A Roundup of Renderings

Tim Fulton 00:08Welcome 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, with spring upon us in the capital city, we are all about change. There's a vibrancy in the air, and that's apparent in our latest roundup of the biggest stories on Columbus Underground. Today, co-founder and editor Walker Evans sat down to discuss everything from Liz Lessner's influential legacy to the latest murmurs about when we'll get passenger rail. There are also plenty of renderings to peruse. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Enjoy the interview. Sitting down here with Walker Evans, the co-founder and editor in chief of Columbus Underground. Walker, how are you, sir?

Walker Evans 01:06I am excellent. How are you?

Tim Fulton 01:07I'm good. We are here to do another quarterly wrap-up, basically, of things that have been in the news, things folks may have missed. You have furnished a list for us. We always appreciate it. First of all, how are things going? Comedy Festival's coming along?

Walker Evans 01:25Yeah, we have a whole bunch of events this year. We're hosting a 5K this summer.

Tim Fulton 01:32Okay.

Walker Evans 01:33We have our Urban Living Tour coming up in a couple of weeks. The Coffee Festival is relocating and getting bigger. So lots of events stuff, lots of things in the news to write about. So it feels like a very—I don't know, there's some palpable energy. Maybe it's just because the weather finally turned nice, maybe as people are walking around. Downtown feels like the heart is beating again after a cold winter.

Tim Fulton 01:55Well, I do think that sort of the drumbeat we've been pushing of, like, hey, things are going to have to change if we're going to be a viable city—the LinkUS bond issue, sorry, it's not a bond issue, the LinkUS issue, the new zoning changes that they're hoping to push through, the Associated Press around that. But the stories we're talking about today, first up, the title, "The Liz Lessner Restaurant Era Has Officially Come to an End."

Walker Evans 02:32Yeah, this is an article that, like last fall, I started to think about, because Tip Top had just changed hands that fall.

Tim Fulton 02:40So let's step back, for those that don't know. Who is Liz Lessner? What was it like in Columbus in 2008?

Walker Evans 02:47Well, kids, gather around, listen to some old man tell you a tale. So Elizabeth Lessner opened a restaurant called Betty's in the Short North in 2001. Very long time ago. In the spot where Brassica is now, just for context. And the Short North was a very different neighborhood. A lot of weeknights, it got kind of dark and quiet and sleepy, and a little weird to walk around by yourself at night. And Liz wanted to have a space that was women-focused, welcoming to that kind of late-night crowd, a good place to have sort of a bit of a safe haven. And she was doing food in an era—because you have to think, this before fast casual, before Chipotle. So it was either fast food or fine dining. There wasn't a whole lot of middle ground, unless you felt like going to Don Pablo's or something.

Tim Fulton 03:40There was an independent version of that.

Walker Evans 03:43Yeah. So I think Liz wanted to carve out a niche where people could get some unique specials and drink specials. And this was before every bar had 20 craft beers on tap. This before we had 100 craft breweries in the region. So it was kind of a hip, cool spot, and it was successful. And she opened up eight restaurants in total, all different concepts. Dirty Frank's is the only one to have a second location. But, one by one, they closed, relocated. Liz kind of said in the story—if you read the full story—that she wanted to really just do it for 20 years and kind of be done. She said, retire by 40 was her goal. And I think she was done at like 41. So the final two, sort of hangers-on, were Tip Top downtown, which is still there, it's still going, but her brother Tim was kind of still running the show, and the two of them sold it to the folks that run the Arch City Tavern. So it has new ownership. And then the Torpedo Room at the Gateway Film Center, which was a concept she developed for the Gateway, just switched over to a new speakeasy model, so it's not open to the general public anymore. It's a members-only thing for Gateway Film Center members. So these are the last two. She sold Dirty Frank's a long time ago, still going, but it's been under new ownership for probably 10 years now. So I reached out to Liz and said, hey, would you want to sit down and reminisce, would you want to do a Zoom call, because she lives in Texas now. And she was like, I'm going to be in town for Thanksgiving, so let's just get together in person. So we sat down for two hours and just talked about every single place. And it took me a while to get the story done. But it was crazy well read. That's why it's number one on the list, because it was super well read. And the really nice thing too, Liz said—like, I didn't tell her the day that it was publishing, it just went up that day. And then later that afternoon, she said she was on a work Zoom call, and she had her phone in the other room, and she could hear it buzzing on the table, like every 15 seconds. And her first thought was like, oh my God, who died? Like, something's wrong, something happened. And then she went and looked, and she just had all these people reaching out to her, like, oh, hey, we haven't talked in a while, old friends reconnecting. People sharing their favorite recipes, like, I really love this one dish.

Tim Fulton 05:53So, to her credit, I was just at Pattycake—Gracie's, the other day—actually, I hadn't ever eaten at the downtown one. And the server was like, hey, Tim, I remember you from Surly Girl. Like, those institutions had some staying power in terms of how people thought about them. The one thing that I don't know if you talked about is the one thing that was interesting to me about her and her business model is each restaurant had a different business partner. This was not a—we think of some restaurant groups in town where it's like, you know, one owner, one owner, and then five concepts. Cameron Mitchell is a gargantuan example of that.

Walker Evans 06:40And she credited him with a lot of mentorship and things of that nature.

Tim Fulton 06:45I just always thought it was interesting that she did it that way.

Walker Evans 06:50Yeah, exactly. I think some of that was just sort of the bootstrapping, trying to get friends and family together and rub a couple nickels together and open a restaurant. And they were thrifting the chandeliers that would go into places like Surly Girl. So it was very DIY aesthetic. So I think that was just kind of spawned out of that.

Tim Fulton 07:08Well, and much credit to her for helping the burgeoning restaurant scene in Columbus. That's a feat.

Walker Evans 07:15And I think, even to this day, you can feel the ramification—maybe that's the wrong word—but the snark, and the cheeky attitude, that were prevalent in all of our places. That is there in spades in places like Mikey's and Oddfellows. And Old Town Tavern feels a lot like Tip Top. Absolutely, start to look at some similarities. And so I think all those inspirations kind of live on in different ways.

Tim Fulton 07:15Absolutely.

Walker Evans 07:15It was a very good, feel-good piece. When I put it on social media, we're like, are people just going to be like, "ah, Columbus sucks, because all of her restaurants closed"? And people were like, oh no, I liked these places, and this was a fun kind of walk down memory lane.

Tim Fulton 07:58Yeah, absolutely. It's great. Next up on the list, "Columbus Included in Two New Proposed Long-Distance Amtrak Routes."

Walker Evans 08:06Yeah, surprise, surprise, people love reading about trains. But this kind of came out of left field, because there's been so much discussion for over a decade now about the 3C corridor. So, Cleveland, Dayton, Columbus, Cincinnati. 3C plus D.

Tim Fulton 08:063C plus D.

Walker Evans 08:06And then the other corridor that we've put in the funding and the studies and all that sort of stuff, because of the Hyperloop, was Chicago to Columbus to Pittsburgh. These other, larger proposals, the long-distance proposals, were part of a larger network of planning that the federal government is digging into. And some of those were like New Orleans kind of sneaking all the way up and hitting Columbus and going up to Toronto, and going across to New York. So it kind of came out of left field, to a degree. And people are like, oh, if we can build one route, great. If we can build all four or five of these, all of a sudden Columbus is a hub, and we've got a lot to be able to access. So people are really excited to read about that.

Tim Fulton 09:07Is there sort of a—at least from Columbus, and I realize that this is a lot of state issue—just a general plan? Like, we don't have passenger rail at all right now. And is there a "hey, there's going to be a new Union Station"—Union Station, which was the original train station we had, which is where the convention center is now—like, is there a plan for where this—we can't even figure out where to put a bus station.

Walker Evans 09:35Apparently the plan right now that the city and MORPC and some of the other leaders in this have put together is in kind of a very similar spot. So by the convention center. So basically, you know where you pull in at the convention center, where the new Hilton Hotel is, and there's that little loop, there's like a hole there, and you can look down into the hole and see the train tracks down below. It would be capping over part of that, and that would be sort of the ground or the street-level entrance. And so you would go downstairs to a boarding platform, because that's where the tracks are.

Tim Fulton 10:05Right. Okay.

Walker Evans 10:07So that would be the downtown station. They're talking about the route from Chicago to Columbus to Pittsburgh maybe having an airport location. So then there might also be an airport station.

Tim Fulton 10:21So I'm glad I asked. There wouldn't be one central Columbus station.

Walker Evans 10:27The downtown would be like the main one.

Tim Fulton 10:31You take a tram or something to transfer to the airport.

Walker Evans 10:34But also Dublin is like, if this is passing through here on the way to Chicago, we want to stop in Dublin. Why wouldn't we?

Tim Fulton 10:43You're going to have it.

Walker Evans 10:44But it also kind of is exciting, because then it allows us to think about, well, if these tracks and these stations are here for long-distance travel through Amtrak, could we also have a shorter-run commuter service that runs on those rails as well, that's just like a Dublin-and-Columbus back-and-forth express or anything. You do have to—I'm not super well versed in this stuff—but you have to have the right rolling stock to do that. So it couldn't be like a light rail line, because it's just different track widths, and array, and distances, and all that sort of stuff. So it has to be something more like the Music City Star in Nashville, which is a refurbished heavy rolling stock train. But it's a suburban commuter train. But it's not technically light rail, or like a tram.

Tim Fulton 11:33Well, that's part of the infrastructure issue too, right? Because we don't currently have commuter rail, there is going to need to be some rail improvements. The stuff that coal rides on is not the stuff that people ride on. It can be, but it has to be multimodal.

Walker Evans 11:49Yeah. And some of it too is about smoothing out some of the curves. Coal probably never goes more than like 50 miles an hour on a lot of these tracks. And if we want high-speed rail to go 100, or higher-speed rail, then there are places where, like, this can't be a 20-degree turn over a quarter mile, it needs to be a 15-degree turn. So, okay, there's those improvements too.

Tim Fulton 12:14Up next on our list, a lot of transit, by the way. "Two-Mile Bike and Pedestrian Loop Planned for Downtown." Yes, the Cap Line. So the context here that I don't think we have talked about, at least on the podcast, is the redoing of Gay Street. So first of all, talk about the bike and pedestrian loop, and how that factors into what they're planning.

Walker Evans 12:40Yeah. So the whole loop, it sounds something a little similar to the Cultural Trail in Indianapolis, but I think they're taking a lot more design cues from European cities. So really, it would be about defining certain streets to be a lot more pedestrian and bike-centric, even just in terms of paint on the ground, solid lines and areas, like, this is for bikes, versus having just sharrows and a car lane. And defining a loop, and connecting all of these different amenities that we have downtown. And Amy Taylor, formerly of CDDC, which is no longer, now sitting at DCI—so, downtown Columbus Inc.—Amy has talked a lot recently about how they realize that they've done a great job of building assets, from Columbus Commons to the Scioto Mile to the peninsula, but not the best job of connecting these assets. And so this is something that is supposed to help drive people from point A to point B all along this trail, phase one, and also to spur development. You know, the Scioto Mile and Columbus Commons is like, we're going to build the six-acre park, and hope private development fills in around it. And that it has, yeah. So this is another sort of shot in the arm. And so there's a lot of hemming and hawing, like, oh, it's a $100 million sort of investment. And it's like, but it will pay dividends, it will drive billions in new private-sector development all around this trail. Phase one would be kind of updating Gay Street. Narrowing the street, pedestrian—I'm sorry, vehicular-wise—widening sidewalks, and allowing for a lot more flexible use of the public space, so that things like the Moonlight Market or the Pearl Market could have access to spill out into the street more easily. Special events, you could close it down. We've got the sculpture right out here, closing the street down to have like a concert under it, or a holiday event.

Tim Fulton 14:37I mean, the renderings look great.

Walker Evans 14:39They do. Shout out to a realm collaborative. They did kind of the initial groundwork. They don't have the contract to do all of the actual work going forward. I think they're submitting for that. So just want to make that point of clarification. But the work that they've done on the visioning process, A-plus-plus, have the beautiful renderings.

Tim Fulton 15:01Talk much about where that $100 million comes from? I assume DCI is putting up some of their money.

Walker Evans 15:07I mean, it's probably going to be a combination of city, DCI, probably some private investment. The same way that, I think, AEP donated X million dollars to the riverfront, through a variety of sources. But when you look at the list of leadership that has co-signed on to this project, it's going to happen.

Tim Fulton 15:28Yeah, I wouldn't bet against the partnership. Up next, "Heath Town Center Buildings Expected to Open in 2026." For those that don't know, Heath is a little town just south of Newark.

Walker Evans 15:28Just a candy bar.

Tim Fulton 15:28Not just a candy bar. And when you sent me the list, I was like, oh, we're going to have a health town center, because I was reading too quickly. Because, honestly, you don't hear about Heath much.

Walker Evans 15:55Not at all. Well, a lot of suburban and exurban communities, I think, have seen the success not just of places like Bridge Park, but downtown Hilliard, kind of all the old Hilliard area, Creekside in Gahanna—they're all kind of reinvesting into their downtown areas. They realized that there's value in creating a walkable, mixed-use sort of environment. It's going to help them retain millennials, who—if you grew up in Heath, usually you just want to get out of Heath. So giving people a variety of options for housing and lifestyle is kind of the MO for a lot of these places. So we've been trying to write about them. And shout out to Chris Alexis, who has been tackling a lot of these, because there's so many happening that Brent can't do all of them anymore. So Chris has been really stepping in to help out with some of these exurban community projects. The Heath one, they're taking a big chunk of fields kind of next to the Indian Mound Mall. So it's kind of a step one. If you look at it, you can kind of see, this is great, but it's very much an island. It's sort of like, you can walk around within this town center, but as soon as you leave the property, it kind of just turns into a suburb very quickly. It's just field to one side—I think it's next to their little regional airport on the south end of it—but to the east, it's the mall, and it's a lot of, like, it'd be like trying to ride your bike on Polaris Parkway. It very quickly turns into that around there. But I think that could be a phase two, redeveloping that mall. I'm sure eventually that will be something that needs to be done. I've not been in a very long time.

Tim Fulton 17:33Well, and it does make me think of how Easton came up. Like, there was Easton One, and there was Easton Two. And it's very similar to what we're seeing in Dublin. But I was working on a project where I ended up in a couple of small, literally rural towns in Ohio, and these exurban areas are doing exactly the same thing. And when you talk to city leaders there, they're very specific: this is all about retention. It's all about making sure that their tax base doesn't die, that they have kids, they have schools, that they have—

Walker Evans 18:16Vibrancy. And I imagine, to some degree too, when you think about the leadership and the planning and the city councils in these places, it's kind of the next generation is coming in. These aren't the people that were maybe making the decisions 20, 30 years ago. So I think it's a fresh set of eyes on things. So hopefully the Indian Mound Mall, if it's redeveloped, maybe they can change the name. It's not the "shopping on your ancestors' grave" commerce center.

Tim Fulton 18:43Yeah.

Walker Evans 18:44It's a little on the nose. But that's probably a heated city council meeting.

Tim Fulton 18:51Sometimes you have to change the name of things. Yeah. What was the other thing I was going to say regarding that? Oh, just, like, I think about, maybe—what was it, 10 years ago, that Tulsa introduced a whole bunch of really small programs for folks who were able to work remotely, and other tax incentives for building and investment, while still trying to retain the historic aspects of that town, that city. And it worked. It totally worked. And it didn't work with—yes, it certainly had private investment coming in, but it wasn't like it was an Intel plant that did it. And so we're going to have to find an interesting mix with our partner communities like Heath, which, again, I hadn't thought about Heath while—

Walker Evans 19:46I think another great example too is Newark, right next to Heath. They've invested a lot into their downtown area, both from an infrastructure standpoint, and just trying to lure new small businesses, and creating more farmers markets, and events and things like that. It's nice.

Tim Fulton 20:03Literally making people want to live there. Because that's how you get income taxes jacked. Up next on the list, "Three New Vendors Open at Budd Dairy Hall Amid Turnover, Lawsuit." That's headline writing.

Walker Evans 20:19Props to Susan. Yeah, I think that probably was super well read because of the word "lawsuit" in there. Because Budd Dairy Hall is not really all that new. But it sounds like they've had some turmoil in terms of some bills going unpaid. And sounds like that's still ongoing.

Tim Fulton 20:35The word "receivership"—I do not know if they're actually in it, but the word has been thrown around.

Walker Evans 20:40Yeah, I want to be careful how I word things. But I don't know all of the details of it. It sounds like there's been a lot of struggle, and some of the businesses there have kind of hinted at problems, but they don't want to speak on the record, because they're still kind of tied to lease negotiations. It sounds like it's been a pretty big challenge. And I know that food halls have been kind of the hot thing for the past couple of years. You look at the more urban—I mean, to some degree the North Market is a food hall—you look at Budd Dairy, and that's a food hall. I think suburban communities are trying to replicate this model. And I don't know if it quite works, maybe, in a place like New Albany, where people want a more specific kind of experience. They don't want that communal dining and loud, casual environment. So I think this really just speaks to, you can't just pick up a square object and drop it into a round hole 20 miles out and expect the exact same result.

Tim Fulton 21:40The model is hard, right? There's so many moving parts. I still think that Budd Dairy is sort of not at the place where it's going to be. I think it's sustainable because of the liquor revenue. But it's a really diverse array of foods that I don't want to be eating when I'm drinking. Not necessarily.

Walker Evans 21:40Sure.

Tim Fulton 21:40And so they will—but I have a lot of faith that they will continue to evolve and find the right mix.

Walker Evans 22:17I mean, the thing that Budd Dairy has that I don't think Budd Dairy—that Budd Dairy has is 2,000 people that live within a short walk. And currently being built, another two to 3,000 people coming into all the apartment communities, within—I'm talking like a two-minute walk, within two blocks. And so I think a young urban audience wants that kind of, like, oh, let's just pop over there for lunch, or happy hour kind of a thing.

Tim Fulton 22:48Well, but I was about to say lunch—you will not survive on lunch alone.

Walker Evans 22:48Sure.

Tim Fulton 22:48Yeah. It's a hard model. And hopefully they'll figure it out. Up next on the list, "Unique Properties for Sale: The Cleveland and Second Building."

Walker Evans 23:03So this was a series I started at the beginning of the year. Unique properties. I love looking on LoopNet, some of the different websites that list commercial properties for sale. So not just like going to Zillow and looking at houses. There's always things that you didn't realize were for sale, because it's more of a behind-the-scenes sort of a thing. So I wanted to call attention to a couple. That was the second one that we wrote about. The first one is the building at Grant and Cleveland—famously has the door up on the third floor that says "watch your step," or "watch the first step" or whatever. Close to Columbus—that was for sale. And both articles have been well read, which is a little surprising, but I also, I guess, not. So this is a series we're going to continue throughout the year. But Blake Compton of Compton Construction is sponsoring this series.

Tim Fulton 23:03Oh, great.

Walker Evans 23:03So I think they probably want to be the people to redevelop these buildings, buy them, and they own a construction company, so it's a synergy. Shout out to Compton. But yeah, there's just a lot of really interesting things in that building. If you've not seen it, it looks like—do you know what building I'm talking about?

Tim Fulton 24:13I don't think so. It's on the corner of Cleveland and Second. There's been like some—

Walker Evans 24:13I know exactly what you're talking about.

Tim Fulton 24:13Yes. Is that the building close to 9-3—for a long time had a quote on it, about an indirect quote—had a quote on it about the economic segregation that Columbus experiences?

Walker Evans 24:13Yes.

Tim Fulton 24:37Well, what was the quote, and why is it wrong?

Walker Evans 24:37It says Columbus is the second most economically segregated city in the US.

Tim Fulton 24:37And why is that incorrect?

Walker Evans 24:37Because Columbus, the Columbus metropolitan area, is the second most economically segregated region in the US, according to some property team.

Tim Fulton 24:37Correct.

Walker Evans 24:37And I feel like it's divisive to say city, because that's sort of like a neighborhood-versus-neighborhood thing. And the real economic segregation is more of a suburb-versus-city thing.

Tim Fulton 25:04Fair. Okay, I think we've got to leave that there. But that building is for sale.

Walker Evans 25:10I think it's still for sale. And it looks like a nightmare on the inside. I don't think anyone's been in it in 30 years.

Tim Fulton 25:16No. Well, I used to live right there at the Milo Arts center. There's a lot of interesting real estate stock.

Walker Evans 25:24Yeah, but it's such a prominent location. And that's what we're trying to focus on.

Tim Fulton 25:28It will be a prominent location. It's not now.

Walker Evans 25:32I mean, a lot of people go by it. It's high visibility, I guess I should say. And so, the right person, the right vision, could do something pretty cool. It's a cool building. I don't want to see it torn down.

Tim Fulton 25:44What are they asking for it? 325,000?

Walker Evans 25:44Yeah.

Tim Fulton 25:44That's it? Let's buy it.

Walker Evans 25:53It's like $76 a square foot.

Tim Fulton 25:56That's pretty cheap.

Walker Evans 25:56That's pretty cheap.

Tim Fulton 25:56But it's probably going to need a new build.

Walker Evans 26:01It needs a shit-ton of work. There you go. It's in bad shape.

Tim Fulton 26:05Next up on our list, "New Airport Terminal Renderings, Timeline Released."

Walker Evans 26:10Yeah. So the complete renovation of the airport has been kind of on the docket for a while, but there was a new batch of visuals released this quarter. And people love a good visual. Very white, very clean. Like, what?

Tim Fulton 26:32The airport design is racially disparate, but that is not what you're saying.

Walker Evans 26:38Yeah. So very kind of futuristic-looking. Or contemporary design, I guess I should say. To which, some people think it looks great. Some people are like, why do we need to spend this much money on our airport? We're not a major hub.

Tim Fulton 26:55Because that's how you become a hub.

Walker Evans 26:57Well, and it doesn't—I think it redesigns the capacity. The footprint isn't really a whole lot bigger, but it will allow for more flights to get in and out faster. So it's better from that perspective. I think some people are disappointed that it's not an expansion. This would be a new terminal built, and then the old terminal would be demolished.

Tim Fulton 27:17Which is very common in the airport world. It's always been notable to me—I travel some—that every other airport always has major renovation going on. LaGuardia, Denver, even though it was just rebuilt, they're rebuilding whole terminals every couple of years. And that, at least in my memory, has not happened. And for anybody that travels much in Port Columbus, if you're not in Terminal B, you're not anywhere. And if you fly in after 8:30 at night, there may not be a gate crew for you. Like, yeah, we could stand for some updating.

Walker Evans 27:58And I think the redesign, if I remember correctly, had a lot more communal, shared areas across those kinds of gates. Whereas now it's like, if you're in this gate, you have this set of food and drink options, and if you're in that gate, you get a different set of food and drink options. I think it's a little more shared.

Tim Fulton 27:58Good.

Walker Evans 27:58Which would be good for the businesses out there.

Tim Fulton 28:19Yeah. Next up on the list, "Metro Center Metamorphosis: Dublin's Answer to Changing Market Trends."

Walker Evans 28:26Yeah. So this kind of ties into what we're talking about with Heath. The city of Dublin has the old Metro Center, kind of office park, which I think was built in like the late '60s, early '70s. It's wildly out of date. They want to do something with it. So the city is sort of embarking on this community-input master plan sort of a thing. They don't want to make another Bridge Park. That would just be the easy thing to do. So really trying to hit the reset switch and figure out what amount of workspace it should be, what amount of living space it should be, what amount of green public community space it should be. But really trying to take—because it's a very large area, acres and acres of land—but it's not really doing the city any good in its current iteration. So really trying to take the lead on the conversation.

Tim Fulton 29:20But in the beginning stages. Like, they are still in the community conversation, let's do some benchmarking.

Walker Evans 29:27Yeah. I think January was their first big public community workshop event, like, come point at pictures and say what you like and what you don't, put post-it notes on a board kind of stuff. So I think it'll be an ongoing process throughout the year. But it was really interesting in terms of what our readers are looking at, because it will be something urban and walkable. It won't just be another office park that's mostly surface parking.

Tim Fulton 29:53Good. Which, I mean, it is now, to Dublin's credit. I rolled my eyes a little bit, because Dublin. But that's probably a new way of thinking, in terms of, like, who lives there. And, you know, it's also got one of the last freestanding malls that's viable.

Walker Evans 30:13Tuttle. Yeah. I forget.

Tim Fulton 30:16I mean, "viable"—I should use air quotes. But yeah.

Walker Evans 30:20I think Tuttle has like a Dublin address, but it's in the city of Columbus. It's kind of a weird—

Tim Fulton 30:25I just think of it in terms of the area that it's in. Next up on the list, "Symphony Outlines Plans for $275 Million Concert Hall." They just dropped it on us.

Walker Evans 30:39I think they weren't ready. Are you surprised?

Tim Fulton 30:43Somewhat. Because you have your ear to the ground, obviously. Like, people send you embargoed things, or say, hey, off the record, or hey, don't write about this yet. But it was a new story, and it was like—the new story had the renderings already in it.

Walker Evans 30:58Yeah. Some of the information had leaked. Someone involved in the project had posted something on Reddit. And then that kind of triggered, I think, the media attention. We reached out as soon as we saw it, and I'm sure the Dispatch was doing the same thing at the same time. And so I think it kind of left the partners involved in this scrambling to issue a response, because I don't think they had all the ducks in a row. I don't think they had all the talking points in a row. So I think it was not where they were wanting it to be, in terms of having the mayor, GCAC, saying this, and it was a little like, we're still having internal conversations about this sort of a thing.

Tim Fulton 31:41And this is—sorry, I like getting into the process part—is everybody on board?

Walker Evans 31:47I mean, as far as I'm aware. There's always nuts and bolts to work out, your timing.

Tim Fulton 31:53Kappa sent out a supportive message. Kappa is now using—now that basically the rental isn't really going to happen, though.

Walker Evans 32:04It's one of those things that if the right partners all say we're doing this, then it happens. I haven't heard all of that, but I haven't been as plugged in to that as I have some other things. So I think it looks good. I've also heard that the visuals for the design were not the final product. It's still kind of a work in progress.

Tim Fulton 32:26I think the location was very high—I mean, it's, yeah, a symphony complex is a huge endeavor. $275 million is a lot of money. The renderings—we keep going back to renderings, I think we're coming up with a title of this episode—it looked very sort of pie-in-the-sky. Like, here's what something like this could really look like, and didn't necessarily aligned with the location, what the symphony needs, anything like that. But I don't know, it just looks pretty.

Walker Evans 32:59Yeah. Well, and the location kind of completes this trifecta that's long been planned for, for our arts and civic infrastructure along the west side of the riverfront downtown. So we have the vets museum—the old Vets Memorial was torn down and rebuilt—and then COSI, and then this other chunk of land. I don't remember how many acres it is. Originally there was a zoo expansion plan there. Do you remember that?

Tim Fulton 33:24No.

Walker Evans 33:27But it came up at a time where there was a little bit of kerfuffle about funding, and the zoo wanted to issue a new levy. And there's a lot of opposition about, like, this levy goes onto Franklin County, the zoo is technically in Delaware County. Like, we need more of a regional funding mechanism for the zoo, so that the whole region is paying for it. You're basically just asking for Columbus to pay for the zoo, even though it's—

Tim Fulton 33:55Which everyone—what happens anyway. But yeah, if you have a Franklin County address, you get a discount to the zoo.

Walker Evans 34:02I'm forgetting off the top of my head right now if it actually went to the ballot and was voted down, or if they pulled it, saying that we just don't feel like we have the support for this.

Tim Fulton 34:09Don't know. But my theory is that somebody, like a lot of things and how they happen in Columbus, somebody was like, hey, can I talk to you for a second? Like, you can't do this. Like, hey, we've got this school—you got to work with the whole system, right? School levy's coming, the transit levy's coming, something else, a bond issue for the city.

Walker Evans 34:30I think this might have actually went to a vote. I don't remember. This is like a decade ago. But that was going to be the third piece of that trifecta. That went away, and then it's just been an empty spot ever since. So I think this still kind of fits that original vision of having these civic institutions, boom, boom, boom, three in a row. And it'd be complementary to the peninsula area, which is kind of evolving into a little bit of an entertainment district, and complementary to Franklinton, which is an arts and entertainment district.

Tim Fulton 34:30Absolutely.

Walker Evans 34:30I'm all for it. The more things change.

Tim Fulton 34:30Yeah. And honestly, 275 million—like, we could do a bond to pay for it. It's not a crazy amount of money. We're building a bike trail for 100. Last up on the list today, "Photos: New Metro Park Canopy Walk to Open This Spring." Where's that?

Walker Evans 35:23It is in the Blacklick Woods Metro Park. Brent went up there and got some photos of the canopy walk under construction back in February. It just looks really cool. They're building both stairs and an elevator to get up into the canopy walk. And then, I don't know how many feet it is, 30, 40 feet off the ground. So you're going to walk around and get some cool views. There have been some places like this—we went to one at an arboretum outside of Cleveland with the kids. And there's a big, kind of 12-story—like, trees that you can see all the way to Lake Erie, 10 miles away. So this won't be quite as extreme as that. But just something new, another draw to the Metro Park system. And I think people really just love seeing the photos of this sort of thing under construction.

Tim Fulton 36:08Yeah. And then I still, like—what are you going to do this afternoon with your mother-in-law that's in town, or filling time with your kids?

Walker Evans 36:16Yeah. One more fun thing this summer to go check out.

Tim Fulton 36:18It's great to have. Cool. Walker, thanks for your time.

Walker Evans 36:18Yeah, no problem, Tim.

Tim Fulton 36:18Thanks 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 theconfluencecast.com. Please rate, subscribe, share this episode of the Confluence Cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite rail enthusiast. If you're interested in sponsoring the Confluence Cast, get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info@theconfluencecast.com. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.