What Columbus Paid Attention to in 2025
We’re doing our unofficial year-in-review. Not the “best of” list, not the most important stories necessarily, just the ones people clicked on, shared, complained about, and wouldn’t stop talking about. We cover everything from parking issues and office buildings converted into apartments to restaurant closings, reopenings, arts leadership changes, and why some headlines travel much farther than others.
Along the way, we talk about how people actually consume local news, the difference between what’s popular and what’s meaningful, and what all of this says about where Columbus is right now: financially, culturally, and just vibes-wise. It’s not polished, it’s not scripted, and it’s definitely not a formal recap. It’s just two people who spend a lot of time paying attention to this city, trying to make sense of the year it just had.
We also look ahead a bit, including Columbus Underground hitting 25 years and what Walker’s thinking about next for the community, events, and staying relevant without losing the plot.
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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, we're doing our unofficial year in review. Not the best-of list, not the most popular stories necessarily, just the ones people clicked on, shared, complained about, and wouldn't stop talking about. We cover everything from parking issues and office buildings converting into apartments to restaurant closings, reopenings, arts leadership changes, and why some headlines travel much farther than others. Along the way, we talk about how people actually consume local news, the difference between what's popular and what's meaningful, and what all this says about where Columbus is right now, financially, culturally, and just vibes. It's not polished, it's not scripted, and it's definitely not a formal recap. It's just two people who spend a lot of time paying attention to this city, trying to make sense of the year it just had. We also look ahead a bit, including Columbus Underground hitting 25 years, and what Walker is thinking about next for community events and staying relevant without losing the plot. 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, sir? I'm good. How are you, Tim? I'm good. We are talking about the year that is coming to an end. We're going to be talking through some of the biggest stories of the year, some of the interesting trends that we saw, and whatever else you decide you want to talk about. Sounds good. What have you got up first? Well, do we want to just talk through the most popular stories?
Yeah, let's do that off the bat, because they seem to be not maybe the most significant news stories. They are just interesting to people. Yeah. We should always preface that. What's popular isn't always important, and what's important isn't always popular. So these are just raw eyeballs. So these are raw eyeballs, active users. In the last year, we're going to go 10 to one. And we are recording this on December 5, so maybe something blows up in the next 25 days, 26 days. So this is everything from January one until now. But the number one story of the year was an update that we did on the tunnel boring going on underneath the city, which was also the most popular story last year, a different update on the project.
Same project, because the photos are cool. Photos are cool, videos are cool. It's not too often that the city is digging a miles-long tunnel underneath. But weirdly, I'm kind of proud that we're sticking to our name of Columbus Underground, the number one story physically being an underground tunnel. Good one. Who administers that? I think it's the Department of Public Utilities, but it is the city. It's a big federal grant. I'm sure there's federal money, state money, all that sort of stuff, because it was a mandate from the federal EPA that said your sewer system was built 70 years ago. It's not big enough for the city, especially in growing areas, and you're polluting the water. So if it rains too hard, the stormwater backfills into the sewers, and then that flows into the rivers. So sometimes in some neighborhoods, it rains heavy and it smells like poop, and it's like, well, that's why. We're literally just dumping raw sewage into the rivers, and the EPA is like, you can't do that anymore. That was okay in the 1950s, back before we knew better. So it's fixing some of those problems. And this is a multi-phase, multi-decade project. But the update this year was that the boring equipment that has been tunneling went down on Olentangy River Road. We did a video of that last year, kind of by the Spectrum offices and City Diner. And then it dug all the way north, and they dug another shaft down, and the machine kind of bust through the rock and dirt and everything. So that was the media event: come watch it come through.
And if anyone's ever seen the movie Tremors, it was like that. Exactly, Tremors. Kevin Bacon was there. But the machine arrived at the site, and that site is at like Tuttle Park. So they dug, it took over a year, like 18 months, to dig from Olentangy River Road to Tuttle Park. So that's another leg of this very long thing. Okay. What else is on the list? Number two, I think this is an example of a slow news day. This is on January 4, which is—
So let's be fair to the articles. Simply going up super early may very well make it— Oh, of course. People will read it throughout the year. If the article has good SEO, it'll get a lot of eyeballs. But Easton announced that they were going to start charging for certain parking lots. And people lost their minds because they thought it was all parking. And it was like, no, it's going to be like a dollar an hour if you want to park closest to the Chipotle or whatever, because there are these inner lots that are just overutilized. And honestly, the big thing was they were probably trying to disincentivize employees from, "I'm going to park there and just be there all day long." They would rather have customers, so it's more of a pro-customer thing than anything. And also, the giant garages are still free. The first floor of some of them is not, over just— Shows how often I go to Easton. But just east of the—
Like what I think of as Easton One. That garage, the first floor you pay. But if you go up one floor, you don't. It's fine. I think I usually park in the West one. Oh, I'm sorry. It's just west of Easton Two. So it's up there by Nordstrom and stuff. Oh, okay, closer to Penn's. I haven't parked in that one in a while. But either way, it was a bit of a non-story. And I think the headline just made people upset.
I imagine, if we look at the Facebook numbers, it's probably the most commented as well. Yeah, it was one of those. So that was number two. Number three was kind of an interesting one. An overall trend going on is the conversion of office space into residential space. You're seeing it more often in downtowns all over the country, where they're like, oh, we have these big towers, they're really expensive to demolish or replace or build something new, so it makes sense to spend the money to convert them. Still an expensive process. But you see it less often in the suburbs, where the format of the office is a lot more horizontal. You need windows in apartments. If you have an interior office with no windows, you can't have an interior apartment with no windows. It's usually more common that you'll see them torn down. But there is an office complex right north of the Walmart that's across the highway from Tuttle. So it's catty-corner from Tuttle, to an extent. It's a collection of three office buildings, and they're like, we're going to keep one office, we're going to convert one into apartments, I think another one's being torn down, some more apartments being built, but the whole site is turning more mixed-use. And it got a lot of attention, I think, because you don't see it so much in the suburbs. So it wasn't really a trend story. It was literally just about that one. It was about that one, but we've written about those trends throughout the year. One of the most significant ones, just down the street—I'm pointing like this, because it's literally right down the street—the Continental tower just opened their residential units. But also, Nationwide announced the 280 Plaza building is going to be converted to residential. The Chase building, a portion of that is slated to become residential. I don't think DCI, Downtown Columbus Inc., has formally announced what they're doing with the buildings they purchased around the Huntington Center. What's the name of the building?
The former state buildings. A lot of those are office, and they've hinted that they may become residential as well. So overall, it's a big trend, not just in Columbus, but everywhere. Thanks, pandemic. More people live in downtown. It's a good thing. So that was number three. Number four was a story that we republished from the Buckeye Flame, about the passage of HB 8 at the beginning of the year, which was sort of an anti-LGBTQ piece of legislation that DeWine passed. And so that got a lot of attention, partly for the headline: "Governor signs anti-LGBT law into effect." So that got a lot of people upset. Again, that was also in January, so it was an older article on the list. But shout out to the fine folks at the Buckeye Flame. We have a republishing partnership with them because they, and the Ohio Capital Journal, do a lot of Statehouse news that we just don't have the staff for. So it keeps people informed. Number five was an update that Brent did about the—this is not our words, but it was in the headline—the "hostile takeover" of the SID.
Which, you know, it should have gotten that much attention. I had done a couple updates on it over the past 18 months or so, but basically DCI absorbing the special improvement districts. It was not a smooth process. It was not a friendly process. There were heated board meetings that I was kind of going to, to see how all this was shaking out. So let's give listeners just a high level of what happened. So downtown residents and business owners and workers are all served by a couple of groups that provide safety services, clean services, a variety of different amenities. One group, Downtown Columbus Inc., known as DCI, the—
The Downtown Development Corporation, correct? I always described them as a little more of a 40,000-foot view, like a master planner kind of organization. They've done Columbus Commons, the Scioto Mile, a lot of big-picture projects. They also do smaller things too. The two special improvement districts, Capital Crossroads Special Improvement District and Discovery Special Improvement District, two separate zones, two separate boards, but a shared staff between them. I have always thought of them more as the grassroots sort of thing. They handle a lot of cleaning up litter. If there's graffiti on buildings or gum on sidewalks, they're out there scrubbing things. They offer safety services. They also do some smaller events, like the Pearl Market, but they handle the safety side of things. And so a grant came down, I think from the federal government, to the city. The city wanted to give the grant to DCI, and they didn't, at the time, do safety services, and that was part of the requirement. And someone—I don't want to speculate—was basically saying these two groups should merge, go make that happen. And I think there probably could have been a good approach to merging the two groups, but just kind of trying to slam them together, everyone kind of got upset in the process. It didn't really follow a good process. But the end result is the SIDs are gone as of now, and DCI is running safety. And it is fair to kind of refer to it as a hostile takeover. I mean, the people that we spoke with, those were the quotes that they gave. So that's why our article said that. That was not our definition of it. But it was strange, especially in a city like Columbus, where generally people are on the same page.
And a little bit more collaborative. Collaborative, yeah. And it just felt like, you know, shut up and do it, to a degree. But the end result: the new safety force is up and running with DCI. So there was never a gap in those services, which I think is really important. Props to everyone for that. I've also heard that some of those folks that worked for the SID were hired. So it's the same people on the streets. This is kind of secondhand information, but that's what I've heard. The Pearl Market is gone, which also, it's struggled for a couple of years, because there's just so many farmers markets, and a lot of the downtown workforce is not fully back to the point of patronizing that market. But the C-PASS program, the free bus pass program for downtown workers, is continuing. It was administered by the SIDs, by the Capital Crossroads Special Improvement District. COTA is administering it on their own now. But we just got an email like last week that said this is being renewed through 2026. Which personally is nice, because we've always just given our employees free bus passes, and we foot the bill. But then when this program went into effect, it's like, oh, well, now this is a cost savings for us as a small business. So if it went away, we'd have to just start buying bus passes again. It's nice. I use it all the time. Please keep it going. It's a great program. Yeah. What else is on it? Number six was Losanti expanding. Are you familiar?
No. So it was the news that this Cincinnati-based steakhouse—not Jeff Ruby's, but a different one—coming to Columbus, going into the old Taft's space, also a Cincinnati-based business, in Gravity, which closed, sat empty for a little while. And that was announced. I just went back and looked at the story, and they were aiming, I can't remember when it said, like October, to open. It's not open yet. Got it. But I just looked at their Instagram account, and they had something posted maybe two weeks ago that said New Year's opening is what they're aiming for. So still in the works, still coming. But I mean, there's so many people in Columbus from Cincinnati or Cleveland or somewhere else, anytime something from one of those cities comes here, people kind of get excited about it.
That makes sense. Number seven—I did think it was an interesting spot for a steakhouse. A lot of times you see them more like convention center or Easton. Do you know the restaurant group behind them? It might just be them? Anything to do with—I've been very surprised by the success of Juniper and that, you know, even the restaurants here at Gay and High.
I'm 90% sure it's just one location, just that one restaurant. It's in—you said it was coming from Cincinnati. So just one location in Cincinnati? Correct. And this would be their second location. I don't think—like, Bakersfield is a restaurant group like that. That family of restaurants is several concepts. I think this was just one, could be wrong. Wasn't expecting to be asked. Number seven, and this is a little bit of a trend-based thing too, was the downtown church music hall project, which I think was announced previously, but there was a big update, just really to say that it's still moving forward because it experienced some delays, as a lot of things do. So that was number seven. Okay. Their opening date worth—their shooting for?
It's sometime next year, I want to say. Because it was announced, and then late 2027. So not next, two years. And I think part of their announcement was, hey, this is still happening, right after the Athenaeum closed. And so they didn't want people to think that all these projects are dead or something like that. Number eight was the announcement of the reopening date for the Front Street Bridge. And that just came out, that article? Well, the announcement was in like September, maybe. Fair, yeah. They didn't have like a whole nine months to gain traffic.
But I always kind of underestimate how—because Brent will do stories like that where it's like, hey, they're working on 70/71, and this ramp to Rich Street is closing. Brent will write an article and get read 20,000 times. I'm like, wow, people really care about that off-ramp. Yeah, or whatever. But I'm curious. I'm sure you look at your source for, like, is this organic? Is this coming from Facebook? Is this direct? I think a lot of it is social. A lot of our stuff, if it's wildly popular in that first couple of days, it's because it's in the news and people are reading and searching, that sort of stuff. Want to see those pictures, find out how to change their commute. Number nine was an opinion piece that Dave Honey wrote. Shout out to Dave. I literally just saw him on my walk in. Well, he just wrote a new opinion piece that you'll want to read, one up today. But he's written quite a few this year, and several of them have just been wildly well received. Was this the festival one?
This was the Short North festival fatigue. It was right after the taco festival, which I heard was a bit of a— They had to kick out the kids. Yeah. We were out of town that weekend, on a trip, but I heard that it was kind of a— Yeah, so the story there was there were some kids coming to the festival causing trouble, and the way the festival decided to handle it was, kids are not allowed if they're not with their parents. Which—
I mean, that's fair. And I think the gist of his piece was sort of, a taco festival would feel more authentic if it were on the west side of Columbus, where there's a bunch of taco trucks— And basically saying we like our Short North festivals, but stop bringing commercialized festivals. And kind of pointing out that ComFest has a history in the Short North, and there's a nonprofit component, and it gives back, and it is loud and messy and disruptive, but they do clean up after themselves. But not every festival is like that. And I don't want to pick on this festival specifically, but we've seen a lot of fly-by-night festivals in town that pop from city to city, and they come in, they grab money, and they take off. And there's no community component. They don't care about disruption. They don't clean up after themselves. They're not even always that much fun. And so people go and they're like, well, I spent $40 and this is kind of lame. Screw festivals. And then it's like, well, you're kind of hurting the local ones. Yeah, if you have a bad experience. So we're not a big fan of parachuters. I think that we do welcome outsiders that come with interest and intent on being a part of our community, even if they are new and unique. The issue is when people come in and try to force-feed us things. That is what we don't like.
And it's like, oh, hey, mojitos are a trend this year, so there's a Mojito Festival, and it's going to be in 18 different cities. Ding, ding, ding, ding, we're going to make our money. And then we're probably not even going to do it again next year. That always kind of feels a little like cash grab. So that was number nine. And then finally, the number 10, I kind of already mentioned, the 280 office building that Nationwide owns, converting that to residential. That was number 10. So people are super interested in that. Just for context, how many articles do you think, roughly, you guys put out a year? That is a great question. I've looked at the numbers before. If I had to take a wild guess, it's probably 1,500. Okay. I was going to guess hundreds.
It's over 1,000 for sure. But also, like the best-of lists that we're putting up, there's 50 of those alone. We spread them into a lot of individual articles. But those are the top 10s. And that, ending on that office-to-residential conversion, is a great segue, because that was a trend that we saw this year. So if we want to just talk about these trends a little bit. Clearly that was one. As far as development goes, I would say overall we saw a lot of delays. There's always some degree of delays with development, but it feels like a lot of people worried about tariffs, they're worried about employment, more so than in years past. As soon as Trump took office, everyone was just sort of like, let's— Hold off for a second. We don't know what the bull in the china shop is going to do. And so that's turned into holding off for a month, holding off for six months, holding off for a year. So there are things that have been announced that just haven't even broken ground. And some people are quick to say, well, Columbus is screwed. It's like, this is everywhere. Everywhere in the country is kind of on pins and needles about stuff. So that was kind of the larger development trend. We did see a lot of music stuff, activity, happening this year. When you host, in addition to that, study.
And that's why we chose to do our Big Table conversation in October. Shout out to the Columbus Foundation for hosting those, on the topic of the music industry, the music scene. So we had people who work within the industry, venue operators and owners. We had working musicians in this very room, kind of sitting around the table to talk about that stuff. As I mentioned, the Athenaeum closed, which was an out-of-state operator that was struggling to convert. They purchased it maybe a year before, ran it for about a year. But Kappa investing in the music hall. Derek Pennell—I always say his last name wrong—owner of the Blue Note, jazz bar on Main Street, opened a second location downtown, and he's working on a third location in Franklinton. So new jazz music. But also, I think his pavilion in Franklinton is going to have all kinds of music. Rambling House closed, but it has new owners, and it's going to be reopening and kind of stay as a music venue. So a lot of venue-related stuff. But music festivals—I went to one back in August and kind of discovered some local music. So there's a lot of buzz and hype. And as you mentioned, the study, and we kind of talked about it already, the music district thing, and the whole conversations we had about that. It seems like something that people want to see better support for and more active participation in. Yeah, absolutely. Which is good. Kind of a weird trend that we saw this year was restaurants closing and then reopening. Which is super rare. You just turn around and smiled, because we've talked about this a bit. The first one that caught our attention was the 1126 restaurant in the Short North, a sushi restaurant in the old Surly Girl spot. It closed, and then several months later, they're like, surprise, we're reopening. Not new owners, same owner, same spot, same everything. Down for several months. I'm not sure why. And then maybe they don't even want to say why. But I was like, okay, well, that was kind of weird. But then we saw, on a much faster basis, Rosebud's in Delaware, which is a Josh Dalton restaurant, closed, and then like two weeks later, they're like, never mind, we're reopening. I was like, okay, that's also kind of weird. Mid City Garage in Merion Village kind of quietly closed. When you look back on social media from the summer, there's comments of, like, I tried to stop in here, and it was dark. Where are you guys? So there's no formal announcement, but then— Well, it's embarrassing when you—I mean, sure, you should announce it. Like Bossy Grrl did.
So maybe it was unplanned, unexpected. But two weeks ago, they're like, hey, everyone, grand reopening. Several months later, it's just back in business again. The Blue Danube reopened. That, in under very different— Very different circumstances, but also kind of weird that it's like, oh, surprise, it's back. Yeah. Can I critique that just for a minute?
And truth be told, I feel like I'm talking the whole time. Give me a break. Truth be told, I have not been in the new one, and I'm sure the staff is lovely. I'm sure the new ownership is great. They didn't seem to do a whole lot of work on "let's replicate the menu." And I know that they're bringing back some things. I even messaged them, because my brother and sister, we all grew up three blocks from there, and they were like, we should all go one day. And so I said, hey, do you guys have brunch? No, we don't have that yet. But just not a lot of the same menu items. I had hoped that they would stick to—do like a "yes, and." Where's the old menu? Because I only ever went there a handful of times, like in college. So remember, it was 20— You know, they had a breakfast burrito that was really good. They had this thing called the Dube Dinner Deluxe, which was a fancy grilled cheese sandwich and a bottle of champagne.
I remember that being on the menu. Like $150. Yes. And just, you know, really just solid diner grilled cheese. I know people are going to be like, "you forgot about this dish." I'm like, I didn't need it. Well, I went once with a friend, to the new one. And it was fine. But also I'm like, do I just not have the nostalgia eyes for it? And it's diner food.
He had, I think, fish and chips were the special that day. That's what he had. And what did I have? I think I just had a sandwich. I'm forgetting. It was fine. It was fine. I'm not trying to say it was forgettable in a bad sense, but also just, if I lived close to it, great. But I don't know if I'd go out of my way for it. I will give it a chance. I think it probably scratches that itch for people that want just sort of— Like a dive-bar food kind of thing. That's fair, like Tip Top.
Or, for me, Old Town Tavern is kind of that. It's close to home, it's comforting, it's not going to win any awards for the cuisine, but it's good, and it's always busy. There's always people in there. So along those lines, though, the recent news that the Spice Bar is coming back. No. What? Did you miss that? The '90s are alive in Columbus. Dream of the '90s, dream of the early—to be clear, Spice Bar wasn't around in the '90s, but sure, quickly thereafter. In the same spot, on Park Street. The owner, Corso—Chris Corso—is reopening Spice Bar. Okay, so you've got to come on this podcast, and we've got to talk about your long and storied history.
I'm sure you would love to. I've talked to a couple friends, and we should throw—we should have a DJ night there with old MIDI Slut and Jason Lyman and Jeff Pond, and DJ John D. And also, you're not allowed to come in unless you're over the age of 40, but it'll just be house music from nine until 11. I assume they just closed originally because it really wasn't that profitable. But— Well, also Corso moved from the nightclub model to more of the restaurant model. Because even prior to Spice Bar and Sugar Bar and that run on Park Street, they were just running nightclubs. By the way, for those of you listening who didn't know, those places existed. Right next door to it, there was a bar called Spice, and there was a bar called Sugar. Kind of sugar and spice. And of course, everyone at the time said, like, where's the "everything nice" bar? So when is it opening?
Sometime next summer. I can't remember the exact opening date. Please get this party on the books. Make it part of your Plan 20, which you need to talk about. Yeah. Also, kind of in that same vein, Basil Thai is reopening. That's kind of brand new. Rome, the owner, is going to serve the food out of the VHS bar that he runs down the bridge. So Basil's back. And then also, it's been closed for a small amount of time, but Creole Kitchen just reopened, or something, around the corner from my—just saw that. Moved from Mount Vernon to Long Street, but there was a lot of downtime in between. So it's been offline for a while. Yeah. I will say, with that trend, 80% of these—some of them, it's just people going in and acquiring a name or whatever, and Corso, I don't know.
The strange ones were the ones where it's like, same owner, same spot. They just shuttered. Here's the theory. It's just money. It's just probably a cash flow issue, or they needed to get some friends-and-family money, or a loan. It's always money, man. Yeah, I feel it. And that kind of ties into something else, because we've heard from a lot of people, a lot of business owners, artists—it doesn't matter who you are—money is tight. Everyone's freaking out. Everyone's like, oh, the stock market is great, the economy is great. And it's like, yeah, but food costs a lot, and healthcare is a lot, and this is going up, and that's going up. And so even though we see a lot of times a retraction in spending, entertainment spending, you see fewer restaurants open, things like that, you still continue to see civic investment happening. We even saw this when the recession hit, 2008-ish, every construction project just kind of slowed to a crawl. But the city's like, we're still going to invest in the Scioto Mile, we're still going to invest in Columbus Commons, we're still going to put money into infrastructure, so that we can bounce back faster. And so I think it's still— You're heartened by that.
It's good to see. So Franklin Park Conservatory announced a big major upgrade. The Ohio Village is under construction right now. That's a big state-funded upgrade for that site. The Capitol Line, which is kind of breaking ground this month on construction—the first phase of that will destroy our street for all of next year. But seeing those kinds of things means that hopefully, once we weather the smaller storm, Columbus still isn't completely shutting down. Right, comes out ahead. So that's my hope. Also a lot of leadership changes this year. GCAC has a new one. The Film Center has a new leader. The Wexner Center will have a new leader; their leader just left. Columbus Symphony Orchestra, Franklinton Arts District—a lot of arts. I went through and just looked at arts. I'm sure there are a lot of business changes, but just a ton of arts, all to happen in the same year, is kind of big. And, honestly, totally unrelated.
So I think that's kind of interesting and exciting for what comes next, 2026 and beyond. You should do a piece on the new class, the new— The freshmen of 2026. Yeah. I like that idea.
And I will say too, on the arts side of things, having all of these new galleries open downstairs—or a lot of them, some of them open previously, but there was kind of a collective opening over the summer—the relocated Lindsay Gallery, Hammond Harkins, I'm going to forget some of them, the Chaos Contemporary that was new. God, why am I forgetting the other one? But Sarah Gormley is across the street. No Place is downstairs. And so having them all do collective openings, especially the four that are sort of attached in the back, really feels like something special. It's Friday after work, and you spill down there and go see a friend's art opening, and bump into people. Rising tide, right? You go to all the shows, you may be exposed to an artist that you wouldn't have been exposed to previously. And a couple of them came from the Short North. I think there's still a lot of great galleries in the Short North that should be supported. Franklinton still has a lot of art stuff going for it. And so I think the sign of a healthy city is to have multiple arts districts, multiple entertainment districts, shopping districts. And so it's really great to see. And shout out to Jeff Edwards, who invested in making a lot of this happen. But it feels very cool. And I overheard someone at one of the events, they're like, this really feels like New York in here right now. Which is kind of a silly thing to say, but it feels a little magical in the air, when you've got like 200 people hanging out, drinking wine, looking, and there's stickers, people are buying stuff. I love it. So that's kind of cool. Do you want to share your plans for events next year?
Sure, let's announce it. All right, go ahead. For anyone still tuning in at the end of the podcast: Columbus Underground is turning 25 years old, almost—2025, a quarter century. A quarter century. And our birthday is technically at the end of the year, like November. But we're going to celebrate all year long. We're going to kick it off with you, of all people, in January. I think January 8. We'll formally announce this and put the events— And invite everyone. I'll be returning to my old stead. It is Team Tim.
Team Tim. Trivia. Host trivia, yeah. Where's that? Cure? Cure, right around the corner, downtown. And then what else are you—in addition to your DJ event at Spice?
Exactly. So Cure. We're trying to hit an engagement point with as many different facets of the community as possible. The trivia community. Do something with arts-related, music, cocktails, food, comedy. Just try and wrap our arms around everything as much as we can, which is the opposite of events we normally do. Like the Coffee Festival is just one thing, and it's gigantic. And these are going to be a lot of just little small pop-up, one-off kind of things to celebrate throughout the year. So probably one a month. And not all of them are event-based things. Some of them will be collabs on products. We did an alcohol collab, a vodka collab, with Echo Spirits in 2021, when we turned 20. So we might do that again with them. I haven't talked to Joe yet. Things like that, that aren't really an event, but like, hey, check out this release. Can we have a big party in November? Maybe—we'll see. Come on, let's make that the Spice night. Maybe those were the DJs that were popular when you came around. Well, I just mean, it's such a big patio, November might be a little cold. We might do that during the summer. But we're talking about doing a comedy and coffee mashup. Because we've never really—we do have our coffee-beer event, but we've never done anything really with coffee cocktails. So we're like, espresso martinis and stand-up comedy might be kind of a— You're going to have an unruly crowd, I'll tell you that.
Oh yeah, all jacked up on espresso. So that. Talking to a band about maybe doing a pop-up house show at Sweeney's, some live music there early in the year. A lot of it's still kind of forming. And so we'll announce the first couple of things and then have more. More to come. Well, we look forward to celebrating Columbus Underground all year. Thanks. And you know, some of the best ideas are things we haven't even thought of yet. So in June, we might think of something fun. Absolutely. Cool. Walker, thanks for the roundup. Cheers to 2026.
Onward and upward. 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, share this episode of the Confluence Cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite editorialist. 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.
Transcript6,214 words
Tim Fulton 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, we're doing our unofficial year in review. Not the best-of list, not the most popular stories necessarily, just the ones people clicked on, shared, complained about, and wouldn't stop talking about. We cover everything from parking issues and office buildings converting into apartments to restaurant closings, reopenings, arts leadership changes, and why some headlines travel much farther than others. Along the way, we talk about how people actually consume local news, the difference between what's popular and what's meaningful, and what all this says about where Columbus is right now, financially, culturally, and just vibes. It's not polished, it's not scripted, and it's definitely not a formal recap. It's just two people who spend a lot of time paying attention to this city, trying to make sense of the year it just had. We also look ahead a bit, including Columbus Underground hitting 25 years, and what Walker is thinking about next for community events and staying relevant without losing the plot. 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, sir?
Walker Evans I'm good. How are you, Tim?
Tim Fulton I'm good. We are talking about the year that is coming to an end. We're going to be talking through some of the biggest stories of the year, some of the interesting trends that we saw, and whatever else you decide you want to talk about.
Walker Evans Sounds good. What have you got up first? Well, do we want to just talk through the most popular stories?
Tim Fulton Yeah, let's do that off the bat, because they seem to be not maybe the most significant news stories. They are just interesting to people.
Walker Evans Yeah. We should always preface that. What's popular isn't always important, and what's important isn't always popular. So these are just raw eyeballs.
Tim Fulton So these are raw eyeballs, active users. In the last year, we're going to go 10 to one.
Walker Evans And we are recording this on December 5, so maybe something blows up in the next 25 days, 26 days. So this is everything from January one until now. But the number one story of the year was an update that we did on the tunnel boring going on underneath the city, which was also the most popular story last year, a different update on the project.
Tim Fulton Same project, because the photos are cool.
Walker Evans Photos are cool, videos are cool. It's not too often that the city is digging a miles-long tunnel underneath. But weirdly, I'm kind of proud that we're sticking to our name of Columbus Underground, the number one story physically being an underground tunnel.
Tim Fulton Good one. Who administers that?
Walker Evans I think it's the Department of Public Utilities, but it is the city. It's a big federal grant. I'm sure there's federal money, state money, all that sort of stuff, because it was a mandate from the federal EPA that said your sewer system was built 70 years ago. It's not big enough for the city, especially in growing areas, and you're polluting the water. So if it rains too hard, the stormwater backfills into the sewers, and then that flows into the rivers. So sometimes in some neighborhoods, it rains heavy and it smells like poop, and it's like, well, that's why. We're literally just dumping raw sewage into the rivers, and the EPA is like, you can't do that anymore. That was okay in the 1950s, back before we knew better. So it's fixing some of those problems. And this is a multi-phase, multi-decade project. But the update this year was that the boring equipment that has been tunneling went down on Olentangy River Road. We did a video of that last year, kind of by the Spectrum offices and City Diner. And then it dug all the way north, and they dug another shaft down, and the machine kind of bust through the rock and dirt and everything. So that was the media event: come watch it come through.
Tim Fulton And if anyone's ever seen the movie Tremors, it was like that.
Walker Evans Exactly, Tremors. Kevin Bacon was there. But the machine arrived at the site, and that site is at like Tuttle Park. So they dug, it took over a year, like 18 months, to dig from Olentangy River Road to Tuttle Park. So that's another leg of this very long thing.
Tim Fulton Okay. What else is on the list?
Walker Evans Number two, I think this is an example of a slow news day. This is on January 4, which is—
Tim Fulton So let's be fair to the articles. Simply going up super early may very well make it—
Walker Evans Oh, of course. People will read it throughout the year. If the article has good SEO, it'll get a lot of eyeballs. But Easton announced that they were going to start charging for certain parking lots. And people lost their minds because they thought it was all parking. And it was like, no, it's going to be like a dollar an hour if you want to park closest to the Chipotle or whatever, because there are these inner lots that are just overutilized. And honestly, the big thing was they were probably trying to disincentivize employees from, "I'm going to park there and just be there all day long." They would rather have customers, so it's more of a pro-customer thing than anything. And also, the giant garages are still free.
Tim Fulton The first floor of some of them is not, over just—
Walker Evans Shows how often I go to Easton. But just east of the—
Tim Fulton Like what I think of as Easton One. That garage, the first floor you pay. But if you go up one floor, you don't.
Walker Evans It's fine. I think I usually park in the West one.
Tim Fulton Oh, I'm sorry. It's just west of Easton Two. So it's up there by Nordstrom and stuff.
Walker Evans Oh, okay, closer to Penn's. I haven't parked in that one in a while. But either way, it was a bit of a non-story. And I think the headline just made people upset.
Tim Fulton I imagine, if we look at the Facebook numbers, it's probably the most commented as well.
Walker Evans Yeah, it was one of those. So that was number two. Number three was kind of an interesting one. An overall trend going on is the conversion of office space into residential space. You're seeing it more often in downtowns all over the country, where they're like, oh, we have these big towers, they're really expensive to demolish or replace or build something new, so it makes sense to spend the money to convert them. Still an expensive process. But you see it less often in the suburbs, where the format of the office is a lot more horizontal. You need windows in apartments. If you have an interior office with no windows, you can't have an interior apartment with no windows. It's usually more common that you'll see them torn down. But there is an office complex right north of the Walmart that's across the highway from Tuttle. So it's catty-corner from Tuttle, to an extent. It's a collection of three office buildings, and they're like, we're going to keep one office, we're going to convert one into apartments, I think another one's being torn down, some more apartments being built, but the whole site is turning more mixed-use. And it got a lot of attention, I think, because you don't see it so much in the suburbs.
Tim Fulton So it wasn't really a trend story. It was literally just about that one.
Walker Evans It was about that one, but we've written about those trends throughout the year. One of the most significant ones, just down the street—I'm pointing like this, because it's literally right down the street—the Continental tower just opened their residential units. But also, Nationwide announced the 280 Plaza building is going to be converted to residential. The Chase building, a portion of that is slated to become residential. I don't think DCI, Downtown Columbus Inc., has formally announced what they're doing with the buildings they purchased around the Huntington Center. What's the name of the building?
Tim Fulton The former state buildings.
Walker Evans A lot of those are office, and they've hinted that they may become residential as well. So overall, it's a big trend, not just in Columbus, but everywhere.
Tim Fulton Thanks, pandemic.
Walker Evans More people live in downtown. It's a good thing. So that was number three. Number four was a story that we republished from the Buckeye Flame, about the passage of HB 8 at the beginning of the year, which was sort of an anti-LGBTQ piece of legislation that DeWine passed. And so that got a lot of attention, partly for the headline: "Governor signs anti-LGBT law into effect." So that got a lot of people upset. Again, that was also in January, so it was an older article on the list. But shout out to the fine folks at the Buckeye Flame. We have a republishing partnership with them because they, and the Ohio Capital Journal, do a lot of Statehouse news that we just don't have the staff for. So it keeps people informed. Number five was an update that Brent did about the—this is not our words, but it was in the headline—the "hostile takeover" of the SID.
Tim Fulton Which, you know, it should have gotten that much attention.
Walker Evans I had done a couple updates on it over the past 18 months or so, but basically DCI absorbing the special improvement districts. It was not a smooth process. It was not a friendly process. There were heated board meetings that I was kind of going to, to see how all this was shaking out.
Tim Fulton So let's give listeners just a high level of what happened.
Walker Evans So downtown residents and business owners and workers are all served by a couple of groups that provide safety services, clean services, a variety of different amenities. One group, Downtown Columbus Inc., known as DCI, the—
Tim Fulton The Downtown Development Corporation, correct?
Walker Evans I always described them as a little more of a 40,000-foot view, like a master planner kind of organization. They've done Columbus Commons, the Scioto Mile, a lot of big-picture projects. They also do smaller things too. The two special improvement districts, Capital Crossroads Special Improvement District and Discovery Special Improvement District, two separate zones, two separate boards, but a shared staff between them. I have always thought of them more as the grassroots sort of thing. They handle a lot of cleaning up litter. If there's graffiti on buildings or gum on sidewalks, they're out there scrubbing things. They offer safety services. They also do some smaller events, like the Pearl Market, but they handle the safety side of things. And so a grant came down, I think from the federal government, to the city. The city wanted to give the grant to DCI, and they didn't, at the time, do safety services, and that was part of the requirement. And someone—I don't want to speculate—was basically saying these two groups should merge, go make that happen. And I think there probably could have been a good approach to merging the two groups, but just kind of trying to slam them together, everyone kind of got upset in the process. It didn't really follow a good process. But the end result is the SIDs are gone as of now, and DCI is running safety.
Tim Fulton And it is fair to kind of refer to it as a hostile takeover.
Walker Evans I mean, the people that we spoke with, those were the quotes that they gave. So that's why our article said that. That was not our definition of it. But it was strange, especially in a city like Columbus, where generally people are on the same page.
Tim Fulton And a little bit more collaborative.
Walker Evans Collaborative, yeah. And it just felt like, you know, shut up and do it, to a degree. But the end result: the new safety force is up and running with DCI. So there was never a gap in those services, which I think is really important. Props to everyone for that. I've also heard that some of those folks that worked for the SID were hired. So it's the same people on the streets. This is kind of secondhand information, but that's what I've heard. The Pearl Market is gone, which also, it's struggled for a couple of years, because there's just so many farmers markets, and a lot of the downtown workforce is not fully back to the point of patronizing that market. But the C-PASS program, the free bus pass program for downtown workers, is continuing. It was administered by the SIDs, by the Capital Crossroads Special Improvement District. COTA is administering it on their own now. But we just got an email like last week that said this is being renewed through 2026. Which personally is nice, because we've always just given our employees free bus passes, and we foot the bill. But then when this program went into effect, it's like, oh, well, now this is a cost savings for us as a small business. So if it went away, we'd have to just start buying bus passes again. It's nice. I use it all the time. Please keep it going. It's a great program.
Tim Fulton Yeah. What else is on it?
Walker Evans Number six was Losanti expanding. Are you familiar?
Tim Fulton No.
Walker Evans So it was the news that this Cincinnati-based steakhouse—not Jeff Ruby's, but a different one—coming to Columbus, going into the old Taft's space, also a Cincinnati-based business, in Gravity, which closed, sat empty for a little while. And that was announced. I just went back and looked at the story, and they were aiming, I can't remember when it said, like October, to open. It's not open yet.
Tim Fulton Got it.
Walker Evans But I just looked at their Instagram account, and they had something posted maybe two weeks ago that said New Year's opening is what they're aiming for. So still in the works, still coming. But I mean, there's so many people in Columbus from Cincinnati or Cleveland or somewhere else, anytime something from one of those cities comes here, people kind of get excited about it.
Tim Fulton That makes sense.
Walker Evans Number seven—I did think it was an interesting spot for a steakhouse. A lot of times you see them more like convention center or Easton.
Tim Fulton Do you know the restaurant group behind them? It might just be them?
Tim Fulton Anything to do with—I've been very surprised by the success of Juniper and that, you know, even the restaurants here at Gay and High.
Walker Evans I'm 90% sure it's just one location, just that one restaurant.
Tim Fulton It's in—you said it was coming from Cincinnati. So just one location in Cincinnati?
Walker Evans Correct. And this would be their second location. I don't think—like, Bakersfield is a restaurant group like that. That family of restaurants is several concepts. I think this was just one, could be wrong. Wasn't expecting to be asked. Number seven, and this is a little bit of a trend-based thing too, was the downtown church music hall project, which I think was announced previously, but there was a big update, just really to say that it's still moving forward because it experienced some delays, as a lot of things do. So that was number seven.
Tim Fulton Okay. Their opening date worth—their shooting for?
Walker Evans It's sometime next year, I want to say. Because it was announced, and then late 2027. So not next, two years. And I think part of their announcement was, hey, this is still happening, right after the Athenaeum closed. And so they didn't want people to think that all these projects are dead or something like that. Number eight was the announcement of the reopening date for the Front Street Bridge.
Tim Fulton And that just came out, that article?
Walker Evans Well, the announcement was in like September, maybe.
Tim Fulton Fair, yeah. They didn't have like a whole nine months to gain traffic.
Walker Evans But I always kind of underestimate how—because Brent will do stories like that where it's like, hey, they're working on 70/71, and this ramp to Rich Street is closing. Brent will write an article and get read 20,000 times. I'm like, wow, people really care about that off-ramp.
Tim Fulton Yeah, or whatever. But I'm curious. I'm sure you look at your source for, like, is this organic? Is this coming from Facebook? Is this direct?
Walker Evans I think a lot of it is social. A lot of our stuff, if it's wildly popular in that first couple of days, it's because it's in the news and people are reading and searching, that sort of stuff. Want to see those pictures, find out how to change their commute. Number nine was an opinion piece that Dave Honey wrote. Shout out to Dave. I literally just saw him on my walk in. Well, he just wrote a new opinion piece that you'll want to read, one up today. But he's written quite a few this year, and several of them have just been wildly well received.
Tim Fulton Was this the festival one?
Walker Evans This was the Short North festival fatigue. It was right after the taco festival, which I heard was a bit of a—
Tim Fulton They had to kick out the kids.
Walker Evans Yeah. We were out of town that weekend, on a trip, but I heard that it was kind of a—
Tim Fulton Yeah, so the story there was there were some kids coming to the festival causing trouble, and the way the festival decided to handle it was, kids are not allowed if they're not with their parents. Which—
Walker Evans I mean, that's fair. And I think the gist of his piece was sort of, a taco festival would feel more authentic if it were on the west side of Columbus, where there's a bunch of taco trucks—
Tim Fulton And basically saying we like our Short North festivals, but stop bringing commercialized festivals.
Walker Evans And kind of pointing out that ComFest has a history in the Short North, and there's a nonprofit component, and it gives back, and it is loud and messy and disruptive, but they do clean up after themselves. But not every festival is like that. And I don't want to pick on this festival specifically, but we've seen a lot of fly-by-night festivals in town that pop from city to city, and they come in, they grab money, and they take off. And there's no community component. They don't care about disruption. They don't clean up after themselves. They're not even always that much fun. And so people go and they're like, well, I spent $40 and this is kind of lame. Screw festivals. And then it's like, well, you're kind of hurting the local ones.
Tim Fulton Yeah, if you have a bad experience. So we're not a big fan of parachuters. I think that we do welcome outsiders that come with interest and intent on being a part of our community, even if they are new and unique. The issue is when people come in and try to force-feed us things. That is what we don't like.
Walker Evans And it's like, oh, hey, mojitos are a trend this year, so there's a Mojito Festival, and it's going to be in 18 different cities. Ding, ding, ding, ding, we're going to make our money. And then we're probably not even going to do it again next year. That always kind of feels a little like cash grab. So that was number nine. And then finally, the number 10, I kind of already mentioned, the 280 office building that Nationwide owns, converting that to residential. That was number 10.
Tim Fulton So people are super interested in that. Just for context, how many articles do you think, roughly, you guys put out a year?
Walker Evans That is a great question. I've looked at the numbers before. If I had to take a wild guess, it's probably 1,500.
Tim Fulton Okay. I was going to guess hundreds.
Walker Evans It's over 1,000 for sure. But also, like the best-of lists that we're putting up, there's 50 of those alone. We spread them into a lot of individual articles. But those are the top 10s. And that, ending on that office-to-residential conversion, is a great segue, because that was a trend that we saw this year. So if we want to just talk about these trends a little bit. Clearly that was one. As far as development goes, I would say overall we saw a lot of delays. There's always some degree of delays with development, but it feels like a lot of people worried about tariffs, they're worried about employment, more so than in years past. As soon as Trump took office, everyone was just sort of like, let's—
Tim Fulton Hold off for a second. We don't know what the bull in the china shop is going to do.
Walker Evans And so that's turned into holding off for a month, holding off for six months, holding off for a year. So there are things that have been announced that just haven't even broken ground. And some people are quick to say, well, Columbus is screwed. It's like, this is everywhere. Everywhere in the country is kind of on pins and needles about stuff. So that was kind of the larger development trend. We did see a lot of music stuff, activity, happening this year.
Tim Fulton When you host, in addition to that, study.
Walker Evans And that's why we chose to do our Big Table conversation in October. Shout out to the Columbus Foundation for hosting those, on the topic of the music industry, the music scene. So we had people who work within the industry, venue operators and owners. We had working musicians in this very room, kind of sitting around the table to talk about that stuff. As I mentioned, the Athenaeum closed, which was an out-of-state operator that was struggling to convert. They purchased it maybe a year before, ran it for about a year. But Kappa investing in the music hall. Derek Pennell—I always say his last name wrong—owner of the Blue Note, jazz bar on Main Street, opened a second location downtown, and he's working on a third location in Franklinton. So new jazz music. But also, I think his pavilion in Franklinton is going to have all kinds of music. Rambling House closed, but it has new owners, and it's going to be reopening and kind of stay as a music venue. So a lot of venue-related stuff. But music festivals—I went to one back in August and kind of discovered some local music. So there's a lot of buzz and hype. And as you mentioned, the study, and we kind of talked about it already, the music district thing, and the whole conversations we had about that. It seems like something that people want to see better support for and more active participation in.
Tim Fulton Yeah, absolutely. Which is good.
Walker Evans Kind of a weird trend that we saw this year was restaurants closing and then reopening. Which is super rare. You just turn around and smiled, because we've talked about this a bit. The first one that caught our attention was the 1126 restaurant in the Short North, a sushi restaurant in the old Surly Girl spot. It closed, and then several months later, they're like, surprise, we're reopening. Not new owners, same owner, same spot, same everything. Down for several months. I'm not sure why. And then maybe they don't even want to say why. But I was like, okay, well, that was kind of weird. But then we saw, on a much faster basis, Rosebud's in Delaware, which is a Josh Dalton restaurant, closed, and then like two weeks later, they're like, never mind, we're reopening. I was like, okay, that's also kind of weird. Mid City Garage in Merion Village kind of quietly closed. When you look back on social media from the summer, there's comments of, like, I tried to stop in here, and it was dark. Where are you guys? So there's no formal announcement, but then—
Tim Fulton Well, it's embarrassing when you—I mean, sure, you should announce it. Like Bossy Grrl did.
Walker Evans So maybe it was unplanned, unexpected. But two weeks ago, they're like, hey, everyone, grand reopening. Several months later, it's just back in business again. The Blue Danube reopened.
Tim Fulton That, in under very different—
Walker Evans Very different circumstances, but also kind of weird that it's like, oh, surprise, it's back.
Tim Fulton Yeah. Can I critique that just for a minute?
Walker Evans And truth be told, I feel like I'm talking the whole time.
Tim Fulton Give me a break. Truth be told, I have not been in the new one, and I'm sure the staff is lovely. I'm sure the new ownership is great. They didn't seem to do a whole lot of work on "let's replicate the menu." And I know that they're bringing back some things. I even messaged them, because my brother and sister, we all grew up three blocks from there, and they were like, we should all go one day. And so I said, hey, do you guys have brunch? No, we don't have that yet. But just not a lot of the same menu items. I had hoped that they would stick to—do like a "yes, and."
Walker Evans Where's the old menu? Because I only ever went there a handful of times, like in college. So remember, it was 20—
Tim Fulton You know, they had a breakfast burrito that was really good. They had this thing called the Dube Dinner Deluxe, which was a fancy grilled cheese sandwich and a bottle of champagne.
Walker Evans I remember that being on the menu. Like $150.
Tim Fulton Yes. And just, you know, really just solid diner grilled cheese. I know people are going to be like, "you forgot about this dish." I'm like, I didn't need it.
Walker Evans Well, I went once with a friend, to the new one. And it was fine. But also I'm like, do I just not have the nostalgia eyes for it?
Tim Fulton And it's diner food.
Walker Evans He had, I think, fish and chips were the special that day. That's what he had. And what did I have? I think I just had a sandwich.
Tim Fulton I'm forgetting. It was fine.
Walker Evans It was fine. I'm not trying to say it was forgettable in a bad sense, but also just, if I lived close to it, great. But I don't know if I'd go out of my way for it. I will give it a chance. I think it probably scratches that itch for people that want just sort of—
Tim Fulton Like a dive-bar food kind of thing. That's fair, like Tip Top.
Walker Evans Or, for me, Old Town Tavern is kind of that. It's close to home, it's comforting, it's not going to win any awards for the cuisine, but it's good, and it's always busy. There's always people in there. So along those lines, though, the recent news that the Spice Bar is coming back.
Tim Fulton No. What? Did you miss that? The '90s are alive in Columbus. Dream of the '90s, dream of the early—to be clear, Spice Bar wasn't around in the '90s, but sure, quickly thereafter.
Walker Evans In the same spot, on Park Street. The owner, Corso—Chris Corso—is reopening Spice Bar.
Tim Fulton Okay, so you've got to come on this podcast, and we've got to talk about your long and storied history.
Walker Evans I'm sure you would love to. I've talked to a couple friends, and we should throw—we should have a DJ night there with old MIDI Slut and Jason Lyman and Jeff Pond, and DJ John D. And also, you're not allowed to come in unless you're over the age of 40, but it'll just be house music from nine until 11.
Tim Fulton I assume they just closed originally because it really wasn't that profitable. But—
Walker Evans Well, also Corso moved from the nightclub model to more of the restaurant model. Because even prior to Spice Bar and Sugar Bar and that run on Park Street, they were just running nightclubs.
Tim Fulton By the way, for those of you listening who didn't know, those places existed. Right next door to it, there was a bar called Spice, and there was a bar called Sugar. Kind of sugar and spice. And of course, everyone at the time said, like, where's the "everything nice" bar? So when is it opening?
Walker Evans Sometime next summer. I can't remember the exact opening date.
Tim Fulton Please get this party on the books. Make it part of your Plan 20, which you need to talk about.
Walker Evans Yeah. Also, kind of in that same vein, Basil Thai is reopening. That's kind of brand new. Rome, the owner, is going to serve the food out of the VHS bar that he runs down the bridge. So Basil's back. And then also, it's been closed for a small amount of time, but Creole Kitchen just reopened, or something, around the corner from my—just saw that. Moved from Mount Vernon to Long Street, but there was a lot of downtime in between. So it's been offline for a while.
Tim Fulton Yeah. I will say, with that trend, 80% of these—some of them, it's just people going in and acquiring a name or whatever, and Corso, I don't know.
Walker Evans The strange ones were the ones where it's like, same owner, same spot. They just shuttered.
Tim Fulton Here's the theory. It's just money. It's just probably a cash flow issue, or they needed to get some friends-and-family money, or a loan. It's always money, man.
Walker Evans Yeah, I feel it. And that kind of ties into something else, because we've heard from a lot of people, a lot of business owners, artists—it doesn't matter who you are—money is tight. Everyone's freaking out. Everyone's like, oh, the stock market is great, the economy is great. And it's like, yeah, but food costs a lot, and healthcare is a lot, and this is going up, and that's going up. And so even though we see a lot of times a retraction in spending, entertainment spending, you see fewer restaurants open, things like that, you still continue to see civic investment happening. We even saw this when the recession hit, 2008-ish, every construction project just kind of slowed to a crawl. But the city's like, we're still going to invest in the Scioto Mile, we're still going to invest in Columbus Commons, we're still going to put money into infrastructure, so that we can bounce back faster. And so I think it's still—
Tim Fulton You're heartened by that.
Walker Evans It's good to see. So Franklin Park Conservatory announced a big major upgrade. The Ohio Village is under construction right now. That's a big state-funded upgrade for that site. The Capitol Line, which is kind of breaking ground this month on construction—the first phase of that will destroy our street for all of next year. But seeing those kinds of things means that hopefully, once we weather the smaller storm, Columbus still isn't completely shutting down.
Tim Fulton Right, comes out ahead.
Walker Evans So that's my hope. Also a lot of leadership changes this year. GCAC has a new one. The Film Center has a new leader. The Wexner Center will have a new leader; their leader just left. Columbus Symphony Orchestra, Franklinton Arts District—a lot of arts. I went through and just looked at arts. I'm sure there are a lot of business changes, but just a ton of arts, all to happen in the same year, is kind of big.
Tim Fulton And, honestly, totally unrelated.
Walker Evans So I think that's kind of interesting and exciting for what comes next, 2026 and beyond.
Tim Fulton You should do a piece on the new class, the new—
Walker Evans The freshmen of 2026.
Tim Fulton Yeah. I like that idea.
Walker Evans And I will say too, on the arts side of things, having all of these new galleries open downstairs—or a lot of them, some of them open previously, but there was kind of a collective opening over the summer—the relocated Lindsay Gallery, Hammond Harkins, I'm going to forget some of them, the Chaos Contemporary that was new. God, why am I forgetting the other one? But Sarah Gormley is across the street. No Place is downstairs. And so having them all do collective openings, especially the four that are sort of attached in the back, really feels like something special. It's Friday after work, and you spill down there and go see a friend's art opening, and bump into people.
Tim Fulton Rising tide, right? You go to all the shows, you may be exposed to an artist that you wouldn't have been exposed to previously.
Walker Evans And a couple of them came from the Short North. I think there's still a lot of great galleries in the Short North that should be supported. Franklinton still has a lot of art stuff going for it. And so I think the sign of a healthy city is to have multiple arts districts, multiple entertainment districts, shopping districts. And so it's really great to see. And shout out to Jeff Edwards, who invested in making a lot of this happen. But it feels very cool. And I overheard someone at one of the events, they're like, this really feels like New York in here right now. Which is kind of a silly thing to say, but it feels a little magical in the air, when you've got like 200 people hanging out, drinking wine, looking, and there's stickers, people are buying stuff.
Tim Fulton I love it. So that's kind of cool. Do you want to share your plans for events next year?
Walker Evans Sure, let's announce it. All right, go ahead. For anyone still tuning in at the end of the podcast: Columbus Underground is turning 25 years old, almost—2025, a quarter century.
Tim Fulton A quarter century.
Walker Evans And our birthday is technically at the end of the year, like November. But we're going to celebrate all year long. We're going to kick it off with you, of all people, in January. I think January 8. We'll formally announce this and put the events—
Tim Fulton And invite everyone. I'll be returning to my old stead. It is Team Tim.
Walker Evans Team Tim.
Tim Fulton Trivia. Host trivia, yeah. Where's that? Cure?
Walker Evans Cure, right around the corner, downtown.
Tim Fulton And then what else are you—in addition to your DJ event at Spice?
Walker Evans Exactly. So Cure. We're trying to hit an engagement point with as many different facets of the community as possible. The trivia community. Do something with arts-related, music, cocktails, food, comedy. Just try and wrap our arms around everything as much as we can, which is the opposite of events we normally do. Like the Coffee Festival is just one thing, and it's gigantic. And these are going to be a lot of just little small pop-up, one-off kind of things to celebrate throughout the year. So probably one a month. And not all of them are event-based things. Some of them will be collabs on products. We did an alcohol collab, a vodka collab, with Echo Spirits in 2021, when we turned 20. So we might do that again with them. I haven't talked to Joe yet. Things like that, that aren't really an event, but like, hey, check out this release.
Tim Fulton Can we have a big party in November? Maybe—we'll see. Come on, let's make that the Spice night. Maybe those were the DJs that were popular when you came around.
Walker Evans Well, I just mean, it's such a big patio, November might be a little cold. We might do that during the summer. But we're talking about doing a comedy and coffee mashup. Because we've never really—we do have our coffee-beer event, but we've never done anything really with coffee cocktails. So we're like, espresso martinis and stand-up comedy might be kind of a—
Tim Fulton You're going to have an unruly crowd, I'll tell you that.
Walker Evans Oh yeah, all jacked up on espresso. So that. Talking to a band about maybe doing a pop-up house show at Sweeney's, some live music there early in the year. A lot of it's still kind of forming. And so we'll announce the first couple of things and then have more.
Tim Fulton More to come. Well, we look forward to celebrating Columbus Underground all year.
Walker Evans Thanks. And you know, some of the best ideas are things we haven't even thought of yet. So in June, we might think of something fun.
Tim Fulton Absolutely. Cool. Walker, thanks for the roundup. Cheers to 2026.
Walker Evans Onward and upward.
Tim Fulton 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, share this episode of the Confluence Cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite editorialist. 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.