U UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI

Date: 15 May 2009

I, Corey DiRutigliano , hereby submit this original work as part of the requirements for the degree of:

Master in Architecture

It is entitled: City Centered: Debating the Future of a Failed Downtown Mall

Corey DiRutigliano Student Signature:

This work and its defense approved by: Rebecca Williamson Ph.D. Committee Chair: John Hancock

Approval of the electronic document:

I have reviewed the Thesis/Dissertation in its final electronic format and certify that it is an accurate copy of the document reviewed and approved by the committee.

Committee Chair signature: Rebecca Williamson Ph.D. City Centered; Debating the Future of a Failed Downtown Mall

A thesis submitted to the Graduate school of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfi lment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Architecture

in the college of Design, Art, Architecture and Planning by

Corey DiRutigliano

B.A. The Ohio State University June 2006

Committee chair Rebecca Williamson, Ph.D. De[mall]ition Debates

How can Midwest urban grids, pock-marked with vacancy and dereliction, prepare for the integration of returning populaces, and provide services while minimizing the destruction of existing architectures?

With the increasing reversal of white-fl ight, instigated by rising energy costs, and a renewed interest in urban living, our cities prepare for the return of the middle class. Midwest urban grids, pock-marked with desolate blocks and vacant buildings, have struggled for decades to maintain social interest. They now face the daunting task of providing urban-style entertainment, amenities, and support to a returning populace; all the while mediating the suburban context and needs this population brings with them. Trends in Midwest redevelopment, namely urban infi ll, today often prescribe a “clean slate” or “tabula rasa” approach when faced with existing buildings or context. The removal of buildings comes with the support of city planners and offi cials looking to make their mark on the cities. They strive to leave behind a legacy of development, and expanded tax bases; sometimes with less than honorable intentions. The resultant urban fabrics are often young, incoherent and untested; lacking both consistency and the variety of ingredients necessary to sustain an enduring urban environment. This thesis investigates urban return, and the methods by which our cities can prepare for shifts in economics, urban structure, culture and the built environment. It considers how we can poise ourselves in socio-economic and environmentally sound ways to make these changes positive and responsible. It seeks out answers through study of the groups involved, as well as development trends and comparable relevant attempts at re-urbanization; with a focus upon critical retail/commercial-centric development. The goal is to understand how existing architectures can facilitate the reintegration and reuse of our cities under these pressures.

The following is a discussion.

CityCentered

Acknowlegements

“Our street is us and we are it. Our street is where we like to be, and it looks like all our dreams.” the Big Orange Splot - Daniel Pinkwater

I would like to thank all those who spent afternoons with me under the palm tree, sipping lemonade and discussing all of our passions and joys. CityC yCenteredd A special thanks to Ellie DiRutigliano and Liz Pisciotta; without whomDebating neither I, nor the this project,Future would of reach a its Failed fullest potential. Downtownw Mall

CityCentered

“We’ll it’s big, damn BIG... Takes me about seven to eight minutes to walk across, but I can do it in under three if a pipe bursts. One hundred and ninety shops at its peak, and another twenty or so if you include all the little temporary seasonal stalls. All of these, plus the old Lazarus across the street and the attached four-thousand car garage, and you’re lookin’ at three-point-two million square feet. Today, of course, this here building holds about a million- and-a-half - and well, you know how much of that is used [gestures in a sweeping motion]. Most recently after the Macy’s/ Kauff man’s anchor closed you could really start to see the panic on people’s faces; and you thought Lazarus closing-up shop got some deer-in-headlight expressions.... Hell, I almost had to call the medics when the Macy’s ball dropped for the last time. Well anyway, another week or two and they’ll have the old connector bridge to Lazarus down. Mayor Coleman’s Great Triumph over the mall! Then who knows what they’ll do with this place. All I know is that I’m here to keep this place heated and the lights on ‘til they tell me to lock up, hand over the keys, and go home.”

Mike December 2008 City Center Mall Maintenance Supervisor

CityCentered

This situation, like many others, begins with the American Dream.

[In reaching and understanding our current predicament with an adequate sense of context, it is necessary to start with a simple beginning and gain momentum until we reach the present.]

The American Dream circa 1950 was all about freedom and the correlating trimmings: The freedom to make our own choices and decisions when and how we want to. In this case the freedom of privately controlled space. Given the economic and geographic situation at the time it was cheap, accessible, even necessary, for a spreading out to occur1. What later became described as “white-fl ight” or ”suburban sprawl,” this spreading out has come to shape the face of the contemporary American metropolis. Countless journals, magazines, books, web sites and colloquia have investigated the causes and implications of sprawl. It continues to play an important role in discussions of city growth past, present and future.

And so the city spread out.

Populations that once fully contributed their presence, money, and time to urban neighborhoods relocated to outer ring developments to get away from the noise and dirt of the city and into a place where they could enjoy their own private [safe] plots - complete with house, yard and picket fence.

1 Wall, 61

Figure.00 [The Suburban Condition]

CityCentered 7 [ + Zoom in + ] Midwest Cities By the Numbers on par with national averages with a few notable diff erences. Many Looking for an invest- Midwest cities> were without heavy industry, ports, or shipping and Usual Suspects Columbus OH; ment requires a very additionally [or perhaps partially in response to] these cities2 did not Cincinnati OH; diff erent approach. have signifi cant incoming migrant populations. In this closed-circuit Indianapolis IN; Investments are done system, as the primary populations left the center, their departures Detroit MI; by numbers not purely left behind holes in occupancy, and perforated the tax base of the city. Milwaukee WI; love and feelings. With Some cities were able to compensate for this by annexing the regions Kansas City MO; investments a prior- populations were relocating to [recapturing the lost tax base]. Often, ity is to look long and however, even under the best circumstances the taxes gained from hard at the numbers. these properties were placed back into the infrastructure needed to Location is always very support these far-fl ung neighbourhoods. (Figure.01) important. With in- vestments one must be 2 Exceptions include: Chicago and St. Louis realistic. Making a 15% to 20% return is very good and the higher the return the more work and risk involved. One of the great things about real estate is that it generally is a very safe invest- ment. Being that it is very safe, you do not often get 40% or 50% annual return on your money. It is a longer-term solid investment with a minimum amount Figure.01 [Columbus, Ohio residential density map] of risk if done right. You want to do a risk reward assessment [ + Zoom in + ] of every investment you do, know what the risks are and Columbus, Ohio Downtown circa 1985; the last occupied high-density >Financially lucrative the potential rewards. http:// structure, the Ohio Penitentiary, fi nally closes. The vast majority of Planning ahead www.populararticles.com/ar- jobs located in the downtown area are fi nance-based (banking and ticle2763.html Typical for planning to insurance), and over 75% of their populations commute 2+ miles to project ahead only a 15- work. Following the population bottom-out in the 1970’s the city year period; assuming of Columbus had been systematically demolishing structures on its the automobile to be a downtown blocks; when buildings reached the fi x-up or bulldoze- permanent fi xture in point, most property owners opted to level in favor of the much more our landscape. option. Indiscriminately, brownstones, row

CityCentered 8

Figure.02 [Columbus surface parking lots] housing, light industrial warehouses, and workshops were cleared to make way for surface parking lots. (Figure.02) During the early- to mid- 1990’s Mayor Greg Lashutka kept Columbus suburbs securely in a track of growth, and the city (and its tax-base) expanding via annexation. Enormous amounts of state and federal monies were invested in building the necessary infrastructure to support these newer distant residential pockets and commercial corridors3. Business continued along as usual until in 2000 Michael B. Coleman took the helm as Columbus’s fi rst African American mayor. Mayor Coleman saw opportunity in the fl edging downtown and made it his administration’s goal to bring vitality and life back into the 8-5 weekday downtown. One of his fi rst moves was to team up with the remaining downtown large employers, city planners, and builders to help see development opportunities through to fruition. In the fi rst fi ve years of Colemans’s term several major downtown projects went active: the stitching of Downtown to the Short North via many small projects, the increased development of the Brewery District (sponsored by Huntington Bank), and the Arena District (backed and sponsored by Nationwide Insurance Co..) The Arena District was the fi rst large scale urban redevelopment to challenge the growth and expansion rates of its contemporary 3 In just four short years (1999 - 2003) Easton Town Centre sprang up from 90 acres of forest and prairie to become 1.5 million sq.ft. of retail and offi ce; today it boasts more than 7.2 million sq.ft. of mixed use development (http://easton- Figure.02b [Mayor Coleman] towncenter.com/)

CityCentered 9 “Columbus, OH is suburban counterparts; Easton/Gahanna, Polaris, and Tuttle/ unique in that it seems Dublin. to be an “average” [A Test Market is tested] American city, with When on the discussion of bell curves, Columbus sits a perfect distribution comfortably at the top. Its city economics, diversity, education level, of races, incomes, and income, growth, obesity, birth and death rates and migration are all demographics. These average. With respect to United States averages, Columbus Ohio ideal statistics make drivers licenses may as well say “ANY CITY, USA”. It is because of Columbus the perfect this standing that Columbus Ohio is regarded to be an excellent focus group for compa- test market. The term “test market” typically applies to all aspects nies to gather research of society, but this discussion will focus primarily on the retail or launch their new “ side of the matter. By current estimation Columbus boasts one of the highest rates of shopping square footage per capita in the “Columbus In-Depth”

“Due to its demograph- ics, which include a mix of races and a wide range of incomes, as well as urban, subur- ban, and nearby rural areas, Columbus has been considered to be a “typical” American city, and has been used as a test market for new products by retail and restaurant chains.”

“Columbus, Ohio” Figure.03 [Columbus shopping centers] Easton Town Center (1999) - Polaris Fashion Center (2001) - Mall at Tuttle Crossing (1997) - City Center Mall (1989) - Gahanna’s Creekside (2008) - Prime Outlet Malls at Jeff ersonville (1998) - The Continent (1984) - Lane Avenue Shopping Center (2008)- Lennox Town Center (1998) - Northland (1964) - Indian Mound Mall (1997) - River Valley Mall (1995) - Westland Mall (1969)- Eastland Mall (1967) - Worthington Mall (1992)

CityCentered 10 - is dispersed throughout the city at moderate densities, there exist many large-scale dense shopping pockets. (Figure.03) In the 1980’s as the city grew steadily in population, retail often surged ahead of the developers’ mantra, in which “retail follows rooftops,” and pushed

Dunham-Jones said big-box enclosed malls have become a dying breed as more shop- pers prefer going to shop at strip malls or “lifestyle” open-air malls.

http://money.cnn. com/2008/12/17/news/economy/ retail_wasteland/index.htm

CityCentered 11 City Center was a Mall

[Columbus City Center Mall; (1989) opening year line up]

CityCentered 12

City Center is a building City Center is a of 1.5 million square feet. of 1.5 million square feet. of 1.5 million square feet. Construction began In downtown Columbus Ohio, adjacent to the Ohio State Capital Construction began on it in 1988 and was Building, historic Ohio Theater, and along the multi-modal transit on it in 1987 and completed in the corridor, High Street, there sits a building on a 9.8 acre lot: four was completed in summer of 1989. stories tall; thousands of yards of concrete, and countless CMU and the summer of 1989. brick blocks; three entry ways and a window count that you can After 20 years in the Blight Following a gang tally on your own fi ngers and toes; spaces for 210 shops, restaurants, industry, the life of a slaying in 1994 the and services; an attached garage of 4,000 spaces, with nearby surface mall on this site has parking to facilitate another 1,000; 400 million dollars initial capital perception of the mall passed on. investment in 1988, and additional amounts in updates and repairs. was permanently In its lifetime the building facilitated millions of people, Resource marred. From this thousands of activities and hundreds of shops and venues; peak sales The remaining stur- event, coupled with in 1996, and 90% vacancy by 2005. It now sits dark and quiet, save for dy structure, while tenant closings the the occasional curious visitor, awaiting the wave of redevelopment plagued with some mall survived, yet soon to break on downtown. But the city faces a challenge: fi xing basic aesthetic/per- declined steadily the malfunctioning parts and preserving the usable ones to make sonality problems, is until in 2008 it fully this a viable transition. still [young/viable] City Center is a closed after nearly 20 How can the site of this super-regional mall, now empty and ready to begin the years in operation building, positively improve and reinforce the development mode(s) next chapter in its ex- of downtown Columbus, while supplementing the culture and istence; to discard this Today it is now being economics of the redeveloping city? After decades of disinvestment structure, casting it in the surrounding urban infrastructure, what can be done to removed to make into a landfi ll indefi - prepare the city for returning populations, and in what form can nitely would be waste way for a golden new this site aide the transition? This thesis is the investigation of this opportunity: problem; an uncovering of the parties involved, the methods and on a deplorable scale. motivations in which our cities prepare for shifts in economics, The old dead structure urban structure, culture and the built environment. City Center is an ex- will be removed and perience and oppor- the slate wiped clean tunity waiting to be to make way for the realized. new Columbus Commons

[City Center logo]

CityCentered 13 the Building Lipstick-on-a-pig & other colorful euphemisms >Destination shopping center (CYA Time of Death p.23). primary user. Further tourism. It responded The overall complex (Figure.04), including the umbilically targeting a mobile and to the deterioration attached Lazarus department store, brought the total square footage fl ighty consumer base of adjacent malls and up to 3.2 million; also of note is the combined fi ve-thousand parking that readily adjusts liv- drastically increased spaces facilitated on or adjacent to the site (four-thousand of which ing patterns based on retailing options for fi t into another umbilically linked three story garage at the south convenience, real or residents and commut- edge of the site). perceived, and which ers alike. The building itself is a three-story structure with another is at the mercy of en- The City Center Mall two-levels of parking situated directly below its footprint. It has ergy costs [oil/auto], is also made great strides three major public entry points on-grade: High street, Rich street a failure of planning up in bringing people, and via the Capitol Square Plaza shops. It occupies one city block front. energy, and income [tax-base] back into an already declining downtown.

Figure.04 [City Center aerial]

CityCentered 14 >bridge Grand gestures? In a show of Columbus fl avored “progress”, Mayor Coleman pushed to have the bridge over High Street dismantled. The necessity and use of funds (approximately $3 million) to take down a structure ,that was not impeding/harming anything, is morally debatable; especially at a time when city defi cits are reaching record highs, and the ledgers cut police, fi re, park staff , city programs, and homeless shelters out of the picture. Figure.05a [the bridge over High street; circa 1992] linking the upper fl oor of City Center to the helped connect yet an- adjacent Lazarus structure (Figure.05a-b). The Rich Street entry is other anchor store to also accessible at grade and on the third fl oor via a bridge linking the the City Center line four-thousand car garage; the Plaza entry and other tertiary service up: Lazarus, a fi xture in >bridge doors enter the structure at less axial points (Figure.07). downtown since 1851. Link;Cave;Scab The bridge allowed Early on this was mall-goers unobstruct- simultaneously a symbol of ed access to the depart- linkage and convenience, ment store, without a gate; later an unintended gauntlet of apprehension ever needing to go out and anxiety to pedestrians into the elements. due to homeless people and panhandlers clustering for shelter; when the mall was in decline it was a cave oppressing the sidewalk below and blocking light; more recently a symbolic piñata for change, and today it has been dismantled and removed leaving an ugly scab on both the Lazarus and City Center buildings. Figure.05b [the bridge scab on City Center/High street; March 2009]

CityCentered 15 sort Applying a style of the inwardly-focused suburban variety. The exterior, save for the Fenestration Following traditional entry points mentioned earlier, is without openings of any sort>. If windows are the European models the 50% of the building’s edges either contact or face service alleyways, architectural “eyes to building edges facing the other half (some 85,000 sq.ft.) lack any architectural articulation the soul” this building the street/sidewalk are aside from courses of monotonous brick and precast panelling; is a emotionless hulk. the most public areas, more than half of these public visually accessible edges were actually >value the “faces” visually en- meant to remain unseen [the Centrum p.37 - fi gure.C]. These concrete tice and invite the shop- block “raw edges” were originally intended to become interior walls Shininess! per into the store1. As following the anticipated addition of the fourth anchor store (CYA Like a fi sh to a lure, humans Centrum p.36); this tenant was never located and as a result the 1.7 are drawn to the Shiny; shini- you move deeper into ness literally relates to the re- the building, where acre space (once occupied by a remnant of the site’s previous life - fl ective properties of surfaces there is less natural The Centrum Ice Rink) remained empty with blank walls. (LaBonte, 22). The impor- light and visual acces- City Center was designed with a focus, in terms of quality of tance of this phenomena is sibility for passersby, materials and complexity in architectural detailing, upon the interior tri-fold in retail environments (Figure.06):(1) The refl ective ivate uses are as- closed-off pedestrian avenue; this in many ways followed suit with more pr property (mirrors in this case) signed, such as storage. suburban shopping mall models which were built in contextless allows spaces to appear larger Often the livelihood of fi elds and had no urban forms to respond to. The appropriateness than their true physical di- a store is based on the of this building type is debatable in general, but when this suburban mensions. (2) Mall environ- curb appeal provided typology is located within an urban district whose shopping model ments not only sell goods but is more aligned with . (chrome, glass, stainless steel, 1 Wall, 24 water, etc) help multiply the visual appearance of activity - Making spaces more attrac- tive to the visitor. (3) The Im- age, beyond the literal “im- age” captured and projected; culturally Shiny objects have a contextual wealth attached to them; consider diamonds, precious metals, pools, foun- tains and displays of water, crystal chandeliers and other objects that diff ract, split and refl ect light. In the Hall of Mir- rors at the palace of Versailles, the magnifi cent polish of the mirrors and surfaces projected an image of wealth, power and splendour upon King Louis XIV’s subjects. Malls apply the same tactics to suggest wealth and success (both of themselves and their clientele). They adorn their public spaces with materials Figure.06 [Center forum - Shiny incarnate!!] that speak to this context.

CityCentered 16 >gravitational pull of the inwardly focused mall. Rather than augmenting the eas of the building were growth in downtowns existing commercial stock, with its respective spaces, customers, not often used by the - Providing options and usage and fi nancial exchange with businesses in the area, City Center public at large. opportunity within a eradicated the already suff ering businesses by drawing in customers single dense locality. with a luxurious promise. The placement of City Center at this location depressed the surrounding area’s retail while it elevated its own status and 1 Kavilanz, Parija B. “It’s do-or-die time for malls.” increased the values of adjacent offi ce spaces and tax bases; sadly, the eff ects were short term. The mall’s design redirected pedestrians in CNN.com 24 Nov. 2008 >one-stop-shopping and through it (Figure.07) - this was especially attractive in winter Big bases with a months and in ugly weather conditions. As the surrounding shops and stores lost customers due to a lack of pedestrian activity outside plethora of options the confi nes of the mall, the already skeptical views of downtown Malls, with their pleth- Columbus as an active center were heightened and proven in this ora of options and vari- self-fulfi lling prophecy. With slippages in reputation, offi ces began ety of goods can squeeze to relocate slowly from the center to newer suburban establishments, individual retailers and which off ered shorter commutes to their suburban workers. small operations out of The inside of the structure is in near-perfect condition, due existence; similar re- in part to the short lifespan of the program and the exceptional sults can be readily seen eff orts of the maintenance and support staff s. With thousands of in the marginalizing ef- linear feet of chrome detailing, tens of thousands of square feet in fects of Wal-Mart stores glass wood and metal fi nishes, and hundreds of thousands of cubic on local businesses and feet in structural concrete and steel, the site supports a combined economies.

CityCentered 17 enclosed area of 27 million cubic feet. The site is structurally sound and nearly water tight ( a sprinkler head defect in late 2008 left water stains on several upper level soffi ts - it was promptly repaired). The major circulation forms a single avenue 30’-50’ wide up the center of the building; the overall shape forms a dogleg with the major forum space (fi gure.08a-b) at its bend (CYA the Walkthrough p.38). As is the case with many malls, the interior is designed in such a way as to facilitate shopping as a form of entertainment in itself1. While loitering or “people-watching” if you will, is strictly forbidden as outlined by the City Center Code of Conduct (Code of Conduct p.27; Thou shalt not... p.28) drawing people to this place simply to see and be seen is a crucial part of the survival of the mall. The hope is that once mall owners get you in the door buying becomes irresistible. In supporting the interaction of people with other people, products and their wallets, the mall’s design is carried out in a way >theatrics that fosters the necessary theatrics>. The three fl oors of passageways Design like you are perforated and give way to the type of cross-views (horizontal and know a damn The vertical) that draw the eye; this strategy simultaneously helps with blind application of the lighting, as the walkway perforations follow the placement and style leads to nonsensi- size of the skylights in the roof above (Figure.09). In other instances cal distribution of de- 1 Harvard Design School: Guide to Shopping 2002 tailing and cultural ref- erencing. Further, this shallow Disneyfi cation of culture devalues the original, and our un- derstanding of it, to a cartoonish level.

Figure.08a [Jam-packed at its grand opening; 18 AUG 1989] Figure.08b [Hanson performs; 21 NOV 1997]

CityCentered 18 the corridors balloon in size and provide adequate room for other programs; these spaces support dining, or multilevel amphitheater seating (Figure.08a). Each of these forum spaces behave very theatrically, like the grand stairs of a Parisian opera house, where the elite descend elegantly holding the gaze of their subjects below; only in this opera shoppers descend metal and glass clad escalators and elevators. >proportions These controlled moments also contain the highest Value Engineer- concentrations of material richness and complex detailing in the ing A military term building, more than found on the exterior, along the corridors from World War II, (Figure.09), or in the shops. The scale and proportions> of store fronts value engineering was . aircraft until it had just European models enough substance to fl y. because of nostalgic Applied to the develop- connotation, and the ment of the shopping timelessness of design. mall array, it describes an attitude in which every possible value inherent in a project is reduced to maximize a single one: profi t. [Techentin p.46)]

>spending Powers of sugges- tion Ever notice the intoxicating smell of Cinnabon rolls as you fi rst enter a mall, only to later fi nd the actual stand buried in the mid- dle of the mall? Nearly every detail of the retail environment has been considered, from the music to the smells to the lack of readily vis- ible clocks. (CYA Thou shat not... p.28) Figure.09 [Interior skylight/walkway notches]

CityCentered 19 Grey Fields, Ghost Boxes...... And other things that go ‘bump’ in the night. >important black per regional mall from Before discussing possible remediations for this growing its town. Greyfi elds are Pollution and trend of empty retail square footage, an understanding of the economically obsoles- Black Gold conditions which produce them is important>; while the criteria cent malls and other The GDP often counts for defi ning greyfi elds is relatively clear, the conditions which led sites that off er large in- pollution as a double to their existence is a bit more controversial. One might step way fi ll redevelopment op- gain; Superfund clean- back, aiming for a big-picture, holistic target, and fi nger our cultural portunities without the up of toxic sites is slated values as the antagonist; that we rely on a market in which continual contamination found to cost hundreds of bil- competition, growth, renewal and production is crucial if not on brownfi eld sites. lions of dollars over the entirely compulsory. Economically the very way our Gross Domestic (Sobel, 20) next thirty years, which Product [GDP] is structured is a point of debate in the way that it will be added to the takes money exchanged/spent (whether it be to build a school or GDP. Since the GDP fi rst remediate an oil spill) and tacks it up in a positive way, labelled as added the economic ac- “growth” and pushes our economy into the black>. Others project tivity that generated that that our infrastructural and real estate guidelines, as mandated by waste, it creates the il- the government, reinforce this “growth” by structuring favorable lusion that pollution is loans, tax incentives, credits and rebates to the aid of developers2. a double benefi t for the economy. This is how The result is an American landscape which is over-retailed3. the Exxon Valdez oil spill led to an increase in the GDP.

http://www.rprogress.org/ sustainability_indicators/ 1 Price 5, 14 genuine_progress_indica- 2 Tetchentin, 36 tor.htm 3 Kavilanz, Parija B. “The Dead Mall Problem.” CNN.com 17 Dec. 2008, money ed.. 3 May 2009 .

CityCentered 20 Recent events have further exacerbated the problematic state of the US retail industry in addition to direct competition between chains and regions. September 11 impacted the economy as a whole in ways that analysts will be investigating for decades; the follow-up US military insurgencies into Afghanistan and later invasion of Iraq

CityCentered 21 mall Trendsetters chains. They invest enormous amounts of money into advertising, and typically carry a large following [customer base]; anchors are Gruen evolved IKEA is relatively The original motiva- extremely attractive for mall developers. If planned correctly, given the young in US the anchor tions from Victor Gruen health of said retailing giants, there are almost guaranteed customer market and has situat- are still strong in theory populations present in the mall>. These results and instability undesirable, results>. These results often impact other retailers Implied neglect When malls begin to within the mall - alluding that if a retailing super-power couldn’t The debate about bro- fall from public favor, make it in the given economic climate, how could a smaller, less ken windows typically owners must work to well-off company stand a chance? When the lights of an anchor revolves around graf- attract new tenants, store go dark,

CityCentered 22

Time of death: >empty

CityCentered 23 On the hunt for Marcus Brutus... Locating City Center’s assassins. In understanding the mall’s failure, critical analysis off ers us two lessons at this point. The fi rst is one of hindsight bias; that because City Center is no longer functioning by economic standards, and others are faring well, some liberties are taken in assuming a 1:1 transfer of spending from A to B; and upon brief analysis this seems fairly sound. Without the increase of capital, or the expansion of spending power in a given area [either via immigration or the arrival of new industry] the market can only allow for so much expansion while still remaining healthy. A colorful analogy; Imagine a herd of cows. This herd has a certain amount of available consumable meat. When only two vultures use the group for sustenance they are relatively well-fed and happy, as there is more than enough to sustain the scavengers. Now picture the same herd with the two vultures, but word has spread and every so often a new vulture arrives. These new arrivals are typically youthful and more aggressive; also noteworthy is the increasing sluggishness, and decreased competitiveness of the older vultures. Eventually these old, fat vultures are nearly entirely unable to maintain their positions and they are excluded by the arrivals of newer hungrier vultures. The scenarios malls face follow a similar tone - These retail organisms [vultures] draw sustenance from the population [herd]. All retail centers age, and their owners, partly due to their comfort with safe investments and unwillingness to modify a working formula, allow their properties to slide out of competitive positions. By the time a real problem is identifi ed- that the center is being beaten by younger more competitive counterparts1 - it is often too late and too expensive to bring the property back into the game. When too many shopping centers vie for a fi xed income pool [meat], all suff er and often a form of cannibalism arises; leaving all parties malnourished.

The second lesson aff orded is awareness of our limitations with problem solving. This is a concept explored in great detail in a book titled The Logic of Failure, by Dietrich Dönner. In it the author investigates humans and their ability (tendency, really) to break-up problems into manageable chunks, so they can be more easily understood and addressed. In doing so the author argues that understanding becomes linear and binary; this is at the expense

1 Bodzin, 78

CityCentered 24 of inadvertently disregarding the impact of and on other complex systems. City Center Mall is a product of such thinking. It was >internally responsive a gargantuan answer to the statement “there is no luxury retail The perils of downtown,” “no place to spend during the work week;” the product is retail outlets downtown, and spending in copious amounts. making assump- This model ignores several critical factors. One: the target tions Even design audience and the context/conditions they operated under. As soon components like the ing into consideration mall exteriors: and largely disregarded the needs of the of surrounding businesses - as per design there are “Shopping-center exteri- and their reliance on pedestrian foot traffi c and walk-in customers very few windows: 1) ors should be simple and (CYA Gravitational pull p.17). they permit excessive reserved - introversion and amounts of sunlight enclosure were essential for Also assumed was an intense increase in the value and usage into the building which suburban commercial cent- of adjacent commercial space downtown. But because City Center ers to overcome the “vulgar- Mall was without

CityCentered 25 into the newer developing malls; this strategy allowed them to deploy newer models of their store/brand. In these new iterations they had a higher degree of fl exibility in applying the most current retailing trends (this impacts everything from display type and size to ceiling heights). The arrival and expansion of the suburban malls, with the aide and support of Columbus City Council, the City of Columbus Planning Department, Capitol South Urban Redevelopment and others, City Center Mall quickly found itself outside of the favor of society.

Figure.10a [interior extroversion]

Figure.10b [exterior introversion]

CityCentered 26

[City Center Code of Conduct, posters located at major entry points] CityCentered 27 Thou shalt not... private property Mall development is How about a DMV, or maybe a grocery store? What about a church1, nearly always funded Getting there? a street performer? A gun shop or a marriage counsellor? Chances While private dollars by private developers. are the answer is no. Malls are very specifi c about how interior envi- For a public entity to pay for the mall struc- ronments are designed and controlled, and they [by law] have every ture itself, it is public fund, and draw numer- right to be as they are . There is careful thought ous private entities to a dollars that are used and consideration put into every level of mall detailing from the spe- to construct or build site, is readily seen as a cifi c aromas at entry points to the ambient music in diff erent areas, superfl uous public ex- up the necessary infra- to food placement with respect to environmental elements. There is structure for accessibil- penditure, and misuse little that slips past the scrutinizing eye of the mall developer. of tax monies. ity; this includes but is But why no post offi ces, DMV’s or other bizarre one-off not limited to: arterial . 2) Far more often that not, The possible return in about their brand as small individual businesses and public services cannot aff ord rents their product does; this tax dollars is often too asked for by the mall and still turn a profi t that will keep themselves tempting to pass up for mentality heavily af- afl oat at that location; on occasion you will fi nd that unique stores fects where stores will municipalities, and so don’t have a large enough customer base to compete in the mall en- the improvements are migrate to/from and vironment. for how long. readily undertaken and Another issue plaguing mall environments has to do with carried out. interrelations between retail chains; in many ways stores behave mall Silencio! services carry stigmas [or “A” scarlet letter] that prohibit them from Social groups “In an important 1980 locating within the walls of a mall>; this can be attributed to their Some retailers stipulate case, Pruneyard v. Rob- relatively low profi t margins, overall business reputations or accom- in their lease contracts ins, the court upheld panying customer base demographics, any of which may be regarded that they will not allow the general notion that as disreputable. These stores often include but are not limited to: “disreputable retailers” citizens have no First advance paycheck or payday loan offi ces, pawn shops, liquor stores, within a certain prox- Amendment rights to strip clubs, army navy stores, temp agencies, convenient stores, job imity; if the mall does express themselves in resource centers, tattoo parlors, or adult content retailers. not uphold this lease privately owned shop- item, tenants can break ping centers.1 “ lease without penalty. 1 The Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota is the only mall (at the time 1 Lithwick of writing) in the US to contain a marriage chapel that you can be legally wed in: The Chapel of Love; http://www.chapelofl ove.com/

CityCentered 28 Excerpted from: http://www.slate.com/id/2079885/ Why Can Shopping Malls Limit Free Speech? By Dahlia Lithwick Posted Monday, March 10, 2003, at 6:01 PM ET

Why don’t citizens have the same free speech rights in shopping centers that they do on city streets and parks?

Because malls are private property, and our constitutional rights are triggered only when the government (and not a private citizen) tries to limit our freedoms. As malls expand to include outdoor boulevards, movie theaters, and coff ee houses, many contend that we should have free expres- sion rights in these “private forums.” Their argument is that malls play the same role city streets and town squares once played in our democracy. The fi rst cases asserting free speech rights in privately owned shop- ping centers were successful. In the 1946 case of Marsh v. Alabama, the Su- preme Court held that the business district of a privately owned “company town” was the same as a public street for First Amendment purposes, fi nding that “the more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the stat- utory and constitutional rights of those who use it.” A 1968 case—Amalgamat- ed Food Employees Union v. Logan Valley Plaza—held that a privately owned mall was the “functional equivalent” of the business district in Marsh.

Mall managers and others Excerpted from “Antidotes to Sprawl” by Kevin Mattson (p.39) Free speech advocates be- arguing for the primacy of in Sprawl and Public Space; Redressing the Mall lieve that since cities and private property rights re- local governments help to ject views of malls as public The tension between malls as public spaces has been addressed in legal de- support malls in a number spaces by saying that public bates about the public funding or incentives provided to mall developers. of ways (i.e. Taxation in- monies used were “for the What these court cases make clear is that mall owners want shopping malls centives and development sole purpose of stimulating to remain dedicated to one purpose only - The safe facilitation of private con- grants) malls are not only economic development;” sumption. private, but also, by neces- the mall has more than re- sity, public. paid dues through tourism “A publically funded private revenues. What the public is left with are large areas of land devoid entity is a contradiction in of the mix and options necessary to sustain the diverse needs of the terms.” population. Malls do not have reputations for providing necessity items but rather superfl uous items which, as is highlighted in diffi - cult economic times, are of debatable importance in everyday life. If malls contain true public space, utilities, services (of every color, disposition, and income level), and residential components in addi- tion to retail, they would likely be referred to as towns.

CityCentered 29 SoapboxS b

To the Landfi ll: “-neither created nor destroyed-” but while we’re here...

If you wait long enough it becomes socially acceptable to have forgotten the things your high school science teachers constantly nagged at you to learn. Einstein’s E=mc,2 New- ton’s laws of something-or-other, momentum, waves, inertia, entropy, all misplaced in your memory, along with where you left your keys and what you had for dinner last night. Luck- ily for us the principles of these laws are some which we constantly come into contact with, and are accordingly reinforced through repetition; regardless of whether we remember who aff orded us the formal descriptions. For example, while standing at the curb of an eight-lane arterial road, poised to cross, we consider the following: we know that if a 2000 lb car travel- ling at high speed perpendicular to our 160 lb body’s direction of motion were to “contact” us, the inertial energy of the car will drastically overshadow our body’s will to reach the other side of the road; the momentum is transferred by the bumper/windshield and dissipated via our person. From the curb we’re not thinking about Newton, or apples, but are considering the conceptual outcomes of these laws in a car vs. pedestrian scenario; pavement, hospitaliza- tion, and if we’re lucky, marker signed casts. While some rules directly impact us, and we are cognizant of their outcomes, other laws impact us in ways and on scales beyond our immediate perception, or even lifetime in some cases; it is to our extreme detriment to forget or ignore the following: Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794), in 1789 developed the law of conservation of matter; to cut to the chase it says that matter can nei- ther be created or destroyed, only changed.1 Of all the people allowed to forget this, designers, builders, and planners should not be aff orded the luxury; the people whose daily decisions directly impact mate- rial production, exchange and change. Day after day trash is crammed into waste cans, garbage trucks whisk away your refuse, derelict cars are towed off , and buildings are torn down and stuff ed into trucks - a responsible eye doesn’t In Columbus Ohio stop watching. Truth is most people don’t con- the material all sider the “fi nal destination” of material once it goes to the Mt. leaves their hands and enters the waste disposal SWACO landfi ll Figure.A [“changed” matter from curb to landfi ll] system. just ten miles out- It wasn’t long ago that cities actually used to grow up side the city. “It’s (not out like we’re used to these days). This growth was often the result of for a good cause...” waste accruing in the streets. Without a system in place to cart the trash I often sadly joke, out of sight, piles formed. In response plank walkways were built atop “that ski resort these; the trash got higher as did the walks, until eventually cities had isn’t going to build risen whole levels [in these cities the notion of material consumption = itself in this fl at waste was directly comprehensible because it stayed in your yard; people made eff orts to reuse items as much as possible] Today we, middle-class landscape”. -Corey DiRutigliano 1 http://www.chemheritage.org/classroom/chemach/forerunners/lavoisier.html

CityCentered 30 SoapboxS b

To theh Landfi dfill ll: “-neither created nor destroyed-” but while we’ree here... America, are unaware of the garbage problem we face because we have developed systems to make it someone else’s problem. Out of sight out of mind as they say. At some point these sys- tems will fail and we, along with much of the rest of the world, will fi nd ourselves in the same situation we were in centuries ago, only now with a feverish appetite for consumption. In the building industry we should not only be concerned with waste but also produc- tion. When we decide to produce a building we are making a lot of decisions beyond what actu- ally shows up on site. The energy needed to run the digging equipment to pull up the gravel; the power to smash aggregate into forms acceptable for concrete production; the power to collect, run, and pump water to the factory for mixture in the cement; the gasoline drilled up in Alaska, piped to the southern US for refi nement and tanked to an Ohio gas station to fuel up the mixer truck so it can drive the concrete to the site; the uranium mined in Canada2 sent to an Ohio processing fi eld in Portsmith Ohio, then a reactor near Cleveland Ohio, which is transmitted via high-tension wires [at a 25% loss in power during transmission] to power the cranes used on -site in lifting the concrete from mixers up to the third fl oor. This incredibly complex, twisted, and intertwined system >Embodied energy is de- all contributes to a system of measure called Embodied Energy3> of fi ned as the available energy that was used in the work of a material. So when you see a building being torn down it’s impor- making a product. Embodied tant to consider all of the previous steps it took to produce, cart, and energy is an accounting meth- assemble each component on site. odology which aims to fi nd the sum total of the energy A fair warning necessary for an entire prod- Movies like “Mad Max”, or “Waterworld” hypothesize uct lifecycle. This lifecycle about post apocalyptic conditions that reduce everyone to scaven- includes raw material extrac- gers, microwaves become no more useful than cabinets, refrigera- tion, transport,[1] manufac- tors become armour plating for attack vehicles, urine is recycled ture, assembly, installation, disassembly, deconstruction into potable water, prisons become the safest strongholds, the inno- and/or decomposition. vation goes on. You scoff but this mentality isn’t so outrageous. In a time with economies collapsing, exponentially escalating energy costs, and building industry freezes to name a few, a scavenger mentality couldn’t hurt - if it means drawing more longevity out of our existing, on-site, readily available resources (Burns p.298). In the case of buildings, at once subject to and criticised by style and functionality, our consumer behavior often regards their existence and subsequent disposal as slightly more in- volved than throwing away an old wheelbarrow. If the money is there to remove it, and pro- duce something deemed more “useful” at the moment, more often that not there are people and groups willing to facilitate. All previous investments of material and energy, taxes and labor (ironically all of which were at the time driven by a similar “useful” intent), have not only been negated but also wasted; overcome by a more powerful, contemporary ego. The dump trucks arrive, as do the wrecking crews, and just like that the material is gone to someone else’s back- yard and in a signifi cantly less useful form only to be replaced by more material more later on.

2 http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf49.html 3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_energy

CityCentered 31 SoapboxS b

To theh Landfi dfill ll: “-neither created nor destroyed-” but while we’ree here...

Many buildings, especially those that are not aff orded the luxury of historical impor- tance, are subject to wrecking ball without much second thought. Unexceptional buildings don’t have constituents fi ghting to protect, reuse or even salvage them. Little thought is given to make the most of the existing embodied energy on-site, or the material and labor invest- ment already made. No one fi ghts to keep programs that cannot be accommodated in the exist- ing building at bay and further prohibit the use of demolition as a solution. There is no policy for keeping material out of the landfi ll and in operation for a minimum amount of time. Our behavior says: We throwaway because we can and there’s nothing that’s going to stop us. There is no plant or animal group shouting an equivalent “no taxation with out representation,” to keep us from dumping out short-sighted planning decisions into their environments. There is no policy that takes into account net losses in wasted material when a building is scraped and a new one is put in place; our understanding of this removal and addition is limited to a fi nan- cial one, and we consider buildings once formally paid off to be good-as-dead and ready to be replaced.

At the risk of sounding green - our environment, Even LEED (the foremost pro- culture and society need a voice to remind us the longev- moter of responsible building ity we should hold our investments and actions to, some- practices in the US) is without one to enforce responsibilty and liability, and ensure that means of coping/confronting we behave in a manner acceptable for all parties involved existing structures, their cor- in all environments. relating massive amounts of waste/resource, responsibly. Salvaging or reusing 95% of your building is worth a (1) point; in the same breath a LEED Accredited Profession- al will tell you that if you use low off -gassing (VOC’s) carpet you can get another point; and if you’re really determined and you decide to designate one of your thousands of park- ing spaces for a low-emissions vehicle, yes that’s right, you are the proud recipient of yet another point. Only 23 more to go for certifi cation.

Figure.B [City Center site under construction; ca. Winter 1987]

CityCentered 32 SoapboxS b

Shopping delight: The intelligence of malls. At the height of the Industrial Age US cities were largely crowded, dirty and dense. A major- ity of the population lived near factories and other dirty industry that functioned round the clock, as there was no formal planning or zoning in place; living conditions were often abys- mal and little progress was made in the decades leading up to World War II. Following the war, as a result of many factors, Americans spread into the suburbs taking housing with them and leaving industry largely in the city (near train yards, waterways and ports). Facilitated by many advances in technology people lived in these new suburbs yet still worked and carried out their shopping in the cities. Eventually commerce began to follow populations out, and in a form largely created by one Victor Gruen. Mr. Gruen, as history has come to attest, is the father of the modern shopping mall. Initially Gruen designed his commercial retail spaces to be “compact, multi- functional spaces serving [the] new suburban communities”. In addition he tried to consoli- date low-density suburban populations into zones where groups could participate together in “strolling atmospheres.1” Beyond constructing spaces in These design elements his malls that facilitate density [while all worked to substanti- providing wares, and services] these ate Gruen’s own claims new shopping centers became home that the regional shop- for modernism2, art, and gardens. ping center must also Some of the earliest designs3 includ- support social, cultural ed: auditoria, club rooms, restaurants, and civic functions. infi rmaries and day-care facilities. These shopping models also helped bring ameni- ties to far fl ung neighborhoods and reduced the necessity for suburbanites to make trips into the city, further taxing urban infrastructure and resources. The suburban shopping mall provided for the suburbanite what the city could no longer off er; culture and spending in a single nearby location. Additionally US cities saw growth in infrastruc- ture and tax bases as a result. Because of the sheer scale of the shopping mall and the number of lives they impacted, their creation and construction required collaboration on the part of architects, engineers, real estate brokers, inves- tors, city planners and politicians; they truly facilitated an intensity and level of interdisciplinary interaction that was not commonplace prior.

Northland Shopping Center; Wall, p.81 1 Wall, 85 Figure.A [ ] 2 Wall, 89 (design comparable in aesthetic for Mies van der Rohe, and Wright became accessible overnight to a national shopping audience) 3 Wall, 86 (Northland Shopping Center outside Detroit, MI)

CityCentered 33 The Schism; ... falling down

4 February 2009: A year and four months after Columbus Downtown De- velopment Corp. & Capitol South acquired the City Center property, and six months before the building’s two-decade anniversary, city offi cials release the site’s planned future on the front page of The Columbus Dispatch newspaper:

Figure.A [The Columbus Dispatch; Columbus Commons plan]

CityCentered 34 The plan as released in print, and in subsequent press conferences >greenspace jointly held by the City of Columbus City Council, Mayors offi ce, There seems to be a rev- Columbus Downtown Development Corporation (CDDC) and erence for green space in Capitol South Redevelopment Corporation, comes under the project cities bordering on the re- ligious. But green space is title “Columbus Commons”. The multi- phase redevelopment plan only useful to the extent includes but is not limited to: the removal of the existing building that it functions well in above grade, and preservation of the two-levels of below g parking. the urban fabric. If you take two blocks and grass Following the demolition, the addition of a 9.8 acre greenspace> atop them over like this, what the garage over a nine- you are really doing is just month period. institutionalizing a vacant The fi rst phase has lot. an anticipated price tag -Aaron M. Renn http://theurbanophile.blogs- of 16-20 million, and pot.com/search/label/Colum- because planning was bus technically in place prior to the fi nancial >greenspace crash in 2008, Capitol “In the context of con- South strongly believes temporary cultural con- that it can readily ac- fusion, “green space” or quire federal funds to “open space” essentially help defray the cost of means build nothing. demolition and park It is a rhetorical device procurement; the me- for putting city land in dia terminology for cold storage in the only this type of project is currently acceptable form, “shovel-ready”. that is, covered by grass The second and third and shrubs, aka nature. phases are slated to This happens because we occur by 2019, incre- have lost confi dence in our mentally adding 2/3 ability to produce build- of the original amount ing worthy of our spirits of square footage back and aspirations... A large on-site. (CYA Sleeping fraction of the public with the Enemy p.39) has decided categori- cally that urbanism is a menace to the human spirit and therefore that the only acceptable use of vacant city land is for installation of the puta- tive antidote to the city: Figure.B [Columbus Commons phasing plan] nature.” (Kunstler, 214)

CityCentered 35 SoapboxS b

the Centrum: Land Banking in the ass-end of nowhere. >Soap box: From the start City Center was a tripod of a dog, nervously awaiting the arrival of its fourth leg. Unfortunately the ending of this tale is not Disney-friendly, it’s much more to the tune of Brothers Grimm, and so long story short: the dog never got its leg and died a slow horrible death that lasted eight years. Just this past February the City of Columbus, in their infi nite developer/consulting wisdom, decided to put ‘Gimpy’ down. At the time of City Center’s completion it was actually only partially fi nished. The mall’s owners designed the mall with the eventual intent of having a fourth anchor tenant (anchor; typically defi ned as 30k sq.ft. minimum of department store) join the team later on, and fi ll in the vacant rectangle in the south-west corner of the site (fi gure.A). As a form of land banking (def) the developers left a remnant from the sites previous life in place, the Centrum Ice rink (fi gure.B); additionally the walls facing the Centrum were left blank - void of penetrations or articulation- as they were soon to become (fi ngers-crossed!) interior walls anyway. Years passed, and the fourth leg never showed. The mall owners grew anxious and, as a result of their fi dgeting, they removed the ice rink, both because of concerns over liability, and to try to make the site more enticing for developers. The owners’ consolation prize to the now barren ass-end of this lot, was the commissioning of a muralist to put something beautiful and inspiring on the massively blank walls (something pretty for people to look at while they drive passed); the result is a two-tone rendition of the Downtown Columbus skyline (fi gure.C). Should you, for whatever reason, fi nd yourself standing in the space, the mural is striking (if only because its on gigantic 50-foot tall concrete block walls - 34,000 sq.ft total)... until you move your eyes up a few degrees and see the real Columbus skyline in all its Technicolor glory.

[There is nothing less productive than pointing fi ngers at this point, but what the hell, lets add insult to injury] For twenty-years the blank walls of this space stared back at High street, the most busy economic artery in all of Columbus, with dead eyes; a continual reminder of the unattractive nature (fi guratively and physically) of the site Figure.A [City Center with Centrum lot; AUG 2006]

CityCentered 36 SoapboxS b

theh CCentrum: Land Banking in the ass-end of nowhere. and downtown. It reminded the people of Columbus that downtown has been and still is the result of negligent short-sightedness and disinvestment with its vast empty surface parking lots, and ghost-town like night and weekend habitation; Columbus Downtown the broken child of dead-beat political and economic parents. Luckily for the mall goer, all of the really “valuable” items were on the inside, and accessible without much walking around out in the “open”; the shopping faithful only came into contact with the cold stare of the Centrum as they peeled-out of the parking garages and headed back to their distant neighborhoods. What would have become of City Center had the owners admitted fault earlier on, and turned more engaging programs loose in the empty green pit? Would the city have been 10 or 15 years into a relationship with a programmed (yet open) space downtown? Or would it be yet another misinvestment in a long history of missed opportunities and failed projects? Perhaps this could have been the crucial missing- link argument in the Public vs. Private debates surrounding shopping center; but one thing is for certain, from now on we should take the more time in understanding our choices for the future and their long-term implications and impact on collateral systems. (CYA Marcus Brutus p.24)

Figure.B [Centrum ice rink] Figure.C [Centrum skyline mural]

CityCentered 37 the Walk through: stumbling through O.P.P. (Other Peoples Property)

When the hand landed on my shoulder I jumped in surprise.

Not the terrifi ed surprise you get when you’ve been startled by something, but more the anxious excitement of fi nding a real live person [albeit a mall security guard] in this place. What are they securing exactly? Is it the Sbarro pizza lamps? Or maybe the sad-looking naked mannequins? Perhaps they’re protecting that one guy I saw walk through here twenty minutes ago to on the way to his car form the capitol building? So “no pictures” she says, and I laugh; it’s still pri- vate space I suppose, despite the lack of anything private anymore. 97% of the shops have left and the lady in the dance studio (one of the four remaining) Thirty seconds down on the world’s slowest hydraulic elevator is getting ready to roll-up her mats for the last time. to the basement and I’m facing a tempered glass pane with a hole I’m encouraged to go speak with the management cut in the center; from here my luck changes. It might have been if I want any images from the interior, I oblige. that I combed my hair that day or that the entire staff in the win- dowless lower levels was suff ering from some form of stimuli deprivation; I can see that after years of waving goodbye to ten- ants and keeping a steady eye on empty space can be numbing.

I speak with Karen, and then Frank, the assistant manager and manager respectively, and after a while I realize that they are happy to see that I’m not there asking for a handout or a job or spare change, and that I’m not a developer with a wrecking ball in my back pocket, just a curious student, approaching the mall like any inquisitive person would if they had just seen an alien ship touchdown in their back yard, camera in hand. With that I’m given the thumbs up and released into the mall. It’s like I remember it from last time, only more people. Its nearing rush hour. I started near the garage at the south edge of the mall and wander north, against the erratic stream of people heading to the garage from which I had just come. The scene fell somewhere comfortably between a zombie movie and a real live version of chutes and ladders, only the crisscrossing escalators are permanently blocked by “slippery when wet signs”, the stairs sporadically blocked, and the glassy elevators seemed to be playing a game of tag with one another just to keep busy.

I continued my stroll upstream past the blank faces of individuals numbed by a 9-5 of offi ce work, on their way to the vehicles and their suburban plots beyond. Making my way through, I’m struck by the total palette of materials em- ployed over the decades, some original, some highly modifi ed. And beyond that is how each of the textures plays into the overall symphony of the space, chrome refl ecting wicker, glass splitting, dividing and replicating marble, cherry and plaster. The eff ect reminds me of the intent of medieval architects in building Gothic churches: complexity and grace in order to draw awe and utter fascination from simple town folk.

CityCentered 38 SoapboxS b

Sleeping with the enemy: Guy Worley answers all your questions about City Center By Walker Evans | February 5, 2009 8:00am | Published on Columbus Underground

Evans: Guy, thanks for taking the time to chat with us today about the new Columbus Commons redevelopment project. Can you give us a quick overview of what this new project entails for anyone who’s been hiding under a rock and hasn’t heard about it yet?

Worley: I’d be glad to. What we’ve introduced today is a redevelopment plan for the former City Center site. We’re now calling our new project Columbus Commons, and the plan is a three phase development. The fi rst phase includes the demolition of the mall and the preparation of the site for redevelopment. The fi rst phase will also include building a new 9 acre park on the current site of the mall. Our second phase will include building about 30,000 square feet of retail, 40,000 square feet of restaurant space, and approximately 400 residential units, all of which will front High Street. The third and fi nal phase will continue development eastward, and will include about 435,000 square feet of offi ce space.

So now… how do we intend to fund this project… For the fi rst phase we intend to ask for approximately 15 million dollars of economic stimulus funds from the

Fig.A [Columbus Commons, fully complete, artist rendering; FEB 2009]

CityCentered 39 SoapboxS b

Sleepinglhhlip with ihh the enemy: Guy Worley answers all your questions about Cityy Center federal government, because we think this project really qualifi es for that. It’s shovel ready. It creates approximately 200 construction jobs, it enables the redevelopment of a blighted one- million square foot mall in our urban core, and it has a long term economic impact. To build out phases two and three will create approximately 1,500 more construction jobs and offi ce space for 2,000 permanent offi ce jobs.

I want to tell you a little bit about how we got here… to what we think is the best use of this site. We hired some of the best and brightest minds to work with us on this. We hired the Georgetown Company, who is the developer for Easton. They also assisted us in the redevelopment of the Lazarus Building, which as you know was an abandoned department store. We’ve now converted it into 700,000 square feet of offi ce space with over 2,000 workers occupying it. We also hired MSI, a local fi rm in the Brewery District… you may not know their name, but you know their work. They created the master plan for the Arena District, they were the architects for North Bank Park, they were the architects for the Scioto Mile project, and they created a master plan for Universal Studios in Orlando. They do a lot of work for Disney World as well. So we had some really good minds looking at this project.

We also asked CB Richard Ellis, who is the largest retail broker in the world, to assist us in our fi rst eff orts, and that was the idea of recruiting and bringing back retailers to the mall. After many unsuccessful attempts it became very obvious that retailers aren’t coming back. They left, they moved to Easton, they moved to Polaris, they moved to Tuttle, and they’ve been very successful in those areas.

And so then we turned our attention to fi guring out a way to reconfi gure the mall into offi ce space and bring regional employers back downtown. After sitting down with many large employers, and attempting to develop programs and building confi gurations for their use, we came to the conclusion that the cost was astronomical. It was unrealistic and simply did not work in the current confi guration of the mall building.

So then we started down another path, and we started looking at residential. We met with many residential developers and many do believe that there is a demand for residential rental housing downtown, even in this current economy. However, they would not be able to be successfully build new residential buildings on site as long as there is a 1-million square-foot empty mall next door. They looked at how we could put residential units inside the mall. The cost per square foot to convert the mall into residential was astronomical as well, because there are no windows, there are no HVAC systems, and the confi guration… well… it was built to be nothing more than what it is. A mall.

And so… in looking at all three pieces; retail, offi ce and residential, it became clear that we

CityCentered 40 SoapboxS b

Sleepinglhhlip with ihh the enemy: Guy Worley answers all your questions about Cityy Center needed to start all over and clear the site, ready it for redevelopment, and then build a mixed use development on it, with the fi rst phase being green space, second and third phases being retail, residential, and offi ce space.

Evans: You mentioned looking at federal funding to kickstart the project, and I believe I heard earlier that even if we don’t secure federal funding that the project is still going forward. Would missing out on those federal dollars aff ect the timeline of the project at all, or… what sort of timelines are we even looking at for all of this?

Worley: We believe that this project is very much qualifi ed for the economic stimulus package because of what I described before: it’s shovel ready, it creates construction jobs, and it has a long-term economic impact. In the event that we’re not able to secure those funds we will look for other public resources including other federal, state, or local grants or loans. Capitol South and CDDC intend to raise the private fi nancing that will combine with the federal funds to complete phase one. We believe that these federal stimulus funds will leverage additional private sector investment once we get the site readied for redevelopment. That could enable it to have an additional $145 million private investment dollars for the retail, residential and offi ce portions.

Evans: With the city being in kind of a budget crunch right now, Parks & Rec always seem to be something that gets chopped fi rst. Can you talk a bit about how the park maintenance is going to be funded?

Worley: Capitol South intends to maintain the park. Capitol South will look for other partners to program the park. We’ve had discussions with other organizations within the community that may have an interest in bringing a lot of new activities into our area.

Evans: You mentioned earlier how this project ties into the Riversouth development. Has there been a lot of thought as to how this ties into the master plan of Downtown or how it could compliment the Arena Fig.B [Columbus Commons initial park, artist rendering; FEB 2009] District, German Village, Short North, and nearby areas?

Worley: This very much fi ts into our urban plan for Downtown because we want to focus on High Street and redevelop that area. We want to bring retail back to Downtown as the Mayor has shared in his new Mile on High initiative. We believe that we can begin doing that at the corner of Town & High. We can develop retail on both sides of the street there because we control both sides of the street. We’ll start by redeveloping the Lazarus space, and that will be fi nished this summer. We’ll begin recruiting retailers to start occupying that space because the storefronts will soon be done.

When we begin this retail eff ort, it’s not going to be the same level of retail that was in the old City Center. That was a million square feet. This is going to be a much smaller component of this mixed use development plan: 30,000 square feet of retail and 40,000 square feet of restaurant space. So a much smaller component that is similar to what has occured very successfully in the Short North. And so by starting in a concentrated area and by building a cluster of retail on both sides of the street, we’re hoping to expand north and south as well.

CityCentered 41 SoapboxS b

Sleepinglhhlip with ihh the enemy: Guy Worley answers all your questions about Cityy Center

Evans: One of the concerns I’ve heard a lot of people mentioning is the demolition process. With the Lazarus building I know there was a lot of material that was able to be recycled. It was a very green demolition process. Are the same processes going to be applied to the City Center demo?

Worley: The Downtown Development Corporation has a really good track record of doing green projects. The Lazarus building is the largest urban green redevelopment project in the country. We’re going to look at that very seriously as we begin the demolition of the City Center and see what can be recycled and reused. So yeah, that’s very much in our line of thinking.

Evans: You mentioned the possibility of events taking place in this greenspace. Do you have any predictions on what what we might see there… festivals… live music… or maybe even bringing back the skating rink and ferris wheel on a more permanent basis? Or is all just wild speculation right now?

Worley: I don’t believe it’s been determined what that programming will be at this time, but we do envision it being very similar in many ways to McPherson Commons in the Arena District. It’s utilized in the daytime by employees who are working the adjacent offi ces, and it’s utilized in the evenings by residents. Perhaps we’ll see outdoor movies in the evenings and potential concerts there as well… we expect this greenspace to be very active and to be utilized by the community at large.

Evans: Well, I’m really excited to see how all of this shapes up. Thanks again for taking the time to chat with us.

Worley: My pleasure.

Fig.C [Columbus Commons, fully developed, artist rendering; FEB 2009]

http://www.columbusunderground.com/guy-worley-answers-your-city-center-questions

CityCentered 42 Cast of Characters

Vulcan Security The Heroes

Dead-beat Friendly Neighbohood dads Architects Mike are skeptical of owns

The Informant owes Guy Worley Capitol South Development corp The Congress for New Urbanism “renovating the building into a combination of offices and retail would prove too expensive.” Guy Worley [on CBRE’s findings] and Walker OZs:

gives ammo to Behind the curtain is the boss of indifferently publishes owns

publishing punks family

owns

6-Pak

Joe

CityCentered 43 To whom it may concern...

Letters and Correspondences

An Open Letter to Columbus: Save The City Center By Corey DiRu | February 11, 2009 8:00am | Published on Columbus Underground

Parks are incredible spaces. Their lawns lend themselves to picnickers; their trees’ shade provides asylum to loungers on a hot summer day; their fountains and other features provide wonderment to people of all ages; most importantly parks provide space for us to escape pressures of life and relax alone or with friends. We are easily drawn to parks and they have the power to shape and defi ne us; a birthday party spent in a pavilion, skipping rocks in a creek bed, chasing birds through a fi eld, playing basketball with perfect strangers that later become best friends, learning to double-dutch with neighborhood kids, getting married, or any other infi nite combination of small events can impact our lives immensely. Parks are among the most intoxicating forms of public space. They exist to provide a variety of functions, and when designed correctly, can support many types of activities year round. They are a forum for public interaction and a place for many to meet on common ground. A good park can make a great city.

Columbus is a city of excellent parks. The Parks and Recreation department, as well as the safeguarding provided by the City and its residents, has cultured a system of parks—75 to be exact—of every shape and size. They cater to activities as diverse as canoeing, bocce ball, horseshoes, basketball, archery, and ice skating. Many of these parks are embedded within even stronger neighborhoods, and are surrounded by residents that would lay down in front of bulldozers to protect them, should the need arise. Columbus is a city of excellent parks, located within excellent neighborhoods, protected by excellent residents.

For this reason, the time is not right for a park in downtown Columbus.

Demolishing City Center, and constructing a large urban park right now, all fi nancial issues aside, is doing a disservice to Columbus residents. In a city which already has many downtown parks, several band shells and concert venues (both indoor and outdoor), the addition of yet another downtown park will do nothing but dilute the existing, underused, stock. Advocates suggest that a park like this would provide much needed outdoor recreation space, but for whom? The trouble with City Center Mall was that its income and use relied on a population that did not live nearby. So will this space, except that it won’t even provide places to eat or buy for a decade, minimum. Additionally, thriving parks— the kind that people love and embrace—exist between points A and B for both drivers and pedestrians. This park only sits between A and B for a commuter crowd: an 8-5, one lunch-hour-per-day, weekday crowd. The rest of the time, people will likely defer their outdoor relaxation time to parks closer to their homes. These types of gems are all over the city, and most embedded within existing dense residential neighborhoods: Goodale Park for the Short North and Victorian Village, Schiller Park for German Village, The Oval for Campus, Whetstone Park of Roses for Clintonville/Beechwold, Sharon Woods for Westerville… the list goes on and on. The proposed park, however, will function marginally better than the landscaped zones around suburban commercial offi ce parks because it, if you look at the zoning- and use- maps of downtown Columbus, is essentially a park surrounded by commuters and offi ce space.

CityCentered 44 To whom it may concern...

Historically the idea of a “commons” was a place of and for residents. It was a common green for people to graze their livestock and socialize. It had purpose, and provided useful space to a variety of people; from farmers looking to fatten their cows, to butchers looking to buy stock, the “Common” was an area used at many times of the day by many types of people. And so we should be wary of such a plan for downtown Columbus.

While the longer term projections for residential and retail to bracket the space are optimistic, we should question what types of diversity and activity this plan will really facilitate. High-cost housing, while great for tax rolls, is terrible at bringing the variety of people and correlating businesses needed to create a sustainable community. Imagine a neighborhood inhabited by bankers, insurance execs and Wall Street stock brokers. Should disaster strike the economy, for example, this neighborhood would be hit hard. Now imagine a neighborhood fi lled with a mix: Dentists, grocers, lawyers, teachers, mechanics, bankers, plumbers, undertakers, nurses and salespeople. If economic disaster strikes, this neighborhood is insulated by diversity: people will always eat sweets, break their cars, clog their toilets and get sick (though not necessarily in that particular order).

Consider existing examples of the type of park proposed for the City Center site: ones surrounded by residential/ commercial and built within the last ten years in an urban area. The vast majority are fi lled with upper middle to high income professionals (better known as DINKS – double-income-no-kids). It’s diffi cult to come by families or even dog owners. The parks tend to be marginally occupied, and full of anti-homeless furniture, so even if you had “business” being there you couldn’t stretch out comfortably on many surfaces. One such example is nearby McFerson Commons in the Arena District. From the urban planning perspective this is a beautiful park. Well landscaped, set within a dense developing neighborhood and in walking distance to a lot of amenities. Yet, 90% of the time the park is empty. What little housing you fi nd around it costs upwards of $220,000 for the smallest of units. The residents (pardon the mild generalizing) are well-paid professionals and tend to work during the hours of the day when parks are most welcoming to human habitation. You might fi nd a crowd at lunch or some sporadic sporting events, but other than that, it sits empty. There are close to zero children living within a stone’s throw of the park. Many of the closest families live in the Short North and prefer Goodale Park. If you want more regular inhabitation, you need many types of people working and living within walking distance. Not just the 8-5ers, but also the second- and third-shifts and the retailers that work evenings and on Saturday mornings. In this way, you have a population with overlapping free times. People that don’t work until 3pm pass through the park in the mornings, while the families with children are able to rush into the park, following the ring of the school day bell at 2:30.

Nearby schools bring incredible vitality to parks. True, correlation doesn’t always equal causation, but consider that schools need recreation space, for sports or outdoor lessons; for community involvement or a public gathering space on a scale that may not be available within their existing facilities. Schools need parks as much as parks need schools. There are only a few schools to speak of downtown.

The population of downtown is also very limited currently; this means very few people to occupy and safeguard the space. Yes, you can program this park with infrequent festivals and events. Yes, a downtown park will probably see a regular crowd of people for lunch during the week in nice weather, and a smattering of hardier people in less friendly weather, but other than that, any occupation will come at the cost of extra eff ort on the part of the park go-er. The park will be empty most of the time, and this will likely run the risk of developing an ‘unsafe’ reputation.

CityCentered 45 To whom it may concern...

Downtown Columbus, the City Center site, is not ripe for a new park just yet—but it is ready for residents.

>Thinking ahead For the sake of suggesting alternative strategies, and generating open discussion on the subject, I’d like to draw attention to a few things. First is to point out the existing blighted park on the corner of Rich and High street (at the SW corner of the City Center site). This 1.6 acre park, dubbed the Centrum, wasn’t always neglected. For decades it was an ice rink and public gathering place; it enjoyed a short relationship with the mall, and was eventually removed due to liability concerns. After its removal the remaining small grassy area sat with the mall’s back turned to it for two decades. Since the arrival of City Center this space was intended to be the new home for the 4th anchor tenant; much to the malls dismay that tenant never showed. The Centrum’s design makes it uncomfortable; the shrunken plaza, the blind corners created by the ludicrously large blank walls (the mural goes a little way in softening this problem but when you realize the real skyline is just feet away, and much more interesting to look at, the eff ect evaporates); the awkwardly placed trees provide little enclosure and the lack of any place to sit, aside from the ground, deters people looking to linger.

Centrum: Existing state

Centrum possibilities: Day-time lounging supported by adjacent cafes and shops; Night and evening events, benefi t the park and the area businesses

This park, if you can call it that, the one we already have, is just what we need. For starters it’s startlingly close to the size proposed in the fi nal phase of the Columbus Commons development; only the existing space has direct access and lines of sight to High street. The existing has trees on their way to maturity that will soon be able to provide useful shade. The lack of detail, development, and activity on the City Center walls facing the park should be embraced with open arms! This blank canvas lends its self to any form you can throw at it. Remove the walls from the fi rst fl oor (the non-structural, easily removable walls) and you can insert coff ee shops, restaurants, book stores, and other programs

CityCentered 46 To whom it may concern...

that cater to a lunch crowd. For other times in the evenings you could project movies on any one of the massive walls, or hold concerts on a semi-temporary stage set. The accompanying awnings, tables and visitors help activate the area and the shops generate profi t while the city incrementally opens up, and redevelops the mall-structure behind it (see images).

Further down the line the Centrum is also well-suited for transformation into a confi guration similar to Chicago’s Millennium Park-like program wherein you insert a transit hub (light rail perhaps, or electric buses) at the ground level and a construct a park on the roof structure above. Because the park space tapers down 12 feet from side walk to building, the excavation necessary is already half complete, and people would likely be able to walk directly into the park/roof without going up or down steps. This transit hub would be located directly on High street and very heavily used by commuters, further activating the shops and amenities on the Centrum. The transit insertion is a more long-term projection, but the park-and-shops idea is something that could realistically occur in the near future.

These are simply ideas driving at a larger intent: Columbus we must shore-up our existing investment, the building and site, and entertain less invasive, smaller creative solutions that use our current resources, not spend money eradicating our assets and built resources. Phasing The following images represent the idea of struc- turally separating and subdividing the City Center mega structure into smaller parcels for redevelop- ment. This primarily asserts a strategy of opening and deconditioning the shared CAM areas to avoid costly heating and cooling bills. Tertiary moves in- volve placing program into physically acceptable and functional areas, and preserving as much struc- ture and material as possible.

CityCentered 47 To whom it may concern...

High Street possibilities: Today Tomorrow? Generic facade is not infl exible/restrictive to intervention or innovation; the materials and site are still highly viable.

CityCentered 48 To whom it may concern...

This letter and everything I have suggested are only a few of the many options I feel the City Center site could undertake that would be far less intrusive and wasteful than the current plan. I Have a follow-up letter asserting just what many of you have questioned “save the park in the corner, now so what for the building”

With a little love and trace paper one option might be to give this introverted mall an attitude adjustment (and in a few easy, relatively inexpensive steps):

1) cut the roof off the common area of the mall, so Mother Nature is picking up the heating and cooling tab, (at a savings nearing $60,000 per month) (fi gure. 1-2) 2) subdivide the building into smaller stand alone parcels and winterize them (seal off the edges and drain the systems to you don’t have problems during freeze-thaw), and 3) encourage and allow individual developers to buy up these small parcels from the city

In this way, the overall liability for each parcel is reduced and immediate development is encouraged. These pieces can be tailored to each client group’s needs and the city never fi nds itself taking too much risk because the building has been paid for and is waiting patiently for the arrival of development. The subsequent renovations are taken on by teams of developers, rather than one company absorbing the massive fi nancial liability and risk.

Funding acquired from the federal government and private investors can be used to clean up and improve the vacant lot at High and Rich Streets, turning it into a usable and immediately profi table space with shops on the lower level ringing a manageable city-center park and utilizing the existing building as it stands. Parceling the mall into more digestible chunks and putting them on lay-away – a sort of inhabitable square footage rainy-day fund – is a much more economic solution. One that will save Columbus money, more quickly add revenue downtown by putting merchants into shops sooner, immediately increase diversity downtown by utilizing the existing park space, and draw a mix of activities to our underused spaces and services.

The city can build a stronger case for federal funds because the adaptation and strengthening of a viable existing piece of infrastructure, is directly aligned with federal administration policy on urban investment spending (http://www. whitehouse.gov/agenda/urban_policy/ - see “Strengthen Core Infrastructure”, “Improve Access to Jobs”, “Increase Access to Capitol” “Build More Livable and Sustainable Communities”). Re-purposing and retrofi tting the Mall at a responsible pace is especially smart, considering the current economic conditions. Instead of a one-shot demolition, imagine rehabilitation over time, spreading out the cost, and maintaining continuous usage. Compare the fi nancial impact of this idea to the current plan to demolish the Mall and deliver $200-million dollars worth of building materials to Mt. SWACO.

And additional funds will go towards reinvesting in an already valuable structure;

We should be shoring-up our investment, not tearing it down.

Systematic dismantling

CityCentered 49 Blogging... Urban Dansigner Says: Respondents February 9th, 2009 at 10:45 am “Packards Ghost … Clearing the site will dru Says: not readily make it available for redevelop- February 5th, 2009 at 5:20 pm ment. Currently the City Center and the “Bringing it down is the right idea. I still garage work together, as they were designed propose we do this vegas style, with some and built to be integral parts of one another. controlled tnt and a fi reworks spectacular. move use> Once the site is cleared of the above ground Is red, white and boom to late? As for the

City Center S.O.S.: Addition through subtraction? American cities need more open space.

James Howard Kunstler says: False.

“We haven’t been building towns in America,” Kunstler says. “We’ve been building UFO landing strips.” Consider the desolate appearance of vacant lots and meaningless strips of lawn. European villages and older American small towns convey a sense of security because buildings and trees form a comforting street wall. But in America, many urban areas have too much open space, and too much space that is poorly defi ned, Kunstler says.

After reading the headlines from Wednesday’s Dispatch I quickly jumped over to the website for The Ohio State University and looked for the tell-tale signs of civic unrest, but was saddened (and simultaneously relieved) when I found none. No protests, no public campaigns, no sit-ins or the traditional fl ipping and burning of cars and couches. There was silence; in fact I was reading the article at night so I actually heard crickets. Considering the enormity of the situation, two things immediately occurred to me: one, people are so busy organizing their retaliations, buying fuel and looking for couches that they’re wholly occupied and unable to provide an immediate response; or two, no one cares.

The latter is the by far the more dangerous scenario.

Yes the fi rst scenario would give us an evening of feverish television watching, awestruck by the anger and may- hem, like seeing a terrible car crash and being unable to look away, but not caring about the destruction, the assassination really, of City Center Mall is an atrocity that promises to infl ict much greater tragedy and waste than may be realized today’s citizens.

Two decades ago a group of men assembled under the seemingly God-given task of creating a mall; with nearly twelve years of planning and a bit of construction they had created a space of grandeur and material wealth previously unsurpassed in Columbus since the completion of the Ohio Theater. The fi rst decade of our relationship with the mall was a honeymoon-like ecstasy; enormous amounts of social and material exchange took place within the $116 million dollar facility, the revenue of which covered the relatively thrifty construction costs in a matter of years. The second half of our ‘gem’s history is a bit more complex, and as the decade wore on the shinyness continued to wane. I will do my best not to slip into a rant condemning Consumerism and its cannibalistic eff ects on our culture and built environment. Nor will I attempt to rationalize the tendency of contemporary culture to claim superior assessment ability, and infallibility in design (if you recall, a group of men fell victim to this same mentality two decades ago); “Where we can fi nd nothing of value in the architecture of a certain era, this does not allow us the right to deny it to exist.” In just over 6 months the building hits the two decade mark. But there won’t be any balloons, confetti or cake. No banners or streamers or smiles. There likely will not even be people left at that point. In near certainty this mall will sit silent and dark in downtown Columbus, despite the noise and energy just outside its doors, awaiting the swing of the wrecking ball.

CityCentered 51 To whom it may concern...

i y Addition through subtraction? Today standing in isolation in the once packed center space you might hear, if you listen hard, the soft hum of the HVAC system working away (as it has for the past 19 years), the mechanical whirr of the escalators, or even the buzz of the emergency fl uorescent lighting. What is most moving is the crushing feeling in the absence of human noise; the sensation of a heavy silence after a cacophony of noise; the void following the fi nal notes in a great symphony piece - the most powerful sensation. This space rings with that silence. This mall almost frozen in time, materials in impeccable shape, chrome polished, and elevators gleaming, screams for inhabitation. But its symbiotic inhabitants are nowhere to be found, rendered obsolete under its own code of existence, and outdated by the arrival of shinier counterparts around the city, this downtown mall - for all its seeming physical health - is on the brink of death.

Columbus has a dog on its hands. It was pure bred 19 years ago, but has become mangy. Columbus should be so lucky! At this point in its history it has the enormous potential to become a mutt. City Center Mall does not suff er from being a historical landmark (and all the attached codes and regulations) nor does it have the benefi t of being a pretty, new face (the fame glamour and associated high maintenance costs). It is an urban mall with a severe personality disorder; introversion. Because the bar is now on the fl oor we have no place to go but up. Here’s why we should be aiming for a mutt. Mutts are cross-breeds. They are hardier. They enjoy the best from multiple genetic pools, and are less susceptible to disease and infection than pure breeds. Best yet, they are interesting to look at. They are the composite of lines of evolution, and come in infi nite variations. City Center enjoyed a brief existence as a purebred on a pedestal, but economic crisis killed its life- lines homogenous retail; worse yet, retail that had already easily migrated away from the core. We’ve learned the best way to destroy an urban mall: base your entire economic structure on a population that lives far away and is fi ckle in its driving habits. An alternative approach: limit the draw of the program; don’t rely on people that live beyond a 15-minute walking radii, or four minutes in a vehicle. Instead take the existing building; all its inherent den- sity and potential energy and use it to begin layering in all the amenities needed to create a self-suffi cient urban district. The building was paid off long ago. The structure is the most generic adaptable type available (retail is designed to be inherently customizable to cater to any companies’ needs). The building is owned by the city and therefore will require no taxes. The cost to the city to buy it was fi fty-cents per square foot. FIFTY- CENTS! At that price you could do dinner and a movie with a friend or buy 100sq.ft of City Center (skip 5 movies and you and your friend have the space to set up a coff ee shop!).

Without proper care and support it will likely not survive in any form to see its 20th. A paradigm shift: Look at Google aerial maps and you see a giant pancake next to our Capitol. This pancake is scary, especially when you consider that this pancake is costing the city tens of thousands of dollars every month in heating lighting and water. It’s gotta’ go you might think. And presto! For a moment you can role play as a city-council member. “we consid- ered dozens of retrofi t ideas…{and they all proved unfeasible}”. In this current economic situation, I’m tempted to jump up from my pew and scream “Halleluiah Brother!”. Then I sit back down and think, what about in ten years, or fi ve, or two? if we wipe this thing off the face of the earth, it’s going to be a long, hard bitter fi ght bringing back anything near

CityCentered 52 To whom it may concern...

i y Addition through subtraction? the size or density. And doesn’t our mayor carry around a fl ag for downtown development, for “green” environmental- ly-sound development, at all times? Doesn’t he want to bring people and density and activity back to downtown? Why not put this building in cold storage so to speak? Should a tenant come along, we’ve got a seat waiting. Let me elaborate: this building is already perforated. The CAM (Center Area of the Mall) is a break in the struc- ture, and is the problem area at the moment. It’s the space that’s costing the money to maintain, not all the empty dark shops. So cut it out. Take off the roof and let Mother Nature take care of the air conditioning and heating in that space. Once you do this the building is ready to be subdivided further. Six or seven independent buildings by a rough guess; cauterize the edges against weathering, and winterize the systems, like you would a car, so you don’t have pipes burst- ing and causing trouble, secure the areas that need to be, and you’re ready to put City Center on layaway; it’s no longer a giant scary pancake. As interest/need/monies arise you can sell off the parcelizations to independent developers for fl ipping. Now, use the knowledge that came so expensively to us: start on the edges and work your way in, don’t follow the introvert model; this will keep people occupied, capitalizing on sidewalk foot traffi c and happenstance users, while the rest fi lls in. This also helps defray the liability, and fi nancial responsibility of any one company. It insures that the program driving the adaptation, has arisen from a concrete need over time, not a compulsive move, nor one that we are completely bound by someone else’s decision long ago. Additionally it creates a palette of diverse architectural styles; a district of unique responses to unique clients and developers. [Does this sound like small town planning? – because it essentially is]. The most important thing: this place evolves over time, it is balanced and tempered. It learns from its own mistakes, and adjusts accordingly. It is simultaneously [architecturally] independent and [programmatically] interconnected. It is a pure representation of the founding principles of our society: diversity and cooperation. It is of us, and yet we are it. How more poetic do you need? Cheap space means a couple things: Start-up businesses are ready to rock and roll. The groundwork for diversity (Biodiversty) of program and use is in place; this caters to many diff erent people much more fl exibly. The multiplicity of use is also more resilient to dif- ferent types of economic depression (here is our mutt!). New retail- tenant cost to rent stifl es unique, un-established shops from getting the exposure they need to take off . The price-points needed to be met for new retail tenants greatly reduces, if not entirely eliminates, the ability of non-chains to occupy the spaces; what you get are chains, and large generic tenants – the same type seen in malls – and the cycle starts again. Housing can be done cheaply; In a complex that is structurally sound, dry, centrally located and within reach of the Short North, Grandview, Bexley, and The Ohio State University, people will invest. Better yet, you start introducing younger people, and people of diff erent income levels, back to city life; you’re no longer out-pricing people from living near to the places they need to work (as new residential construction often does). What about retirees, students, young professionals that aren’t accountants or business people on bee-lines to CEO positions, artists, THE CREATIVE CLASS!, the middle class, the shop workers, the mechanics, the bakers, the school teachers, the foundations of American society? The pump has been primed downtown for housing, for groceries, doctors’ offi ces, recreation space, bike shops, markets, eyeglass repair, business incubators, cooking classes and space for dancing lessons. It’s been there waiting patiently for 20 years, but only obviously so for fi ve. City Center Mall, the edifi ce of what was the mall, provides the density and skeleton needed to support what our city so desperately needs, what the people so desperately need. Why wait a minimum of 20 years when we can start tomorrow? Why spend tens of millions of dollars on what we can have today. City Center is about to sink forever; S.O.S.

CityCentered 53 Design inclinations

Figure.A [Site Analysis; programmatic walking distances to City Center site] CityCentered 54 Design inclinations MORE LESS - Large Space Corporate Start up Grassroots Inflexible Tenants Elastic Buisnesses + Multi National Corporations Incubators University Reasearch Armatures (Niehoff) Rentable Conference/Office space

- Drive in Walk-in Arena Open pocket spaces Multi-plex + Mega Electronic shop 50¢ theatres (Brew-n-view) Robot building courses Cooking/Pottery/Dance

- Car Dealership Bicycle Kitchen Parking Garage Bicycle Reststop/depot + Hummer. Rentable Garage Maint. Space Zip car depot Light rail/Electric bus hub

- Liebeskind Über-Lux Condos Studio Apts New Urb. Tilt-up Town Student/Elderly Housing + Buisness Hotel Co-OP’s Community Living (shared small spaces) Campground/Hostel

- Homogeneity Heterogeneity Predictability Spontaniety + Bedroom community Suburban Vanilla Frequent prog/hours overlaps National Chain Bohemian Irregular Suds-n-Buds Figure.B [Program Analysis; Less and More] CityCentered 55 Design inclinations

the design follow through: logistics and strategies -

Figure.C [Circulation Patterns; Current vs. Proposed extroversion]

Figure.D [New Laminate layer; with circulation]

CityCentered 56 Design inclinations

Figure.E [Exploded wall section]

Figure.F [Center slab cut; stairwell teamed with skylight.]

CityCentered 57 DEBATE The Debate Tempo: Tête-à-tête In a test market city retail cycles are as infl uential and critical as the rotation of the Earth about the sun, or the moon about the Earth. These cycles, with their waxing and waning, are instrumental in the behaviors of consumer trends and impact everything from product placement, store layout and design, to renovation costs, construction and real estate development rates. These scenarios quickly escalate to large scale implications. Further these cycles impact all scales of retail from the very compact minimal shops to the expansive super-store bigness. >Reuse> The following pages feature commentary from the author discussing relevant City Center experiences. These recollections introduce and provide context for the subsequent sidebar commentary. The mate- rial on either side is largely excerpted from published books, articles and magazines; they are notated accordingly. Spoiler alert: The hero dies... 9 months ago while circling this project from 4,000 feet and the com- fort of my thesis chair, I poured over aerial images. >“Currently applied principles to up and The architectural defi ciencies were glaring, but coming Greyfi eld redevelopment: evolve well within reach. Days later with my feet on the from a single structure; reorient activity pavement and camera in hand, I eagerly walked to face the street; diff erentiate pedestrian < ”It’s a classic case of addition by subtraction. in- around- through- streets; integrate multiple uses; create a By taking City Center down and then developing and on City Center new network of interior streets; include a green space where it once stood while preserv- Mall. The date is No- housing; accept “The more success- ing the parking, that in itself is a major improve- vember 27, 2007, just the element of fully a city generates ment for Downtown1.” Brian Ellis, days before the busiest time; build real diversity and vitality President Nationwide Realty Investors. shopping day of the public space; in any of it’s parts, year, and not a soul in customize to fi t of course, the better “Schuen thinks the new offi ce space sight. The more I look, local needs6.” become its chances would be snapped up quickly if the pictures I snap, and back corridors I sneak for building success, economy recovers, because companies through, the more developed my sense ultimately, in still tend to gravitate to new space that can of the structure becomes. What areas are other parts - Includ- be customized. Overall, the project is prime for intervention? My earliest reac- ing, eventually, those expected to add up to eight buildings, tion is the earnest enthusiasm one feels to- most discouraging to featuring 500,000 square feet of com- wards a scratch-off lotto-ticket; what will I begin with.” mercial and residential space2.” fi nd below the shiny coverings? (Jane Jacobs p.177)

CityCentered 58 DEBATE Planned Obsolesce: overstaying your welcome... November 27, 2008; Watching the crane silently lift away the steel trusses from the High street bridge is like watching a very expensive erector set session play in reverse. The remaining scabs on both La- zarus and City Center feel like the result of an ugly divorce; while historically-signifi cant Lazarus quickly receives medical treatment MALL FACTS Published: August 18, 1989 | Edition: HOME FINAL | Section: NEWS | Page: 4H The Columbus Dispatch COLUMBUS CITY CENTER CONTAINS: 198,870 BRICKS. 4,000 TONS OF STRUCTURAL STEEL. 98,000 SQUARE FEET OF FLOOR TILE. 2,743 FEET OF HANDRAILS. City Center is given a band-aid left to bleed-out in the gutter for all to see. Other constituents have slowly taken steps to break-off rela- tionships with City Center, either leaving the facility or cauterizing their physical connections with drywall blockades. [the walkthrough with Mike Wills] takes me behind-the-scenes. Its steel and concrete-block. The grid is a dumb 28’-square and only gets tricky at the pedestrian corridor in the middle where the building’s structure opts for open-web steel trusses to make the clearance. All said and done: 27-million cubic feet of sound and dry space. There are no tricks here. >Bigness; Scale, architectural composi- tion, tradition, transparency and ethical The large Plaque has a beige-tint to breaks all result in largest break: BIGness it, as if it were subjected to 20 years of is no longer part of any urban tissue nicotine tarring. (CYA Code of Con- It exists; at most it coexists duct p.27) Its size and placement high is BIGness a blessing in disguise? on the entry wall give the fi ne text at the top a diminishing Star Wars-like BIGness can engineer the unpredict- perspective; this blurry text notifi es able! – it can be the assembly of maxi- you of the ease of removal you are sub- mum diff erence ject to should you decide to commit BIGness (through its artifi ciality and any of the listed infractions. People complexity) releases function to lique- entering the mall do so at high ve- faction; promoting models of locity, headed towards what shiny PROGRAMMATIC ALCHEMY! objects lay beyond for them, they BIGness, for all our nostalgia for classical “public space”, miss the following restrictions: right pushes us to confront the new kinds of sociality this con- to assemble, freedom of speech, right to fail to be dition makes possible. fully clothed, inability to bring pets, Sing songs, “The potential of Bigness is that specifi ci- play music, stare unnecessarily, the list pours on - ties through their simultaneous presence all denied. in a single container, and through the ma- We don’t know what we’re missing nipulation of vicinities, sequences, separa- tions, blockages, etc., can be unbound, be- CityCentered come more fl uid, more wild.7” 60 Koolhaas p.497 DEBATE

March 28, 2009; “Many redevelop- “$15 to $20 a sq.ft.” Like being handed an anticipatory time-of-death ment experts like slip the real estate developer sitting opposite me at my design critique the reasoning behind says with a dismissive wave of his hand. Enter Scooby-Doo stage left the city's plan to to pull the villain’s mask off revealing a faceless opponent. “Zoikes Scoob! Its just as I expected!” demolish City ”Cities need old buildings so badly it’s probably impossible Pipes up Shaggy from the back Center in favor for vigorous streets to grow without them. by old buildings row. “It’s old man McGreedy of a park and tar- I mean not museum-piece old buildings, not old buildings from Bottom-line lane!” [The geted construc- in an excellent and expensive state of rehabilitation - Al- audience gasps] “Unfortunately tion, but worries though these do make fi ne ingredients - but also a good for you foolish kids, even with about the econo- lot of plain, ordinary, low-value, old buildings, including 3 your meddling you can’t over my abound. some rundown old buildings.” come the awesome power of the [insert any combination of the “It’s an important par- following: fi nancial - capital - real estate - developer - market]. Bwha- cel for the community, hahahah!!!” And with a poof of green smoke he evaporates into thin and symbolically there air, leaving professors and students alike, coughing in his wake. should be public space in whatever they do, R.I.P. City Center I can’t really fi nd too much to pick at. “To renovate the mall, that would be crazy. They can rebuild new and have exactly what they want and give tenants what they are looking for.” The site is ripe for all types of development because it’s so close to other reno- vations4.”

Chris Boring, Columbus retail analyst

"Having watched the transformation of City Center from opening to its demise, I think it's an opportunity to redevel- op the site as more than single-purpose or for a single generation5"

Keith Myers, MSI principal

CityCentered 59 DEBATE

MALL IS BUILDING TO A FINISH By Robert Sohovich, Dispatch Development Reporter Published: January 20, 1989 | Edition: HOME FINAL | Section: NEWS | Page: 4C Giant heaters spew out fl ames like dragons. Sets of escalators, their toothy gears just being installed, look like the backs of dinosaurs. Bright sunlight shines through large skylights. The interior of the Columbus City Center mall quickly is taking shape. The shell of the mall, south of the Ohio Theatre, is about 75 percent complete. Mall manager Bill Winters said about 120 construction workers are on the job. They work in small groups, swallowed up by the spaciousness of the three- level, two-block-long mall. They are installing terrazzo tile along the main walkways, building the huge sunken court- yard that will be overlooked by glass-enclosed elevators and fi nishing the connector bridge to the Lazarus store. The general construction work is to be fi nished by May 15; the mall is scheduled to open Aug. 18.

references: 1-4 - Pramik, Mike. “Trading mall for park has support, but will cash appear to get things started?” The Columbus Dispatch. 5 February 2009

5 - Rose, Marla Matzer. “Goodbye, City Center; A Downtown gem when it opened in 1989, the forlorn mall will be torn down by summer” The Columbus Dispatch. 4 February 2009

6 - SOBEL. Greyfi elds into Goldfi elds: Dead Malls Become Living Neighborhoods. Congress for the New Urban- ism, 2002.

7- ARCHITECTURE;, REM. Small, Medium, Large, Extra-large : Offi ce for Metropolitan Architecture, Rem Kool- haas and Bruce Mau. New York, N.Y. Monacelli Press, 1995.

CityCentered 61 Parallelrealities

Removem November 27, 2009; The sparks of demolition torches started as the sun broke over the downtown skyline; casting long shadows deep into the eastern side of City Center. Saws roared through midday while the chill of a November breeze fl apped through the construc- tion fencing blocking off the empty nine acre site. Then, fi nally, the last of the glowing, arcing sparks fi zzled out along with the setting sun. The site is dark now; illuminated only in points with the loud buzz of sodium lamps. The jagged edges of the masonry, and steel poke out, exposed demolition points.

To a developer this building is being removed to turn a profi t.

To a mayor this mall is being removed to make way for progress.

To the author it could have taught us all about our city

u

To the author it will teach us all about our city

To a mayor this mall is being reused to make space for progress.

To a developer this building is being reused to turn a profi t.

November 27, 2009; The sparks of welding torches start as the sun breaks over the downtown skyline; casting shadows across the new stairwells on the eastern side of City Center. Saws roar on through midday while onlookers, despite the chill of a November breeze, sit at the new Centrum cafe observing the renovation spectacle: the ad- dition of new windows and balconies. When the last of the glowing, arcing sparks fi zzle out along with the setting sun, a crowd gathers in the green space to watch the walk-in theater lights come up. The site is dark now, yet alive with the buzz of hundreds of people. The jag- ged edges of the masonry, and steel poke out, the exposed skeleton of what is to come.

CityCentered 62 Late-Breaking News: Vicious cycles

Sunday, February 8, 2009 | by Jill Riepenhoff and Jonathan Riskind THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH Ohio mayors dream big for stimulus cash; 847 public-works projects far exceed aid state will get In Ohio, the mayors of more than two dozen cities have a wish list of 847 projects with a $4.2 billion price tag. That list doesn’t include Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman’s demolition of the City Center mall, but it does include a proposed light-rail line from Polaris to Downtown.” “Nothing in either the House or Senate versions of the bill sets aside money for demolition of City Center. Lawmakers and the Obama administration insist that there will be no earmarks for individual projects in the bill. Regardless of the fi nal package, Brown said that mayors realize there is not enough money to fund everyone’s wish list. Not even close. ‘Mayors are smart enough to know it will not take care of all the problems we face,’ Brown said.

Friday, April 17, 2009 | by Brian R. Ball BUSINESS FIRST OF COLUMBUS Feds won’t send money to City Center demolition project The city intends to bulldoze City Center and replace it with a park that would be surrounded by other development. But the prospect expressed two months ago that the federal economic stimulus package could cover most of the project’s cost fell through, leaving Capitol South scrambling for alternative private-sector money. ‘We left no stone unturned,’ said Capitol South Chief Operating Offi cer Amy Taylor. ‘The economic stimulus package really didn’t have funding for something like the transformation of the City Center.’

Monday, April 20, 2009 | by Robert Vitale THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH City Center mall set to come down in summer A month shy of its 20th birthday, Columbus City Center will come down starting in July. Although they couldn’t score federal economic-stimulus money for demolition, offi cials of the nonprofi t development agency that owns the shuttered Downtown mall said today that they’ll move forward this summer with plans to tear it down. The City Council gave the Capitol South Urban Redevelopment Corp. permission tonight to refi nance existing loans on City Center parking garages, borrow additional money and use funds earmarked for Downtown housing projects to pay for the work. The development agency will seek federal and state grants to cover some of the cost, Taylor said. It will seek corporate help as well. City Council members emphasized, though, where funding won’t come from. “No - I’m underlining - no city tax dollars will be used in this project,” said Councilwoman Charleta B. Tavares.

CityCentered 63 Image Credits

Figure: 00 http://www.csmonitor.com/slideshows/durableSlideshows/suburbanSprawl/slide4.jpg 01 http://www.socialexplorer.com/pub/maps/map3.aspx?&g=0 (with author edits) 02 http://maps.google.com/ (with author graphic overlays) 02b http://www.dispatch.com/live/foundation/slideshow.jsp?fi le=/multimedia/daily_slide shows/2009/02/citycenter.html&image=3&adsec=multimedia&tot=27 (Dispatch photo history) 03 http://maps.google.com/ (with author graphic overlays) [Page 12 - http://dispatch.com/live/export-content/sites/dispatch/life/stories/2008/extras/CityCenter_stores_1989.pdf] 04 http://maps.google.com/ (with author graphic overlays) 05a http://www.dispatch.com/live/foundation/slideshow.jsp?fi le=/multimedia/daily_slideshows/2009/02/ citycenter.html&image=4&adsec=multimedia&tot=27 (Dispatch photo history) 05b Author’s photo; 24 February 2009 06 Author’s photo; 24 February 2009 07 Author’s diagram; compiled data from walk through 08a http://www.dispatch.com/live/foundation/slideshow.jsp?fi le=/multimedia/daily_slide shows/2009/02/citycenter.html&image=3&adsec=multimedia&tot=27 (Dispatch photo history) 08b (same as Fig.08a) 09 Author’s photo; 18 Novenber 2007 10a/b Authors’s photos 18 November 2007 [Page 27 - City Center Mall; Code of Conduct, author’s photograph] To the Landfi ll A http://www.nwas.org/meetings/nwa2006/Broadcast/Kelsch/watersheds/media/graphics/unit_1/ecy cle_landfi ll.jpg B http://www.dispatch.com/live/foundation/slideshow.jsp?fi le=/multimedia/daily_slide shows/2009/02/citycenter.html&image=3&adsec=multimedia&tot=27 (Dispatch photo history) Shopping delight A Northland Shopping Center; Wall, p.81 The Schism A The Columbus Dispatch front page; 4 February 2009 B http://www.dispatchpolitics.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/02/04/citycenter_large. html?adsec=politics&sid=101 (the planning for columbus commons) the Centrum A http://maps.live.com/ B http://www.dispatch.com/live/foundation/slideshow.jsp?fi le=/multimedia/daily_slide shows/2009/02/citycenter.html&image=2&adsec=multimedia&tot=27 C Author’s photo; March 2009 Sleeping with the Enemy A http://www.dispatchpolitics.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/02/04/copy/citycenter_plan. ART_ART_02-04-09_A1_MKCPKVM.html?adsec=politics&sid=101 B [Same as A] C [Same as A]

CityCentered 64 Playbill - Page 43 Graphic compiled by the author; images sampled from: http://www.columbusunderground.com/ http://www.shortnorth.com/FrankElmer.html http://www.downtowncolumbus.com/progress/columbus-commons http://www.georgetownco.com/ http://ci.columbus.oh.us/ http://www.simon.com/ http://www.irishsurnames.com/cgi-bin/gallery.pl?name=wolfe&capname=Wolfe&letter=w&user= http://knarfoh.com/weird/coleman/d9gj2999g.jpg http://www.wsyx6.com/ http://www.nbc4i.com/ http://www.wbns10tv.com/live/content/index.html http://www.columbusalive.com/live/contentbe/EPIC_shim.php?sec=upfront&story=alive/2008/0605/u-unedited.html

An Open Letter to Columbus: Save the City Center All photos taken and images created by author

Design Inclinations All images and diagrams created by the author

Spoiler Alert Photo collage created by the author

CityCentered 65 Bibliography

ARCHITECTURE;, REM. Small, Medium, Large, Extra-large : Offi ce for Metropolitan Architecture, Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau. New York, N.Y. Monacelli Press, 1995.

Bodzin, Steven, and Ellen Greenberg. Failing Malls: Getting to the Heart of the Issues. San Francisco: Congress for the New Urbanism, 2004.

Burns, Carol and Andrea Kahn. Site Matters. New York: Routledge, 2005.

Chilton, Kenneth M. Greyfi elds: The New Horizon for Infi ll and Higher Density Reneration. Char- lotte: University of Louisville, 2005.

Dunham-Jones, Ellen. Retrofi tting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2009.

Dönner, Dietrich. The Logic of Failure. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1996.

Gehl, Jan. Life Between Buildings; using public space. Copenhagen: The Danish Architectural Press, 2006.

Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House, 1989.

Kunstler, James H. The City in Mind. New York: Free Press , 2001.

LaBonte, David A. Shiny Objects Marketing. Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, 2008

Price Waterhouse Cooper. Greyfi eld Regional Mall Study. Global Strategic Real Estate Group, 2001.

Sobel, Lee S. Greyfi elds into Goldfi elds: Dead Malls Become Living Neighborhoods. Pittsburg: Congress for the New Urbanism, 2002

Sorkin, Andrew R, “General Growth Files for Bankruptcy.” The New York Times 16 Apr. 2009, deal book ed.

Tetchentin, Warren Dead Malls: LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design. Canada: Westcan, 2004

Wall, Alex. Victor Gruen; From Urban Shop to new City. Barcelona: Actar, 2005.

CityCentered 66

Articles

“Goodbye, City Center.” The Columbus Dispatch 4 Feb. 2009.

International Council of Shopping Centers. Shopping Center Defi nitions. New York: ICSC, 1999.

Kavilanz, Pairja B. “The Dead Mall Problem.” CNN.com 17 Dec. 2007, money ed.. 5 May 2009 .

Kavilanz, Parija B. “It’s do-or-die time for malls.” CNN.com 24 Nov. 2008, money ed.. 4 May 2009 .

Lithwick, Dahlia . “Why Can Shopping Malls Limit Free Speech?” Slate.com 10 Mar. 2003. 5 May 2009 .

Renn, Aaron M. “Columbus: Downtown Mall to Be Demolished” The Urbanophile: Urban Af- fairs and the Future of the Midwestern City 5 February 2009

Robaton, Anna . “Flat CAM.” SCT - Shopping Centers Today Online Sep. 2004. 5 May 2009 .

Rose, Marla Matzer. “Goodbye, City Center; A Downtown gem when it opened in 1989, the forlorn mall will be torn down by summer.” The Columbus Dispatch. 4 February 2009

Pramik, Mike. “Trading mall for park has support, but will cash appear to get things started?” The Columbus Dispatch. 5 February 2009

CityCentered 67