An Off the Rails Roundup

Tim Fulton 00:00Welcome 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 Statehouse 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 smoky 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 theconfluencecast.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 is time to talk about some of the most popular articles that have occurred on Columbus Underground. We did a little pre-session talking about what's actually important, that things are happening. For example, you guys have been doing a lot more video work, specifically around the protests that are occurring around the Statehouse, getting a lot of engagement. So how have things been? What's going on?

Walker Evans 02:06I mean, busy start to the year, where—I assume, as of the time this goes up, we're fully through the first quarter of the year. Indeed. Yeah, 2025—25% done with 2025. Okay. Stumble to get that out. So we like to look back at analytics and kind of see what's being well read, partly to help inform our decisions. Is this worthy of a follow-up? Should we be doing more of this sort of thing? Sometimes it's a fluke, and sometimes there is no follow-up. But we always kind of go to reflect upon what people find important.

Tim Fulton 02:43Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, talk about your headspace around the protests. I mean, you're right here, you're a block away, so you see them.

Walker Evans 02:53It's tough. There's no centralized repository of all the protests that are going to happen, because it's just not that by nature. It's different groups of people protesting different things. But the really nice thing about having an office one block from the Statehouse is we'll be sitting here working in the afternoon, and all of a sudden you start hearing chanting in the background. And it's like, oh, there's a march coming by, or, oh, that's coming from the Statehouse. 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.

Tim Fulton 03:27When I think about protests at the Statehouse, I think back to 2020. How does the vibe feel? Is it a little bit more in the spirit of protesting and positive, or is it anger? From your perspective, what does it feel like down here?

Walker Evans 03:48I think people are upset by the state of things. There was one recently that was specifically around SB 1, trying to fight for the future of higher ed. So it was a lot of teachers and students and people who kind of oppose this bill at the state level. But some of the other protests have been very broad, and you see signs like "deport Elon," you see anti-Trump signs, you see anti-RFK signs. So some of the critique of the protests online is like, I don't even know what this is about, because I see 30 different signs and different messages. And the person kind of leading chants will guide people through chanting. But it's very like, we're mad at everything.

Tim Fulton 04:36Okay. And that's kind of understandable, right, at the moment. It very much is. What is getting good hits on Columbus Underground?

Walker Evans 04:45Well, 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. It was about Easton converting some of their parking lots into paid lots. Which is one of those examples of, like, I can't remember who first reported it, or if it just kind of got into 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 05:19Okay. Like, they are just reacting to the headline. They're reacting to the headline. But funny enough, a lot of people did read it. Again, the analytics we are looking at is people visiting Columbus Underground.

Walker Evans 05:32Yeah, which is probably 10% of the people. And that story—let me look real fast—16,000 people read that story. Another 160,000 reacted to the headline. So it's one of those instances of, like, 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?

Tim Fulton 05:54I mean, simply that they are going to start charging for some of their lots. They will still have free lots, but some of the more centrally located ones, they're going to charge. And it's the same system as it is on city streets here. You just pay in an app and you move on.

Walker Evans 06:11I mean, it's the same system in a lot of places. It's sort of like, oh, we're going to have these parking meters be 30-minute meters, because we just want to turn customers over. This is in front of a coffee shop. This is for people who just want to run and grab a coffee and come out. It's not for people who want to park all day because they work somewhere nearby. So we're going to de-incentivize the behavior we don't want, and incentivize the behavior we want. This is designed to serve a different purpose.

Tim Fulton 06:40Well, and 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. And also, a friend of mine pointed out that there have always been meters at Easton 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 the store employees to park there, correct? So it's a continuation, that you incentivize.

Walker Evans 07:17Yeah. So the lots that they're flipping to paid were the ones close to the Barnes and Noble. There's like a Chipotle there—

Tim Fulton 07:26Yeah, it's where the cigar store, the P.F. Chang's is.

Walker Evans 07:29So there's a surface lot right there, and it's almost always full. And it's kind of designed for people who want to park there, and maybe they're just going to Brassica, in and out in 20 minutes. But if employees are parking there, then all of a sudden that spot is taken up for eight hours. And so they're like—the rates are like a dollar an hour, it's a pittance—but it's designed to say, like, oh, if you're going to park for the long term, go in the garage, park on the third floor in the garage, it's free. That's where you should be if you're going to be here for long.

Tim Fulton 08:01It's the same argument of, like, well, I want to do this event, I don't need to charge money for this event, but also I kind of want to know how many people are coming, so I'm going to charge a dollar so there's some barrier of entry, so people aren't just RSVPing to look good.

Walker Evans 08:17But it was kind of funny that a lot of the comments on Facebook were people saying, this is corporate greed. It's like, it's a dollar to park. No one's gouging you.

Tim Fulton 08:29And doesn't it still go into the same charity fund? Their part, which is in the article. So not corporate greed.

Walker Evans 08:37It's going into their fund for that. And the other sort of comment is just like, oh, this is a death knell for Easton, it's over, as soon as this goes into place, no one's—I'm going to Polaris now because of that.

Tim Fulton 08:51It's like, you were going to Polaris before, why? Over a dollar charge?

Walker Evans 08:54An optional dollar charge is not going to have any kind of impact. So, again, it was one of those 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 caught people's attention. And yeah, they wanted to be mad about something, I think.

Tim Fulton 09:15And 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 a rundown of some of the bigger development stories? Like the apartments planned for Tuttle.

Walker Evans 09:36Diagonally across from Tuttle, there's an office park, and I want to say it's three or four larger buildings, probably built in like the '80s, maybe early '90s. I don't know what their occupancy rates are, but I can't imagine they're great. A lot of the conversation, too, about work from home and office vacancies all across America has been centered upon central business districts. And people don't talk enough about, like, every outer belt in America is just surrounded by office parks, and they're just as empty. 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. If you know where that Walmart is off Tuttle, that's directly on the opposite side of 270 from the Tuttle mall, just north of that.

Tim Fulton 10:23How's Tuttle mall doing? You did a rundown of—haven't been in a minute, but you photographed the evidence of the decline of—was that Polaris? Was that the occasion? No, Tuttle. It was Tuttle. Yeah, sorry. Okay, got it.

Walker Evans 10:43It was rough when I went, and I want to say that was like the beginning of 2023. So it's been like two years since I 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 foreclosure. I forget 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 going to let it rot.

Tim Fulton 11:17Is this my opportunity to talk about how much I dislike private equity, and that it's contributing to the enshittification of every industry, of everything? And by the way, sorry, can I plug an article that you didn't publish? So Joe DeLoss, the 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, here's what private equity does. And yes, there are—God bless Richard Gere and Pretty Woman—there are places for, hey, this business isn't being run efficiently, and we're going to make it run efficiently. That's not what happens a lot of times. A lot of times they're literally just there to extract value.

Walker Evans 12:19And I love the term "vulture capitalism." We see it a lot. Toys R Us is a great example of that. If you Google, like, why did Toys R Us go out of business, you'll find some really cool, deep-dive pieces of where they over-leveraged intentionally to bankrupt the business. And the group that purchased it also did like debt servicing. So they were just sucking whatever money was left out of this. Before they bought it, Toys R Us was turning a profit. It wasn't like a failing business, and they drove it into the ground. And, I mean, this is the whole Red Lobster thing, exactly. Almost any time you see those kinds of stories—there's also been talk about Red Robin shedding locations and going out of business—look up who owns it 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 equity.

Tim Fulton 13:21Private equity, I do want to be distinctive.

Walker Evans 13:25Yes, I misspoke. 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. But people are losing jobs.

Tim Fulton 13:42That's my point. Joe didn't just build a hot chicken restaurant. In my head—and I don't know if he would say this—he built an employment model that helped people who needed help.

Walker Evans 13:57They employed people with records, like prison records. And there's a term for it, it's like difficult-to-employ people.

Tim Fulton 14:06He found a way to make that work, and he had a successful, well-liked business. And I don't fault him for getting out of it. So, other development stories that have been in the news?

Walker Evans 14:22Yeah. I mean, some of the projects downtown, like the South Fourth Street tower going up from the Bluestone Group, that received some tax credits, some state funding, I think it was the TMUD stuff. There's been a couple others along those lines. But one of the bigger economic development stories has been the Anduril defense contractor, which I think is technically in Pickaway County, 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 4,000 jobs, this big, I think 500-acre site. I don't have the numbers exactly in front of me, but that got a lot of attention. One, because I think it's one of the largest job development programs in the history—I mean, it's up there with Intel in terms of the impact. But they're building kill bots, you know, they're building drone warfare. And a lot of people feel icky about that, 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 15:31First 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 war drones, sorry. I own a drone—it is not weaponized, it has a camera on it. But 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 who do. My sister was actually in the military, spent time in Afghanistan. And Columbus is a hub for defense. We have the Defense Supply Center here on the west side.

Walker Evans 16:15I don't know the things that Battelle does that's like top secret as well.

Tim Fulton 16:21And it's 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. I don't think folks understand Battelle and what it does. But that being said, yes, I don't want a war machine drone factory close by, but I do think it's part of our fabric already. It's not different than the things that are part of the fiber of us already. So that's my thought.

Walker Evans 16:55That's fair. Can I ask more about the Quaker thing?

Tim Fulton 16:59Yeah. 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. That's what a congregant is, a friend. And there's no minister, there's no leader that runs a service. And again, I was a very young child, so I was in Sunday school for most of it, but still— Still Christianity. It's still—oh yes, they're Christian. You go to a service, and 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 people sitting in gathered prayer, and then you will hear someone say someone's name. And it may just be that. And I'm sure that there are friends meetings where there are friends who just feel like they're entitled to talk, and they do, but you're not 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. What are you no more? No, I'm a Unitarian now.

Walker Evans 18:41Cool. Fun aside. So there's been a couple other larger-scale development projects. A big one out in Dublin, kind of off of, like, where 161 and 33 split, kind of where you're headed toward Plain City. A big, like, 44-acre mixed-use development site out there, very pretty renderings on that one. So that got a lot of attention. So even though there's been a lot of hand-wringing and worry about how tariffs are impacting things, will impact things, a lot of it has not fully come to fruition. But that, I think, is just one more layer of complication, at least on 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.

Tim Fulton 19:35I don't know if you've looked at lumber futures in a while, but—

Walker Evans 19:41I have no reason to, but I guess outside of curiosity. But yeah, I mean, I think we're going to see kind of a slowdown. I think we're already starting to see a slowdown. So even though things are getting announced, getting approved, like, you might not see them really break ground. The things that are already under construction are moving forward. But 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 going to see this everywhere.

Tim Fulton 20:11Well, let's use that as a transition, then. You had a piece that did pretty well, that Brent did, about how the behavior or actions of the new federal administration are already having ripple effects on Columbus. What are those?

Walker Evans 20:30Yeah. Brent talked to a couple different both private housing developers and public—you know, like Homeport doing affordable housing—and everyone kind of agreed that either it's making them nervous, the disruptions that it could cause, or people are saying, this is already having an impact on projects that I'm working on down the pipeline, the funding that I have lined up, the investors that I have lined up. A lot of them are getting cold feet on things. And for nothing, too. It's like, why start a lumber trade war with Canada? 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 very vocal and willing to speak out and say, this is having negative impacts.

Tim Fulton 21:22Yeah. And I do want to note, we are recording this like maybe 48 hours after—I'm having a very hard political day. Sure. We are— You go protest a block over at the Statehouse. —abducting and deporting 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 for what feels like a small reason, like our money for trees was taken away. 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 of privilege, I highly encourage you to speak out. 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. And it doesn't seem to be happening.

Walker Evans 22:32And 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 money, right, or whatever. Which, that's a fair critique. But at the same time, 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, it's a continuation of a trend. The summer of 2023 to the summer of 2024, the most recent census estimate updates, 30,000 people in central Ohio in that one year moved here. We grew—it's births and in-state and out-of-state migration—so it's birth versus death and migration. 30,000, which I always like to put in terms of Grandviews. You know how many people are in Grandview? Like 8,000 people. So that's like four and a half Grandviews. We grew by four and a half Grandviews in one year.

Tim Fulton 23:30That's three and a half Grandviews, but it's almost four.

Walker Evans 23:34Yeah, thank you. Almost four.

Tim Fulton 23:38I'm going to start using that, by the way. I haven't heard you do that.

Walker Evans 23:41But that's a lot of people. And then you look at the stats of, like, housing starts—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?

Tim Fulton 23:56My love is, we need one unit per every 1.5 people.

Walker Evans 23:59Something along those lines. And this is region-wide statistics, so this is 30,000 people in central Ohio. So that's Columbus, it's suburbs, it's exurbs, kind of the surrounding counties, basically.

Tim Fulton 24:11That's the Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Walker Evans 24:15But you look at some communities around here and how many new housing units they've added, and it's like 10 in a year. A small place like Obetz, 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 24:40Are you ready for my theory of everything?

Walker Evans 24:43Yes. Everything bagel.

Tim Fulton 24:46That actually, everything bagel has kind of been brought into this too. There is an understanding that is starting to come into view. There are two books that just came out specifically about this. It's very hard for capital-D Democratic places to build things. 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. There are a lot of things that hold us back from doing things. I am not trying to say that is good or bad. However, I think that Columbus actually is a little better at it, because 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—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 smoky room, though. Columbus maintained—I'm not saying that they're corrupt at all.

Walker Evans 26:14What's funny is, behind the scenes, they are.

Tim Fulton 26:18We 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 together our collective might—corporate money, nonprofit, semi-governmental organization—in order to make and see these things happen. 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. 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 to tax credits, and, hey, I know that you don't like it, but progress is good in a certain direction, as long as everyone's aware of what's going on. Counter me here.

Walker Evans 27:26I mean, I have like 1,000 thoughts on a lot of this stuff. But going back to the historic, like, the reason it's hard to build in every city is because of single-family zoning laws that were implemented in like the mid-20th century.

Tim Fulton 27:42And we just passed a zoning initiative that kind of is starting to change that. It's a half step—the room would argue it is not far enough, fast enough, correct? And I agree with you there.

Walker Evans 27:53And there's more to come. They're still working on it, which is fine. But a lot of that was done—basically, as we grew out into the suburbs as a country, we did so in a way that was not equitable. Basically, we wanted to—

Tim Fulton 28:12It's called white flight for a reason.

Walker Evans 28:15People with money and means that could move out there, highly subsidized in every way, shape, and form. The federal government built the highways that enabled it. We enabled car manufacturers and cheap gas. We gave people very cheap land and cheap loans at a time when housing was cheap. And in the very early days, it was like, this is a whites-only neighborhood—like, the racism was on the brochures advertising these places. Once that became illegal, they switched to be classist instead of racist. They're like, if you want to build a house here, it has to be at least 2,500 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. And so basically, keep the poors out, which was just code for keep the minorities out. A lot of that is still in place today, the classism side of it. Like, you can't build within certain parameters in many places in America.

Tim Fulton 29:19Well, I think, sort of understandably so, folks who are in a position of privilege, who do have 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 an apartment building around the corner from me. Because the perception that it will lower your home's value. And they will say all day, I don't have any problem with people who make less money than me or are in a different class.

Walker Evans 29:55They're trying to protect their asset. But the problem is that housing—I mean, shelter is a basic necessity. People need to be housed a certain percentage of their lives. But housing in America is an investment, and it can't really be both. Like, if we have unhoused people that we need to put in housing, or we have low-income people 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 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 as an example in this case. And I don't think anyone, 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 that's kind of what they're working against.

Tim Fulton 31:05I think if we, collectively speaking, switch our headspace around a little bit and view housing as a commodity only, we would all be a little bit healthier as a society, rather than viewing your home as your primary investment vehicle. Rant on that.

Walker Evans 31:26Yeah. I think there's ways to accommodate both. And I do think, to give props to the fine folks in the development department who are working on the zoning stuff, 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 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 across the board, throughout the entirety of the city. So that 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 there's skyscrapers on everyone's streets. And it's like, no, you end up with something more like German Village, which is illegal to build now, because the houses are smaller, they're tighter together, they're closer to the street, they have little carriage houses. Because that's what was built.

Tim Fulton 32:32And it's one of the most sought-after, expensive-per-square-foot—people want to live there.

Walker Evans 32:35It's a neighborhood, and it's walkable because everything's tighter. And so we need more of that for people to live, to create better walkable communities. It's better for the environment. It'll be better to improve transit systems. That's why our transit system sucks, is because it's a square peg, round hole situation. You can't build buses that serve low density. What is this, SimCity 101?

Tim Fulton 32:58What do you say to people that are like, well, it's going to negatively affect the character of my neighborhood?

Walker Evans 33:07I think "negatively affect" and "change"—change just for the sake of change or difference—are two very different things. I think people say "negative," and they don't really understand what that means. I think it's coded classism and racism. 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 mean by that? Because I don't think there are many excuses that don't fall into classism or racism.

Tim Fulton 33:42I think that's fair. We were going to get into parks. We went way off the rails, but I think this is good. So talk about parks too. No, we don't need to. We're good. Walker, thank you for your time. Thanks, Tim. 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 theconfluencecast.com. Please rate, subscribe, and 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@theconfluencecast.com. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Phil Cogley. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.