Eastland Mall

Tim Fulton 00:11Ladies and gentlemen, 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, Eastland Mall, once a thriving hub of retail activity in Columbus, has closed its doors for good. Historian Doug Motz takes a look back at the history of the mall, and examines its impact on the local community, the retail industry, and the city as a whole. We also discuss the political fights that have always followed development in Columbus, and the need to look at the plan for the neighborhood now that Eastland is gone. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Also, the Confluence Cast is on Patreon. Find out how to support this podcast on our website, theconfluencecast.com, or at patreon.com/confluence. The Confluence Cast is sponsored this week by the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, or MORPC, featuring stories about local and regional partners that envision and embrace innovative directions in economic prosperity, transportation, sustainability, and an inclusive Central Ohio. MORPC's transformative programming, innovative services, and public policy initiatives are designed to promote and support the vitality and growth in the region. For more information, please visit morpc.org. Enjoy the interview. Sitting down here virtually with Columbus historian and Columbus scholar Doug Motz. Doug, how are you, sir?

Doug Motz 01:59I'm great. Thanks for having me on the podcast, Tim. I really appreciate it.

Tim Fulton 02:03No, absolutely. We are here talking on the occasion of the demise—I don't want to use too heavy of words—talking about the Eastland Mall has closed. And it's an opportunity to look back at the history of that mall, and, frankly, look back at the history of enclosed malls in general in Columbus, and shopping, and how it's evolved over time. Doug, first of all, to lend you some credence, give us a little bit of your background as a historian here.

Doug Motz 02:35Sure. Thanks again for having me on. I'm a lifelong Franklin County resident. I actually was born in Columbus, at the old St. Ann's Hospital on Bryden Road. My family, though, lived out in Reynoldsburg. So I, you know, a Reynoldsburg guy, would go to Eastland Mall, and work to get there. But a very avid local historian. Written a couple of books with friends: with David Meyers, Elise Meyers Walker, and Jeff Chenault, we wrote a book on the long-lost Kahiki, which has a second book coming out, actually, next month, a Kahiki scrapbook. We've got so much interest in that, that a lot of people wanted more and told us more stories. So there's enough for a whole other book. And my friend Christine Hayes, she and I wrote Lost Restaurants of Columbus. And then there were so many people that said you forgot this one, and you were right, because we were focusing exclusively on Columbus. So we wrote the second book, Lost Restaurants of Central Ohio and Columbus. And with my friend Jeff—Jeff wrote a whole book on Ohio Tiki, and he asked me to do the foreword, and I was really pleased to do that. So I've written some books. I give tours for Columbus City Adventures, I've given tours for Leadership Columbus, I've given tours of the history of the city for the Council of Historic Neighborhoods. I was president at one point of the Columbus Historical Society. I've written a column for Columbus Underground called History Lesson—starting that up again, actually, with a history of the Deshler-Wallick Hotel. So I'm really happy to be here. And that's some of my experience and some of my background.

Tim Fulton 04:36Yeah, and one thing I said to you before we started recording today: I am surprised that it's taken so long for you and I to connect. This feels like an appropriate time, given that we're looking back at something, but I imagine that we will have you again in the future to talk about some of Columbus's history, especially as things continue to evolve, and we're getting into a city council zone system this year. And there's just a lot to look back on. And of course, the podcast was not around during the bicentennial.

Doug Motz 05:11For sure. Yeah. At one point, I was actually living—I was a Sixth Avenue area commissioner. So I'm pretty well aware of some of the politics happening in the center city. So that would be interesting.

Tim Fulton 05:22There you go. Let's first of all give the high-level rundown of Eastland Mall and how it got started and what its history is here.

Doug Motz 05:32Sure, for sure. So, ground got broken on July 12, 1966. The following day, I was born. So, interestingly enough, it was announced to be by the Casto organization, and there was another organization that was involved in putting all of that together with them—the Cincinnati Jacobs company. They were the co-founders. It was to actually open in '67; it opened in '68. But there was a construction workers' strike, and so the mall itself did not open. But parts of the mall did. Actually, the Lazarus family was able to open at Eastland Mall in August of 1967. So that was kind of interesting. And they made a really, really big deal, because at the mezzanine level, they had the very first restaurant that would overlook the mall. So you could go out there and get a sandwich or something. I have a lot of terrific memories—again, that's where I grew up. There was a theater in the mall, the Eastland Theater. They had just two screens. But my grandmother, who worked at the Union, which was a competitor of Lazarus and of Morehouse Martens—you know, Morehouse, the fashion and all that—she would take me there to see the Disney movies when they would get first released. I remember always going there with her, and either before the movie or after the movie—I remember seeing Mary Poppins with her at Eastland Theater, and I remember seeing Lady and the Tramp with her. And I have memories of it too, because she got me the little Golden Books, and she would sign it, you know, "from your grandmother." But we would have a fancy lunch at the Lazarus restaurant overlooking the mall, and I would always get this Mickey Mouse ice cream sundae. They'd put, you know, like Oreo cookies and ice cream, like Mickey Mouse ears, and these big things of licorice to make it look like whiskers or whatever, and I think maybe red hots for eyes or something. So I have a lot of great memories of that mall. But that was a really big deal, they're really kind of hyping it up in all of their ads. Then along comes Sears, because there are three big anchors at that mall. And I'll backtrack, because Eastland is—there were all the ones they call the directional malls. Started with Northland. And Northland was a big mall around Morse Road, kind of down the way now from where Easton is. That was an open-air mall, but it was still a big mall by the Casto organization. And Casto had had a lot of good luck, because they were also the first ones to open up a shopping mall, period. They had opened up Town and Country Shopping Center along Broad Street in East Columbus, kind of that area, just outside of Whitehall. And so—

Tim Fulton 08:42Clarifying question here. Yeah, so we refer to Eastland specifically as the first closed mall, right? Yep. Enclosed mall? Enclosed. Correct. And so, additionally, Northland—already, because I was about to say Northland wasn't around yet. But it was, but in a different form.

Doug Motz 09:03Northland was around; it was open-air. Northland doesn't become an enclosed mall until 1975. Gotcha. Because—in fact, when Eastland gets open, to another part of their advertising, it's always 72 degrees. It's always 72. They would put that in their taglines in just about everything, when it was the mall itself doing the advertising. Gotcha. So it was a pretty big deal. You know, I mean, it was on a really large swath of property, and it not only brought in retailers, but it also spurred a great deal of housing development. There was a lot of housing development—I'm thinking of, there were two that I was doing a little bit of research on. Telford Park, they would advertise, you know, "just near Eastland Mall," and Fritsche Homes had "the village live in a quality-plus home right near Eastland Shopping Center." So, I mean, it's interesting. It didn't just do that for retailing, but it also brought out a lot of housing development. Interesting as well, because our hometown guy, Les Wexner, had just opened up The Limited at Town and Country. And he's featured in this advertising, as they're opening up "Welcome, Eastland Shopping Center. The Eastland merchants elect—the Eastland Shopping Center Merchants Association has been formed to promote and publicize the new heated and air-conditioned enclosed mall, and to encourage such civic, social, and cultural programs. Officers and members of the newly elected association shown are, left to right, Leslie Wexner." So Leslie Wexner was on the ground floor of Eastland Mall, which I think is very interesting. And I didn't know that. Yeah, absolutely.

Tim Fulton 11:05Well, and to be clear, this isn't even a civic organization. This is a—

Doug Motz 11:12Merchants' association. Yeah.

Tim Fulton 11:15But do you think of it as formal? Or is it much more like, we put together this cheerleading team, if you will, that represents the merchants and also helps to attract others to participate in this new project—this new, unproven, at least in this market, project?

Doug Motz 11:36Yeah, for sure. I don't know the parameters about how this association was set up, but I think your hypothesis is spot on. I'm sure it was a group put together to encourage others to join, or to keep different standards up at the mall, or things along that line. Because you have to remember, prior to that, there might have been shopping districts, but everybody had their own brick and mortar, right? This is kind of like—I don't know, I guess you could think of it as single-family homes versus a condominium. You'll have a neighborhood that's filled with, maybe you have a homeowners' association in the single-family homes. But in that condo association, you've got a board that's overseeing what's happening at that shared space. And to me, it seems like this is a group that's put together—and again, I don't know this, but it would seem to me that this is a group that's kind of trying to figure out, how are we going to make this work? How are we going to make this make money for us? How are we going to attract our customers here? Who do we want here? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Tim Fulton 12:38Absolutely. So the mall opens February 14, 1968.

Doug Motz 12:42Valentine's Day, same as Columbus's birthday. I think that's interesting.

Tim Fulton 12:46Yeah, I was gonna say, I was gonna do it, but you stole it. So, yeah, that's totally fine. Sorry, friend.

Doug Motz 12:55No, it's all right. But yeah, ground's broken, and they open up in '68. And there's a laundry list of things that you can do at the mall, and they're touting they've actually got six places to eat. Whoo, six places at the mall. And you can actually go there, too, and you can get your eyes looked at by Tuckerman Optometrist. You can get your new suit or uniform at the National Uniform Shop. Lane Bryant opens up there. JCPenney's, The Limited, Sears, Lazarus. Woolworth makes a really big deal—they're kind of a quasi-fourth anchor, kind of a value store. But they open up this Woolworth Harvest House cafeteria, so very excited about that. B. Dalton Bookseller, Gray Drug, Singer—but they're not just selling sewing machines in their ads. They're selling TVs and phonographs and vacuum cleaners and fabric. And there's an A&P, but there's also, along with the mall, a lot of ancillary around Eastland Shopping Center, where there's a White's Fine Furniture, and there's an A&P grocery store. So there's this mall, and much like Easton today, there's the mall proper, and then across the street are other retailers that are kind of clustering together under the same kind of auspices. But there's a curtain shop, the Ann's Curtain Shop; there's Schiff's Suburban Shoes; Madison's, which was a very, very nice women's clothing store; I mentioned the Eastland Cinema, where I would go and see things; the Cut 'n Curl beauty shop; and the Merle Norman cosmetics studio. Their ads liked to say that they're "home of the free hour of beauty." Eastland Shoe Repair, Parkland Hosiery, the Fanny Farmer candy shop, and the Junior Shoe World, "as seen on Lucy's Toy Shop." You can go in there and ride the carousel. Okay, so Lucy's Toy Shop was a program that was put on by WBNS—a local programming. Lucy was a doll maker and puppeteer, and I have very fond memories of Lucy's Toy Shop. But yeah, that would have been a kid's place to go and get your shoes.

Tim Fulton 15:16And can you give some context for where—you know, in preparation for this interview, obviously I go on to the website, and I go to Wikipedia, and do a little digging in terms of what are the cited articles, so that I have some context. But I'm just curious, where one would go—where are you getting, first of all, this list of "here's what was there," and here's what was unique about how Singer, what we think of as a sewing machine maker, that they were going into other lines of sale. Where is this information, as a historian? Where's it coming from?

Doug Motz 15:54Happy to share all of that. I am a former shop owner—shop runner—of the Columbus Library Store. It's all part library. This is all from the Columbus Metropolitan Library's database. You can get amazing, amazing research from them. If you are a Columbus Library card holder, you can log in now and actually access the Dispatch digital archive. So once you're in there, I simply do a search within the Dispatch—I did a parameter search of Eastland Mall, and went through several hundred citings of Eastland Mall, and every time there was something interesting, that's—I pull a lot of it from there. So I'm trying to get contemporary sources to do all of this, and then to kind of sort it out and give it context and curate it a little bit. So that's where all of this that I've shared with you is direct from newspaper clippings from the Columbus Dispatch that are contemporary to the mall opening.

Tim Fulton 17:02And I imagine a lot of what you're talking about, too, is not just articles surrounding the mall, but the advertising that's within the Dispatch at the time.

Doug Motz 17:11Absolutely. Because you have to remember too—what was kind of funny is, I had done that search, and there are a lot of sales ads, people wanting attractive women. It was very sexist, it was very misogynistic. But again, it's '67 and '68. So in looking for this, it's like "female situations wanted," and there'd be these ads that they wanted a waitress, or they wanted the sales clerk, or they wanted the bookkeeper. Right next to—I tracked it—there were seven ads in '68 for go-go dancers. So that's where we were. When you look for that, you find all kinds of other things. But what's interesting to me, too, though, is not only do they open up all this retailing, and they're talking about the shops, and you can go get your hair done, you can have your eyes looked at, et cetera, et cetera—which is kind of interesting, they're doing a little bit of, it's not just retail, but you can get something to eat, and you can have a day of beauty, or have your eyes looked at, so take care of some medical things. They do a big piece about the shopping days that they're open. They're only open Monday through Saturday for shopping. Okay, Sunday they're not open for shopping. But you can still come in and see artwork. And there's this really interesting piece that they have that they call the Wonderfall—it kind of goes in the mall. And I don't know if you're familiar—in the mid-century, modern lamps or things, but they're like those little oil lamps. Yeah, where there's kind of this liquid that comes down. That's not quite water, it's not quite oil—

Tim Fulton 18:46The beaded going down like that. Yep, this Wonderfall.

Doug Motz 18:49Apparently this was a giant one of these that was something like 38 feet tall. And in all of the ads, they're touting, "Come see the Wonderfall on Sunday." If, you know, the shops aren't open, but you can window shop and you can see that. And there were several sculptures at the mall, done by a Cleveland artist—gosh, I know I've got his name here somewhere, I was just looking at all of it. Charles Van Duzer. And I've been searching for what they were called. But on each end of the mall, with this Wonderfall kind of being sort of in the middle, there was, like, this pioneer family, and kind of, again, a mid-century, a little bit brutalist kind of a sculpture. It was kind of cool—it was Dad in like a stovepipe hat, and the mom and kids, and Dad's got a big scythe. And on the other end of the mall, they've got, like, the contemporary group; it's the same family, but they're brought up into 1968. And then, along too, they've got greenery and fountains, and because it's always 72 at Eastland Mall. So it's just really interesting that they're saying, even come to the mall when we're not here, you can see some artwork. There's a big article about Huntington Banks opening up a branch at Eastland Mall, and they're making a big deal about artwork that is on loan from the Schumacher collection at Capital University. So you could move into the Huntington branch and actually see some curated artwork. And then, as you go along, it's also really interesting because they're trying to get people, I suppose, to come and do things at the mall, or create events. There's an article cited from April 6, 1968, just a couple of months after the mall opens: "Eastland plans a psychedelic painting contest. Students from Ohio State and Capital University, armed with brushes and buckets of paint, will hold their first paint-in Sunday through April 29 in the new enclosed Eastland Mall. The painting, featuring psychedelic and whimsical art, will be done on new automobiles provided for the paint-in." So they're doing their best to try and bring in people with a variety of art and other things outside just shopping, which I think is kind of interesting.

Tim Fulton 21:19Yeah. One, it seems a little similar to, you know, once Easton was established, they started doing a little bit more in terms of activating their streets, like with their chalk artist drawings. Oh, yeah. And other events, to sort of draw people in. And you also saw that—now that I think of it, you saw that at City Center, right, with their center court.

Doug Motz 21:43The City Center entertainers, I—so, I worked at Eastland Mall. I opened City Center Mall, okay. I did—1989, August of 1989, I was hired by Marshall Field's to sell men's clothing. So I can talk about my experience there. I can talk about my experience at Eastland Mall. I worked there in the mid-1980s as a college student. I was going to college at Ohio State. And there was a men's store that was right outside of Lazarus. It was called Walker's; it was a men's store put on by a big kind of traditional men's clothing company called Hart Schaffner Marx. So I learned a lot about traditional clothing. But yeah, being in that men's store got me a lot of—I began to understand some of the fashion and fabric, but it also got me to know the mall pretty well. At that point, they did add a Wendy's. That was a big deal, because you could go to Wendy's during my lunch break, which before, I would really only go to the Woolworth counter, or Lazarus at the time had a basement restaurant called Charlie's—I suppose was named after Charles Lazarus, one of the brothers who was running Lazarus at the time. They had amazing broccoli soup, that's what I remember, at Charlie's. But the mall was still very, very active into the '80s, with—the Bombay Bicycle Club was a bar that had opened up kind of outside of it. There was Buzzard's Nest Records, there was Peaches Records; again, a whole grouping if you're going just outside of the mall. Again, kind of like their things up and down around Easton, it was very, very similar. But to go into the mall there, I still remember going to Hallmark, I can remember going to The Limited—at that time, it was all women's things, they didn't have any of the men's collection until they opened up Express. But they had a big thing there. It seemed like their big draw was Hunter's Run—Hunter's Ridge, I'm gonna say it wrong—but it was kind of a knockoff of Polo, because the preppy whole idea in the mid-1980s was huge. So I can remember, again, just out of high school into college, there were a lot of women that I knew that loved Limited Hunter's Run and Hunter's Ridge, and they would go in there for that. B. Dalton was around, you know, that was still a thing. We spent a lot of time at Sears getting cars worked on—I remember that, and getting tires, because Sears had an automotive area that you could do things with as well. Penney's—my mom would order things either from Penney's or the outlet, which was also nearby, a big Penney's outlet, if you just want to know about the general shopping in Columbus in central Ohio at that time. But also, right across the way from the mall was a discounter called Gold Circle, and that was run by Lazarus and the Federated Department Stores. Much like Marshall Field's had this little discounter—you might know it today, Target. Marshall Field's would buy things if they had a great deal on something they got really inexpensive; they sent it to their Target store in Columbus. Lazarus would do something very, very similar, probably borrowing from their rivals, the Schottenstein's, and they had their own store called Gold Circle. And that was also there at the Eastland Mall area. So, I mean, it was pretty lively. If you're there at the holidays and trying to turn off of Interstate 70 to Hamilton Road to get down there, good luck, because traffic would really, really be backed up. But it was a very, very lively place. And then it becomes very interesting—I was putting together kind of a timeline about what's happening, because in 1989, like we've said, City Center opens. So that's given Eastland Mall a good 20 years, right? A good two decades to establish itself. But then City Center opens up, and they're luring all kinds of stores we haven't seen either. Marshall Field's, being a huge competitor for Lazarus and one of the big anchors of Eastland—that's going to draw. And it's downtown, so that's going to draw people kind of back in. You have to remember, there was a lot of flight away from the urban core in the '50s and '60s that makes malls super attractive. The big thing still happening in downtown Columbus at that point is Lazarus. The Fashion is still around, the Union store's still around; these are kind of the fashion—it would be very contemporary to Lazarus and very similar. And, well, Lazarus—people listening to podcasts might not know that they started Federated, but that became Macy's. Okay, with all of these, the Federated Department Stores—Shillito Rike's and others. But Macy's joined Federated a little bit later; in fact, Lazarus was older than Macy's. Lazarus has its own really interesting history. Like we're talking about, my friends David Meyers, his wife Beverly, and their daughter Elise Meyers Walker wrote a fantastic book. I've gotten a lot of source material from that book, too, Lazarus. But Simon Lazarus was Columbus's first rabbi. So he comes here in the 19th century, not only as a rabbi, but he opens up a men's clothing store, and that kind of spreads out. And the Lazarus might—like, God, who doesn't love Lazarus, who was in Columbus at any point while Lazarus was still in existence? They set all kinds of standards, retailing-wise, including grouping merchandise by its kind of style rather than its price. So, yeah, I just learned that on a really great blog called Fashion to Fiber, at osu.edu. Very interesting. Okay, so that's another source. I knew this already, that the Lazarus family convinced Franklin Delano Roosevelt to move Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday, rather than it always being the final. There's actually a History Lesson column about that, so you can source that, and it's got some fun things. But so much of retailing the way that we know it, Lazarus—even just setting price tags on things. They actually had a common price tag before that. Lots and lots of retailers, you'd just kind of come in and haggle a little bit. They also set a standard for returns; you could return anything to Lazarus, even if you hadn't bought it there. The Lazarus family—there's a great slogan when Columbus turned 150. The Dispatch used to have its own magazine inside of it. But at the back of the magazine inside of the Dispatch, the special Sesquicentennial edition: "If it's good for Columbus, it's good for Lazarus. And if it's good for Lazarus, it's good for Columbus." That's kind of their business model. And they're doing all kinds of things to make certain that they're upholding the civic values that they feel are important to the city. I cannot say enough good things about the Lazarus store and the Lazarus family. But anyway, so City Center opens up in '89. But then you start to see some other downtown stores close. It was really—Madison's, which was down the way closest from there, in 1994. The Union store closed their last store, which was at Kingsdale Shopping Center, in October 1997. Then a little bit later, Easton opens, and there's a lot of, is Tuttle Mall going to kill City Center, are they going to hurt all the other malls? So in doing all of this research, looking at it, there are tons of fights. There are fights from civic organizations, fights from homeowners, fights from other mall owners. And then there's different tax breaks and tax incentives. In fact, when Michael Coleman is running for mayor against Dorothy Teater, right during the Y2K time, that's one of the big battles that the two of them are having. It's going to be a historic election one way or another—we're either going to have the first African American as mayor, or we're going to have the first woman as our mayor. And they're really being pummeled with questions about who are you going to give these tax incentives to. Because they're not only talking about Tuttle, but there's rumor in the wind about this Easton thing that might be opening up, and there had been several attempts at that point, none of them succeed, about something going on in the Polaris area. So there's a lot of voters and a lot of people, like, why are you giving them all this money? And what about us? And what about our neighborhood? What are you doing to help out Northland? What are you doing to help out Westland? What are you doing to help out Eastland Mall? So it takes on kind of a life of its own then. Yeah.

Tim Fulton 31:22Which is a struggle that continues today. Not necessarily in that shopping context, but, oh yeah, where are folks gonna put jobs, and what tax incentives can they get as a result?

Doug Motz 31:33Huge. I mean, you can go back and look through that. Again, I was still using that Columbus Library database, and I typed in Tuttle Mall, and I wasn't getting anything about Tuttle Mall. It was all about Dorothy Teater and Michael Coleman. And I was like, what is—I mean, I lived through that, and I remember some of that, but it's interesting when you go back and, like, these malls and these developments, long before we had anything that was virtual, or long before we were doing anything that was cyberspace or Cyber Mondays or online shopping. This was a really big deal, where are you going to get your stuff. I mean, there was one other big thing that we don't really talk about, and that was catalog companies. I also worked for a really fantastic catalog company that was based here in Columbus called Huntington Clothiers—again, on the side, they were on Alum Creek, but they had their own shirt manufacturing. And a lot of people thought, you know, both J.Crew and L.L.Bean would have been the really big people in that realm. But yeah, for a catalog company, people would call in and get the catalog and want to know, what does this feel like? Or what does this really look like? Or what does this pair well with? So, Columbus retailing—and then don't forget, all the L Brands. The Limited gets its start early. We're talking about Leslie Wexner earlier. There's a lot of fashion in Columbus, there's a lot of fashion innovation. We can talk about Morehouse Martens. So, Morehouse Martens had The Fashion, and in 1910, kind of as a publicity stunt—this is a really cool film, taking you way back—they actually hire the Wright brothers to fly a bolt of silk fabric from Dayton to Columbus. And the promo says, even if you don't even have an airport at that point—and The Fashion, tons of money, that ends up being a really big—Allen Good, a designer, and their family, Gundersheimer family. They do this giant publicity stunt to fly a bolt of fabric from Dayton to Columbus. It lands in what's now Driving Park on the east side, off Livingston Avenue. It actually causes one of Columbus's first known car accidents, because it's reported that there was actually a truck that sees this airplane flying, doesn't know what to do, crashes into a hole. But when the airplane lands, it's a Wright Flyer, and Orville, or his brother, were supposed to actually pilot it, but it ended up not happening that way. It's the first air-mail delivery of merchandise. And people in Columbus get telegrams from Paris and London and Tokyo and New York, all over, we've actually used an airplane to fly merchandise from one place to another. And the folks at Morehouse Martens, The Fashion, they take little snippets of it and put it on postcards: hey, you can buy a piece of this historic event. I believe they made some dresses out of it for women. But there's an awful lot of innovation. There's more fashion that comes through Columbus, with L Brands and Victoria's Secret and Abercrombie and Fitch and Bed Bath and Beyond, than even in the New York shopping district. We know this—there's just so much fashion based here that we don't think about. But Leslie Wexner comes to mind, as soon as Easton Town Center opens and revitalizes that whole area. He does something really interesting, though, that we're not seeing in some of the other pieces parts. He's kind of taking that whole idea of the Continent—if you remember that. That's kind of—

Tim Fulton 35:32Yeah. You were talking about the movie theater—I was thinking about how I used to get taken to the Continent, right?

Doug Motz 35:39Yeah. Right. So he's taking that idea. And really, Walt Disney—it's plus-it, plus, plus, plus that. Because you not only have retail, and you not only have the restaurants, but you've got an awful lot of places now that are workplaces, there are places to get discounts, there are places to go get your health looked at, other places to live. And he's also taking this idea of, if Eastland Mall is a big deal because it's enclosed, Easton Town Center kind of goes the opposite direction. We're going to recreate this kind of downtown shopping experience that someone might have had; we're going to make it safe, we're going to make it very accessible. We're going to put up other kinds of things. I mean, we talked about the Wonderfall and the sculptures, but Easton has all kinds of—they've got a little train that goes through, and they've got some of the sculptures out on the other side, by the Lego store. When they had Planet Hollywood, if you remember that—I do—that was the theater that was there, and they had Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, Steven Spielberg give all their props. There were a lot of things to look at and draw you there in the same kind of way. But they've just taken the opposite approach, and just left it very open-air. And you have to constantly kind of be changing it, or updating it, or moving your store around, keeping it fresh. They're probably the success story of that era, because in '99, now in 2023, Easton seems to be as strong as ever, and continuing to grow. But, I mean, there's Polaris, opens in 2001. So we know that, and then with Polaris being kind of this competitor with it, you begin to see all the other stores dropping off. There's no more Northland, there's no more Westland. I mean, all the directional malls begin to fold and close down, or get kind of repurposed. Like Northland is probably the best example of something getting repurposed. They've moved the Franklin County Board of Elections over there, the Franklin County Animal Shelter; there's a lot of—they moved a Kroger over there. So they've really taken that space and tried to repurpose it for the benefit of the community and the benefit of the neighborhood. I was looking at the Columbus government website and the Eastland plan. They have not updated it since 2007. So if I was someone living in the Eastland area, and I was an area commissioner for that, or a resident, I might be tapping on some city council doors saying, you haven't revised this plan since 2007. Let's have another kick at this and see: how did things work so well for Northland? What lessons did we learn? And how can we apply that to what's happening at Eastland?

Tim Fulton 38:41Yeah, well, and especially now that there's that opportunity to do it, right? There was—yeah, even though they lost the anchor stores, there was still enough tenants in Eastland to keep it open, at least until a couple of weeks ago. Right now is the opportunity, right? And especially, just to bring things full circle, especially as we focus more and more on the individual city council zones that we are implementing, how much of that will become an issue? And will we put it to that individual council member, or will this be a rallying cry that multiple council members are able to get behind?

Doug Motz 39:26Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, again, doing this research. There was a terrific article that came up in 2002. Dispatch reports residents are concerned about the mall's decline. There was a resident there, her name was Jean Rose, she counted up 43 vacant stores along it, and she went to the Dispatch, she went to council, so, what are we going to do? How—I'm interested in working to shore up the mall and shore up our neighborhood. So there have been warning signs about what was happening in Eastland for quite some time, I think.

Tim Fulton 39:59That's 20 years ago you're talking about, right? Yeah.

Doug Motz 40:02This was a 2002 article from the Dispatch. And they did—the council member, Sensenbrenner, was very responsive. She's now gone. But yeah, I mean, I would really think that it's time for dusting off that Eastland plan and really having another kick at it. And again, how did we get some things to work in Northland? It's certainly not perfect, but what worked? And how can we use those victories? And what did we learn from the things that didn't work well, to kind of avoid those pitfalls when we think about redeveloping that area?

Tim Fulton 40:44Absolutely. Doug, I want to give you the opportunity to answer the same question that I ask everybody at the end of episodes, and hopefully you get the opportunity to answer this question a couple of times at least. What do you think Columbus is doing well, and what do you think Columbus is not doing so well?

Doug Motz 41:05Oh, gosh. Columbus does so well these days, I think, at marketing ourselves. And I really do. We are smart and open, and again, as a lifelong resident of Franklin County—in fact, I'll be leading a tour next month for a group of people around the core downtown. Our businesses, our civic associations, our residents are really reinvesting back in and supporting one another in that reinvestment. When I go to other towns and places, and I look at how businesses are supported or not supported, or how ideas are supported or not supported, I think Columbus does a really terrific job at supporting one another, and really finding ways to collaborate. And maybe I don't know why exactly that is—I have my own ideas—but I think we do a good job at that. What are we not doing well? I'll pull from my friend Michael Wilkos. We are one of the most segregated cities as well, in terms of where we're living, and poverty disparity, and all the social determinants of health disparities, and education disparities, and, you name it. You can see some direct linkage to how some of that is around freeway systems, but the freeway systems link it to redlining, and so he'll back that up. I think that is a real challenge. I know Mayor Coleman and Mayor Ginther have both talked about addressing that in different ways. I just think it's a tough one, and I think that we could do a better job. Probably the areas that are doing well are doing very well, but what about the areas that are not doing so well? How do we spend the time to look at the Westlands and Eastlands? And, you know, our city continues to grow, but as we grow, we're kind of attracted to this shiny new thing. But how do we maintain and sustain the areas that foster that growth? So I think looking at that challenge is something that we could probably do better.

Tim Fulton 43:25Absolutely. Doug, thank you so much for your time.

Doug Motz 43:28Thank you for having me. I look forward to coming back on again.

Tim Fulton 43:43Thank 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 historian. 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.