Yep. And so they’re like, it’s gonna in. The rates are, like, $1 an hour. Yeah, they’re it’s a pittance. But it’s designed to say, like, Oh, if you’re gonna park it for the long term, go in the garage, park on the third floor, in the garage, it’s free. Yeah, that’s where you should be if you’re gonna be here for long. It’s
Tim Fulton 08:01
the same argument of like, well, I want to do this event. It I don’t need to charge money for this event, but also I kind of want to know how many people are coming, yeah, so I’m gonna charge $1 Yeah. So there’s some barrier of entry, yeah. So people aren’t just RSVPing to look good, but it
Walker Evans 08:17
was kind of funny that a lot of the comments on Facebook anyway, where people saying, this is corporate greed. It’s like it’s $1 to park. No one, no one’s gouging you, doesn’t
Tim Fulton 08:29
it still go into the same, yeah, yes, of charity, yeah. Like their part, which is, which is in the article, okay, yeah, so not corporate, yeah, yeah.
Walker Evans 08:37
It’s going into their, their their fund for that. And the other sort of comment is just like, oh, this is, this is a death knell for Easton, like, it’s over. As soon as this goes into place, like, no one’s I’m going to Polaris now because of that. And it’s
Tim Fulton 08:51
like, going to Polaris before why? Yeah, like a $1
Walker Evans 08:54
charge, right? That’s an optional. An optional $1 charge is not going to have any kind of impact. So, yeah, again, it was one of the things. And this story was January 4, so everyone was just kind of getting back after vacation and holidays. And so I think it was one of those first kind of big stories that kind of caught people’s attention. And yeah, they wanted to be mad about something, I think.
Tim Fulton 09:15
And there’s a whole lot of development stories. I feel like that’s your niche, your bread and butter, to an extent. Can you give sort of a rundown of some of the bigger development stories? The bigger the bigger development stories? Yeah, yeah. Like the apartments planned for players, Tuttle. Tuttle, excuse me, yeah,
Walker Evans 09:36
diagonally across from Tuttle, there’s an office park, and I want to say it’s three or four larger buildings, okay, probably built in like, the 80s, okay, maybe early 90s. I don’t know what their occupancy rates are, but I can’t imagine they’re great as a lot of office a lot of the conversation too, about like, work from home and like Office vacancies all across America has been centered upon central business districts, hmm. And people don’t talk enough about like, every outer belt. And I’m. America is just surrounded by office parks, yeah? And they’re just as empty, yeah? So the plan is to tear, I think, two of them down and build apartments and keep one of the office buildings. So it’ll be kind of a mixed development. It’s, if you know where that Walmart is off a tunnel. So that’s directly on the opposite side of 270 from, okay, from the Tuttle mall, yeah, it’s, like, just north of that.
Tim Fulton 10:23
How’s Tuttle mall doing? Like you did, did a rundown of, like, haven’t been in a minute, okay, yeah. But you, I mean, you photographed the evidence of the decline of Polaris This was at the occasion. No, Tuttle. It was Tuttle. Yeah, sorry, okay, got it, yeah, so we don’t know
Walker Evans 10:43
it was, it was, it was rough, yeah, when I went and I want to say that was like the beginning of 2023, so okay, it’s, it’s been like two years since I kind of did that sort of thing. Maybe time for a little refresh. I’ve thought about it, because at that point in time, too, it was court owned, like it was in, oh yeah, foreclosure. I came with the official status, but it since had a buyer, but I think the buyer is like a group of investors, not like a mall operator owner, so I think they’re probably just gonna let it rot.
Tim Fulton 11:17
Is this my opportunity to talk about how much like, dislike private equity, and that it’s sure contributing to the initiative of every industry, of everything, yeah, by the way, sorry, can I plug an article? Not that you didn’t publish? Sure? Well, Joe Delos has his former owner of hot chicken takeover sold the business to private equity. It then got resold, which then he had the opportunity to say, Well, that didn’t go how I wanted it to go. But business first did a really fantastic piece that sort of outlines, like, here’s what private equity does, yeah, and yes, there are good, you know, God bless Richard Gere and pretty woman, there are places for Hey, this, this business isn’t being run efficiently, and we’re gonna make it run efficiently. Yeah, that’s not what happens a lot of times, a lot of time. They’re literally just there to extract value. Yeah? And I
Walker Evans 12:19
love the term vulture capitalism, yeah, venture capitalism, yeah, yeah. Indeed, we see it a lot. What Toys R Us is a great example of that. If you, if you will, familiar with, if you Google, like, Why did Toys R Us go out of business? You’ll find some really, like, cool, like, deep dive pieces, oh, of where they like, over leveraged intentionally to, like, bankrupt the business, yeah, well, and the group that purchased it also did, like, debt services. So they were just, like, sucking whatever money was left out of this, like, before they bought it, like Toys R Us was turning a profit. It wasn’t like a failing business, okay? And they drove it into the ground. And, I mean, this is the whole Red Lobster thing, exactly, yeah, yeah, almost every I mean, because there’s also been talk about Red Robin shredding locations and going out of business on almost any time you see those kinds of stories, look at who, look it up on Wikipedia, and it’s like, they opened, they franchised, they grew, they sold, they sold again, they sold again, they sold again. And now it’s in the hands of a venture capital firm and private
Tim Fulton 13:21
equity, sorry, private equity, I do want to be distinctive, sure,
Walker Evans 13:25
yes, yeah, I misspoke. A vulture capital, a private equity group that’s just selling the assets, stripping it for parts and destroying it, and at the same time, it’s like, are we really going to cry over a Red Lobster going away? It’s a big chain. It’s, you know, but people are losing jobs. To
Tim Fulton 13:42
my point, Joe didn’t just build a hot chicken restaurant. He in my head, and I don’t know if he would say this, he built an employment model. Yes, that helped people who needed help. Yes,
Walker Evans 13:57
they employed people with records. Yeah, yeah, like prison records. And there’s a term for it, yeah, it’s like, difficult, difficult
Tim Fulton 14:06
to employ people, and he found a way to make that work, and he had a successful, well liked business, and I don’t, don’t fault him for getting out of it, but, yeah, yeah. So other development stories that have been in the news.
Walker Evans 14:22
Yeah. I mean, what one of the, you know, some of the projects downtown, like the south Fourth Street kind of tower going up from the the blue stone group that that received some tax credits, like some state funding, I think it was the T mud stuff. There’s been a couple, a couple others along those lines. But one of the bigger sort of economic development stories has been the anderal defense contractor, yeah, which I think is technically in Pickaway County, okay, but it’s but it’s in the region, and they were given some gigantic incentive package from the state to build it’s high tech jobs. It’s like four. 1000 jobs this big, like, I think, 500 acre site. I don’t have the numbers exactly in front of me, yeah, but that got a lot of attention one, because I think it’s one of the largest, like, job development programs in the history. I mean, it’s up there with Intel in terms of, like, the impact. But they’re building kill bots, you know, they’re building drone, drone war, yeah, yeah. And it’s like a lot of people feel icky about that, yeah. And rightfully so. And so is this what the future of our central Ohio economy should hang its hat on? I guess so.
Tim Fulton 15:31
First of all, yes. And I don’t know that I’ve ever revealed this, at least on this podcast. I was raised Quaker. I inherently don’t love drones. I don’t love drones. Sorry, I don’t like war drones. I own a drone, okay, right? It is not weaponized. It has a camera on it, yes, but so first of all, I inherently don’t like war. I don’t like guns. It’s just not my thing. I don’t have a problem with people to do. My sister was actually in the military. Spent time in Afghanistan, and Columbus is a hub for defense. We have these defense Resource Center here on the west side.
Walker Evans 16:15
I don’t know the things that Battelle does that’s like top secret as well. Yeah, and Battelle
Tim Fulton 16:21
is part of the military industrial complex as well, albeit in a nonprofit way, but we can get into that another time. We should talk to them, by the way, yeah, like, just, I don’t think folks understand Battelle and what it does, but that being said, Yes, I don’t want a drone, a war machine factory close by, but I do think it’s part of our fabric already. It’s not different than the things that we sort that that are part of the fiber of us already. So that’s my
Speaker 1 16:55
thought. That’s fair. Yeah, yeah. Can I ask more about the Quaker thing? Yeah?
Tim Fulton 16:59
So Quakers go to friends meetings. We don’t go to churches. Our churches are called Friends meetings. Friends meetings, correct, the members of the Quaker church are friends, okay, that’s like the a congregant a friend, okay? And there is no there’s no like minister, there’s no like leader that runs a service when you go to a sir. And again, I was a very young child, so, like, I was in Sunday School for most of it, yeah, but still Christianity. It’s still, oh yes, yeah. They’re Christian. Yeah. You go to a service and it, you know, they do the standard like, Hey, we’re having a potluck next week, and hey, we’re doing X, Y, Z, and then when the actual service starts, everyone is quiet, unless a friend is moved to speak so very commonly, what It will be is just basically people sitting in gathered prayer, and then you will hear someone say someone’s name, gotcha. And it may just be that, and it may be, I am sure, that there are friends meetings where there are friends who, like, just feel like they’re entitled to talk, and they do, you know, but they’re not. You’re not like, engaging with it in that way. It’s not like everybody is like, oh, this person has the floor. Now, it’s not that. It’s interesting, huh? Yeah, I was a Quaker. Gotcha. What was no more? No, I’m a Unitarian. Now, gotcha. Yeah?
Walker Evans 18:41
Cool, fun aside, yeah, yeah. So there’s been a couple other, like, larger scale development projects, yeah, a big one out in Dublin, kind of off of one like, where 161 and 33 split, kind of you’re headed toward plain city, yep. A big like, 44 acre mixed use development site out there, very pretty renderings on that one. So that got a lot of attention. Okay, yeah, so, so, you know, even though there’s been a lot of hand wringing and worry about how tariffs are impacting things, yeah, will impact things, yeah, yeah, a lot of it is has not kind of fully come to fruition, but that, I think, is just one more layer of complication, at least in like that housing development side of things, where people have been already worried that interest rates for commercial construction loans are higher than what they were a few years ago. So
Tim Fulton 19:35
I don’t know if you’d look at lumber futures in a while, but yeah, I
Walker Evans 19:41
have no reason to, but I guess outside of curiosity. But yeah, I mean, I think we’re gonna see kind of a slowdown. Yeah, I think we’re already starting to see a slowdown. So even though things that are like getting announced, getting approved, like you might not see them, really break ground, yeah, the things that are already under construction. Shouldn’t you know are moving forward, but yeah, and I, again, I don’t think this is a Columbus problem. We love to beat ourselves up as if we have unique problems that other cities don’t. But yeah, I think we’re gonna see this everywhere
Tim Fulton 20:11
well, and let’s use that sort of as a transition. Then to you had a piece that did pretty well, that Brent did, about how the behavior or actions of the new federal administration are already struggling to sort of have ripple effects on Columbus. What are those?
Walker Evans 20:30
Yeah. I mean, Brent talked to a couple different both private housing developers and public doing, you know, like home port doing, yeah, affordable housing and everyone kind of agreed that either it’s making them nervous, you know, the disruptions that it could cause, or people are saying this is already having an impact on like, projects that I’m working on, yeah, down the pipeline, like the funding that I have lined up, the investors that I have lined up, like a lot of them are getting cold feet on things and so, And for nothing too. It’s like, Why start a lumber trade war with Canada? Like, what’s Yeah, this. It feels very optional, like we’re not doing it to some end. It’s just, let’s do this for fun and make everybody else suffer in the process. So people were, like, very vocal and willing to speak out and say this, this is having negative impacts,
Tim Fulton 21:22
yeah, and I do want to know we are recording this, like maybe 48 hours after I’m having a very hard political like day. Sure, we are, you
Walker Evans 21:33
go protest a block over the State House abducting
Tim Fulton 21:35
and deporting legal Yes, legal immigrants to our country? Yes, I saw the video, and there’s a lot right, and our city attorney has joined a lawsuit to sue the Trump administration as well. Honestly, what for what feels like a a small reason, like we are money for trees was taken away, yeah, but it’s important to fight back, and it’s important to be vocal. And if you are listening to this, and you are a person, are a person of privilege, I highly encourage you to speak out, and I think that there are so many opportunities to put our heads in the ground and say, Well, someone else is going to solve this problem, yeah. And it doesn’t seem to be happening, yeah. And,
Walker Evans 22:32
you know, when we’re talking about like a private housing developer, I think it’s easy to say, Oh, boo hoo. This company is not going to be able to make more more money, right? Or whatever, which, that’s a fair critique. But at the same time, you know, we were also looking at the we did an article. This is more recent, so it’s probably not in the top of this list, but the rate at which we’re growing and the rate at which we’re building housing, yeah, it’s a continuation of a trend. But the summer of 2023, to the summer of 2024 the most recent, like census estimate, updates, 30,000 people in central Ohio in that one year moved here. Yes, we grew by we grew we grew. So it’s births and in state and out of state, migration, migration, birth and migration. Sorry, birth versus death and migration. Yeah, 30,000 which is, I always like to put it in terms of grand views. Okay, how many? Know, how many grand views? Like, 8000 people. Okay, so that’s like four and a half grand views, yeah, okay, we grew by four and a half grand views in one
Tim Fulton 23:30
year. That’s three and a half grand views, but it’s almost four. Okay, so,
23:34
yeah, thank you. Almost four.
Tim Fulton 23:38
I’m gonna start using that, by the way. I haven’t heard you do that, yes, yeah,
Walker Evans 23:41
but that’s, that’s a lot of people, yeah, you know. And then you look at the stats of, like, housing starts, like, how many new builds, how many apartment units we’re adding into the market, and it’s always like, half well, and you don’t need a unit per person, right? You know, I think the
Tim Fulton 23:56
My love is, we need one unit per every 1.5
Walker Evans 23:59
people, something along those lines, yeah. And this is region wide statistics, so this is 30,000 people in central Ohio. So that’s Columbus Day, right? Yeah, it’s suburbs, it’s exurbs, you know, kind of the surrounding counties, basically, that’s
Tim Fulton 24:11
the Metropolitan Statistical Area, yeah, people, yes, but,
Walker Evans 24:15
but you look in some communities around here and like how many new housing units they’ve added, and it’s like 10, yeah, in a year. You know, like a small place like obets or but even like New Albany, doesn’t build a lot of housing year over year, and we need more at every level, in every neighborhood. And Columbus cannot be the only part of the region that is building housing, because there’s so much land in the region that is not in the city limits.
Tim Fulton 24:40
Are you ready for my theory of everything? Yes, okay,
24:43
everything bagel,
Tim Fulton 24:46
that actually everything bagel has kind of been brought into this too. There is a a understanding that is starting to come into view. There are two books that just came out specifically about this. It’s very hard. Hard for capital D democratic places to build things. Yeah, we put a lot of restrictions on ourselves because we are concerned about real things. We’re concerned about pay equity among people that build stuff for us. We are concerned about environmental impact. We are there are a lot of things that hold us back from doing things right. I am not trying to say that is good or bad. However, I think that Columbus actually is a little better at it, because it there is an argument that the Democratic party came into power in places that were corrupt in order to fight that corruption. Okay, so if you accept that as a basically, the government should be doing these things that people in smoky rooms were doing for us before, and they were self serving, and it was keeping the little man down. Columbus didn’t actually get rid of the smokey room, though. Columbus maintained, I’m not saying that they’re corrupt at all.
Speaker 1 26:14
It was doing what’s funny is, behind the scenes they are.
Tim Fulton 26:18
We do have known entities in this city that are sort of like we want to see this happen, and so we’re going to pull, pull together our collective might, corporate money, nonprofit, semi governmental organization, in order to make and see these things happen, right? This is how we’re going to handle it when city center goes away. This is how we’re going to solve the waterfront. This is how we’re going to work with the state in order to get enough water to Intel so that it doesn’t hurt Columbus. Sure. I think Columbus is uniquely positively positioned if people sort of wake up just a little bit and say, like, hey, there’s a virtue of tax credits and hey, there’s like, I know that you don’t like it, but progress is good in in a certain direction, as long as everyone’s aware of what’s going on, yeah? Counter me here.
Walker Evans 27:26
I mean, I have like, 1000 thoughts on a lot of this stuff, but going back to, like, the historic like, the reason it’s hard to build in every city is because of single family zoning laws, yeah, that were implemented in like, the mid 20th century, yeah.
Tim Fulton 27:42
And we just passed a zoning initiative that kind of is starting to change, that it’s a half step in the room. Would argue it is not far enough, fast enough, correct? And I agree with you there, yeah.
Walker Evans 27:53
And there’s, and there’s more to come. They’re still working on it, which is fine, but a lot of that was done is basically, you know, as we grew out into the suburbs as a country, we did so in a way that was not equitable. Yep, basically we wanted to.
Tim Fulton 28:12
It’s called white flight, for a reason. Yeah, people with
Walker Evans 28:15
money and means that could move out there and highly subsidized in every way, shape and form. Yes, the federal government built the highways that enabled it. We, you know, enabled car manufacturers and cheap guy. Bill, yes, yes, yeah. We gave people very cheap land and cheap loans. Yeah, a time when housing was, you know, cheap and but said, Oh, you, you know, I mean, in the very early days, it was like, this is a whites only neighborhood, like it was the racism was on the bottom, on the bro, on the brochures, you know, advertising these places looking at you up once that, once that became illegal, they switched to be classes instead of racist. They’re like, if you want to build a house here, it has to be at least 2500 square feet. It has to be at least four bedrooms. It has to be designed a very certain way. And it has to be on a quarter acre lot, yep, and so basically, keep the pores out, which was just code for keep the minorities out. Yep, a lot of that is still in place today. The classism side of it, yeah? Like you can’t build within certain parameters in many places in America, yeah? So, well,
Tim Fulton 29:19
I think sort of understandably so folks who are in a position of privilege, who do have, you know, even a starter home in Upper Arlington, they view that asset as going to be negatively impacted by maybe not even affordable housing, just literally, like, I don’t want one of those. I don’t want an apartment building around the block, around the corner from me, sure, because the perception that it will lower your home’s value, right, right? And they will say, all day, I don’t have any problem with, you know, people who make less money than me or are in a different class, yeah,
Walker Evans 29:55
they’re trying to protect their asset. But the problem is that, you know. Know, housing should be viewed as, I mean, shelter is, is a basic necessity. Yes, people need to be endorsed, yes, a certain percentage of their lives, yes, but housing in America is an investment, and it can’t really be both, yep, like if we have unhoused people that we need to put in housing, or we have low income people that need to that need shelter. It has to be built, and it has to go somewhere. And so if you have a place where the value is high because of artificial scarcity, like, oh, 50,000 people want to live in Upper Arlington, and there’s enough room for 30,000 people to live there. And as long as you don’t build more housing, you keep, you keep the supply and demand imbalanced, and your asset continues to grow in value. And I’m not trying to beat up on people in Upper Arlington. I’m just continuing to use it Yeah, as an example in this case. And I don’t think anyone like when you present it that way. I don’t think any one individual would be like, Oh yeah, I value my money more than I value human life living on the street, certainly not, but like, but that’s kind of what they’re they’re working against. I think if we, collectively speaking, switch
Tim Fulton 31:05
our headspace around a little bit and view housing as a commodity only, yeah, we would all be a little bit healthier as a society, rather than, like, viewing your home as your primary investment vehicle, yeah? And rant on that, yeah,
Walker Evans 31:26
yeah. I think, I think there’s, there’s ways to accommodate both. And I do think, you know, to give props to the fine folks in the development department and working on the zoning stuff like, yeah, what we’ve done in Columbus, updating our zoning for the first time in 70 years as of last summer, is definitely needed, a great step in the right direction. Hopefully some of our suburban counterparts are going to follow suit with that sort of stuff. But when you when you look at the map and what it is, it’s really like corridors for high density development on major corridors, and we really need to take that next step and say, we need to eliminate Single Family Housing zoning, like across the board, like throughout the entirety of the city. And so if somebody wants to build a duplex instead of a single family home, they are allowed to do that because right now it’s illegal. If someone wants to build an adu, like a garage mother in law suite, they’re allowed to do that because right now it’s illegal. People think that like, you get rid of single family zoning laws, and all of a sudden they’re skyscrapers and everybody on everyone’s streets, and it’s like, no, you end up with something more like German village, which is illegal to build now, yeah, because the houses are smaller, they’re tighter together, they’re closer to the street. They have little, you know, carriage houses, because that’s what was built, and it’s
Tim Fulton 32:32
one of the most sought after, yeah, expensive per square foot. People want
Walker Evans 32:35
to live there neighbor, and it’s walkable because everything’s tighter. And so right, we need more of that for, you know, for people to live, to create better walkable communities, it’s better for the environment. It’ll be better, you know, to improve transit systems. That’s why our transit system sucks, is because it’s a, it’s a square peg, round hole situation, right? You can’t build busses that serve low density. What at Sim City 101?
Tim Fulton 32:58
What do you say to people that are like, well, it’s going to affect, negatively affect the character of my neighborhood.
Walker Evans 33:07
I think negatively affect and change, change for just the sake of change or difference. Yeah, I think are two very different things. I think people, people say negative, and they don’t, they don’t really understand what that means. I think that’s it’s coded classism and racism, you know. And if, and if you call people out on that, they’d be like, Oh no, no. But like, ask someone what they mean when they say it’s going to change the character of your neighborhood. Like, what do you what do you mean by that? Because I don’t think there’s many excuses that don’t fall into classism or racism.
Tim Fulton 33:42
I think that’s fair. We were gonna get into parks. We went way off the rails, but I think this is good, yeah, so talk about parks too. No, we don’t need to. We’re good, yeah? Walker, thank you for your time. Yeah? Thanks, Tim. Did Thank you for listening to the confluence cast, presented by Columbus underground. Again, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at the confluence cast.com Please rate, subscribe, share this episode of The confluence cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite Quaker. If you’re interested in sponsoring the confluence cast, get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info, at the confluence cast.com, our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Phil Cogley, I’m your host. Tim Fulton, have a great week.
