By Jeff Bell
Urban landscape designer Keith Myers hopes the community won’t come to view the Scioto Mile riverfront park as an island unto itself.
The park, on track to open along the east bank of the Scioto River next June, is meant to contribute to the whole of downtown Columbus rather than stick out as a singular part, said the principal at MSI Design, the Columbus firm that developed the design for the $44 million project.
“It’s really about creating another piece of the downtown puzzle,” Myers said. “It will be more than whether Scioto Mile is mobbed with people. It’s all part of the fact that a rising tide raises all ships.”
Those other pieces, he said, include the Arena District, Huntington Park, new housing along Front Street, Miranova, Scioto Audubon Park, COSI and the Columbus Commons park under construction on the former City Center mall site.
Blending styles
While Scioto Mile officially stretches from North Bank Park in the Arena District to the Audubon Park on Whittier Peninsula, all the attention is focused on converting a formerly drab section of Civic Center Drive between Broad and Main streets to a vibrant urban park. It’s in that area where nearly all of the $44 million in public and private-sector funding – led by $10 million each from the city of Columbus and American Electric Power Company Inc. – is being spent to create a tree- and fountain-lined boardwalk called the Promenade and overhaul Bicentennial Park, which will feature a massive water fountain, cafe, band shell and amphitheater.
The Scioto Mile design team has worked to pick up some of the architectural flavor of surrounding buildings in various elements of the park, said Darren Meyer, a senior associate at MSI. Examples include using rustic stone and brick in the cafe design and matching the limestone in the columns along the Promenade to masonry materials in the Ohio Supreme Court building along Civic Center Drive.
But Myers said designers also have tried to incorporate some of the modernistic elements seen at Miranova and the new, $60.1 million Main Street bridge over the Scioto.
“This is not an exercise in historic architecture,” Myers said of Scioto Mile. “We had the opportunity to make it more forward-looking than other pieces of downtown. There is a restrained formality we tried to acknowledge, but we still wanted to make it a place where people would want to be.”
It goes back to the goal of making Scioto Mile feel like a piece of the broader downtown, both old and new.
“It’s an evolution of a kaleidoscope of different styles,” Myers said. “That really is what makes a city great in terms of diversity.”
Continuing with the green theme brought to the whole project, developers have torn down a concrete wall that separated the Scioto Mile walkway from the river. It is being replaced by an earthen slope that will extend 25 feet from Civic Center Drive down to the river, adding almost 2 acres to Bicentennial Park and providing access to the water.
Revitalizing the riverfront
The goal is turn the riverfront into a regional attraction, said Amy Taylor, chief operating officer of the Columbus Downtown Development Corp., which is overseeing the project.
“As we looked at the riverfront,” she said, “we saw the community wanted to see a revitalization. We knew we wanted energy and activity. It became a matter of how to get those things.”
One of the basics, Myers said, is to offer people “benches to sit on and comforting shade.” The Promenade, located along Civic Center Drive between Broad and Rich streets, will do that with trees and a stone colonnade that will be dotted with benches, swings, card and chess tables, gardens, bronze fountain sculptures and a water canal for toe-dipping.
Bicentennial Park will be anchored by a fountain that will draw from hundreds of jets of water that can be programmed to make geometric shapes and be used in artistic light projections. It will also have a central pool with a towering jet of water.
The park will include a 2,000-square-foot cafe with seating for 75 indoors and another 75 on a terrace. Its glass design will allow park visitors to look into the cafe and diners to peer out at the fountains and band shell, said Danial Hanes, a 360 Architecture designer who worked on the cafe project. He said the building has environmentally sustainable features such as large canopies for shade on the south and west sides of the building and rooftop solar panels to help power the cafe and fountains.
After more than 70 years along the Scioto River, the limestone railing had all but lost its battle with the elements.
Steel pins and anchors that held the railing together slowly rusted through. Concrete sections, installed as a cheap fix for crumbling portions, didn’t match the weathered Indiana limestone.
“Besides the weight of the thing, you probably could have kicked it into the river if you wanted to,” said Darren Meyer, a senior associate at MSI Design’s Columbus office.
But now the railing and its balusters have been restored as part of a $44 million plan to link the Arena District and W. Main Street via a riverside park.
The project, called the Scioto Mile, will incorporate the John W. Galbreath Bicentennial Park and Battelle Riverfront Park. It’s scheduled to open in time for the city’s bicentennial in 2012, and it eventually could connect to the new Scioto Audubon Metro Park a little farther south along the river, near the Brewery District.
“The riverfront is a natural asset for Downtown that has been underused for years,” said Amy Taylor, spokeswoman for the Columbus Downtown Development Corp.
“It’s going to be a regional attraction and amenity and draw people to a section of Downtown that they haven’t been to in a long time.”
For the railing, the work meant a thorough examination by Schooley Caldwell Associates, the Columbus architects whose experts disassembled part of the balustrade to figure out how it was put together.
It’s a difficult procedure, because it’s right on the floodwall,” said Robert K. Smith, a principal at Schooley Caldwell. Rigging held a platform over the river during the project, and workers wore life vests in case they fell into the water.
About two-thirds of the original balustrade could be salvaged, Smith said. Reconstruction began behind the Ohio Supreme Court building, across the river from COSI Columbus.
Planners imported new limestone from Indiana to replace portions that could not be repaired. Crews sandblasted and stained the new stone to imitate weathering on the original pieces. The concrete was removed.
Work continues, but Meyer said the project is at least 90 percent complete.
The new railing will include metal pieces between the balusters to prevent anything or anyone from slipping through the space and ending up in the river.
“We’re sort of walking a fine line,” Meyer said. “We want to give it a face-lift, but we want to keep the patina of age — keep it looking like the historic structure that it is.”
dhendricks @dispatch.com
From his perch in Miranova, Harrison Smith will watch the Scioto Mile park take shape the next two years, curving north along the riverfront.
“I’d like to look down at my window and see a thousand people there every night,” the chairman of the Downtown Commission said. They’d be enjoying concerts in the new band shell, eating at a planned restaurant and strolling along a promenade that will follow the river.
“Then we’d have a winner,” Smith said.
To attract those people, the city is working with the Columbus Downtown Development Corp., the project’s manager, to create events and activities to continually draw people to the riverfront. They include night concerts and small combos playing at lunchtime, and family movie night, said Alan McKnight, Columbus’ recreation and parks director.
“The concept is to try to have a number of things on an ongoing basis, not necessarily big events,” McKnight said.
McKnight wants to bring several summer festivals back to the riverfront in two years.
The Columbus Arts Festival and Festival Latino were held in other locations last year. The Jazz & Rib Fest was held at Bicentennial Park last year, but it and Festival Latino were cut from the city’s budget this year.
The Downtown Commission signed off on the final plans for the $44 million project yesterday. Besides the restaurant, band shell and 30-foot-wide promenade along Civic Center Drive between Rich and Broad streets, there will be plenty of fountains.
The restaurant will face a signature 15,000-square-foot fountain shooting a jet of water 70 feet high, and five steel “halo” fountains will create mist and fog. There also will be 200 water jets within a crescent that people can traipse through.
Work will begin in May when crews begin scraping away and redesigning Bicentennial Park, said Amy Taylor, Downtown Development’s chief operating officer. Civic Center will be open to twoway traffic between Broad and 2nd streets by July.
The project should be finished by June 2011, five months ahead of schedule. November in Ohio isn’t the best time to open a park, said Guy Worley, the Downtown group’s chief executive.
Although Smith complimented the Scioto Mile’s design, there’s one thing he doesn’t like. “The restaurant building looks like a really good rest stop along the freeway,” he said. He wants it to look “niftier.”
Worley said, “We think the design is very contemporary.”
No one has agreed to operate the restaurant, but there has been interest, he said.
Smith knows what he’d also like to see along the river.
“I’d put a casino there,” he said. “You’ve got to admit, you’d have a hell of a lot of people.”
For more information on the project, go to www.sciotomile.com.
It wouldn’t be the same Scioto that Lucas Sullivant gazed upon, but the Downtown riverfront could get a more natural look in coming years.
City officials are seeking permission from the federal government to tear down a stretch of 80-year-old concrete wall along the eastern bank of the Scioto River. As part of the Scioto Mile riverfront makeover, they want to recreate an earthen slope from Civic Center Drive down to the water 25 feet below.
The Scioto’s limestone cage would stay in place north of Town Street, where the bridge is scheduled to come down in 2010. But between Town and Main Street, where a new bridge is scheduled to open next year, the riverfront would take on a more natural look as part of the $38 million Scioto Mile project.
“We’re taking a man-made barrier and replacing it with a natural river’s edge,” said Amy Taylor, spokeswoman for the Columbus Downtown Development Corp., which is overseeing the Scioto Mile work. “The whole idea (of Scioto Mile) is to open up the river. You can’t open it up if people can’t get to it.”
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will begin reviewing the city’s proposal after a public comment period ends June 20. The agency’s office in Huntington, W.Va., will look at environmental, economic and other factors and make its decision in six months to a year.
Taylor said city officials signed off on the plan after concluding the change wouldn’t increase flood risks. The wall south of Town Street is concrete, not limestone, and is in worse condition than the stretch that runs northward, she said.
A sloping riverfront would add almost 2 acres to Bicentennial Park and extend 70 feet into the river’s current course. The new land would include paths for pedestrians and bicyclists.
A promenade along Civic Center Drive also is planned to connect Bicentennial Park at the southern end of Downtown, Battelle Riverfront Park near City Hall and North Bank Park at the edge of the Arena District.
It would do more than look pretty, said Susan Ashbrook, the city’s environmental steward.
The new riverfront would be designed as a “bioswale,” which means trash- and toxin-laden storm water that now runs right into the river would seep instead through a natural filter of vegetation, soil, rock and clay.
The plants would be able to withstand rising and falling river levels.
The Scioto Mile project is a series of improvements designed to create a more inviting riverfront from the Arena District to the Brewery District. In addition to the promenade along Civic Center Drive, it will feature new fountains and artwork, and a portion of the Town Street Bridge will stay as a river overlook.
At Bicentennial Park, the plan includes a 15,000-square-foot fountain, a permanent band shell and a glass-enclosed cafe.
It’s scheduled to be completed in time for the city’s bicentennial in 2012.
The city and American Electric Power each are picking up $10 million of the project’s cost. Private donors and the federal, state and county governments are contributing the rest.
SciotoMile.com is Now Live
Get the 4-1-1 on the future Scioto Mile by visiting the new Web site that has it all.
American Electric Power (AEP) and the Columbus Downtown Development Corporation (CDDC) recently launched www.SciotoMile.com , a Web site intended to provide information regarding the design and construction of the new riverfront park in Downtown Columbus.
SciotoMile.com contains project timelines, descriptions of the different elements, future concepts, progress reports, a list of current sponsors, news articles, and information on how to contribute to the project. Downloadable renderings of the different components are on the site, and users also have the option to upload their own photos of the riverfront to SciotoMile.com. In addition, there’s an interactive feature to pose questions and get quick responses.
The Scioto Mile is one of the central components of the 2002 Strategic Business Plan for Downtown Columbus. When complete, it will be a new integrated system of parks, boulevards, bikeway and pedestrian paths creating a green corridor stretching from the Arena District to Whittier Peninsula that reconnects the downtown to the river. The Park will play an essential role in the revitalization of downtown – attracting and complementing residential development, boosting property values and stimulating commercial growth.
AEP is the corporate leader for the project and contributed the design and development of the Web site as part of their leadership contribution.
AEP is one of the largest electric utilities in the United States, delivering electricity to more than 5 million customers in 11 states. AEP ranks among the nation’s largest generators of electricity, owning nearly 38,000 megawatts of generating capacity in the U.S. AEP also owns the nation’s largest electricity transmission system, a nearly 39,000-mile network that includes more 765 kilovolt extra-high voltage transmission lines than all other U.S. transmission systems combined. AEP’s utility units operate as AEP Ohio, AEP Texas, Appalachian Power (in Virginia and West Virginia), AEP Appalachian Power (in Tennessee), Indiana Michigan Power, Kentucky Power, Public Service Company of Oklahoma, and Southwestern Electric Power Company (in Arkansas, Louisiana and east Texas). AEP’s headquarters are in Columbus, Ohio.
CDDC is a private, non-profit development organization designed to lead City-changing projects. The Board of Directors is made up of senior business and institutional leaders who have a strong commitment to downtown revitalization. CDDC is focused on making Downtown Columbus one of the most attractive center cities in the United States and a premiere place to live, work and play.
For more information on the Scioto Mile, please visit www.sciotomile.com.
For more information about the revitalization of Downtown Columbus, please visit www.downtowncolumbus.com.