Olde Towne East and the King Lincoln District will be eventual winners

If you’re considering a purchase on the Near East side of Columbus or in the German Village, Schumacher place communities, you should know that the Ohio Department of Transportation is going to tear up the highways on the East and South sides of downtown, where Interstates 70 and 71 meet and are the same road for a stretch.

Right now it’s a mess and the most congested, accident prone stretch of highway in the state.  Two generations ago, the highways tore apart neighborhoods and severed the Columbus Community while razing gorgeous and important residential and commercial buildings. Early ODOT renderings showed caps re-connecting downtown Columbus to its neighborhoods similar to the cap over I-670 that connects the Short North to downtown.

Now that construction is inching ever closer, it appears that only one of the bridges will be capped with enough real estate on top of it to actually build something – at Long Street over I-71, a big win for the King Lincoln Bronzeville neighborhood.  In the beginning though, there will only be a grassy field on the cap until a developer with some money decides to build there.

Most of the rest of the bridges be will built with the ability and strength to support a cap with buildings on it but that’d be an entirely new construction project or projects. Many Olde Towne East residents are upset that the project will wipe out a couple historic buildings on Parsons Avenue, including Carabar and ET Paul Tires–the Country’s  first gas station (I know, the irony).

I love the idea of a functional Broad Street bridge over I-71 that is pedestrian friendly with no on or off ramps coming onto Broad. Throw in that treed, park like median we’ve all been hearing about for years, extend it to Franklin Park and we’ll be in business.

It’s going to be a pain for residents of KLD and OTE for the next 4-6 years and there will be inconveniences. I don’t think property values will be adversely affected in the short term. I do think that, in the end, with a solution in place that looks better, feels better and will be more connected than what is currently there, property values and interest in these areas will increase–with an obvious bump up for OTE and KLD which have so much more pricing room than German Village.

Here is the latest from THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Coveted highway caps still in Downtown plan
But budget will limit final number
Monday, July 19, 2010 02:51 AM
By Robert Vitale
Bridges over a rebuilt I-70/71 will be better than the standard concrete and chain-link of today.

But only one of the six spans to be replaced during the project’s first half will include a Short North-style cap that near-Downtown neighborhoods have coveted throughout the planning process.

Ohio Department of Transportation officials say earlier drawings and descriptions were conceptual and now are outdated, even though they’re still posted on the agency’s website. The “visioning exercises” included cost estimates but weren’t subjected to the budget realities applied as the state moves toward a 2011 construction kickoff.

“We’re down to the nuts-and-bolts decisions now,”  more here

Working primarily in first ring suburbs like Bexley and Grandview and along the High Street corridor running from Merion Village to German Village to the Short North, Campus, Clintonville and Worthington, I see many old homes.  I happen to have a passion for older homes and I love nothing more than uniting homes with character with people of great character.

When it comes to fixer uppers, I love seeing them post-rehab but I love seeing them in the raw even more. I love to see behind the scenes, I love to see the during and I love to see the ‘after’ – especially after someone has lovingly restored an historic Columbus home and called it home for some time–as opposed to a quick flip.

Rarely do you get to see inside the walls of an historic Columbus home, behind the plaster and lathe to see what lurks there and how its made. In just such a home in Olde Towne East recently, I had an opportunity to shoot a quick look at what lurks behind the walls of a serious fixer upper.

This home at 2465 East Broad Street will be one of a dozen or so open during March's Third Thursday open house event in the Bexley area.

A few years back, some of the Realtor associations inside I-270 had an idea  about Open Houses.  Holding an open house on a day other than Sunday wasn’t a new idea but all agents, working together across brokerages to promote an additional opportunity to showcase listings was new. It wasn’t an idea that orginated from the local Board of Realtors, but in the field.

Fast forward to a week from tomorrow, the third Thursday in March, and the only open houses will be in one zip code -43209- Bexley, Berwick and Eastmoor.  In fact, the last I saw, there were 25+ homes (listed below but still time for others) in Bexley and Eastmoor open.

It didn’t stick in Clintonville, it didn’t stick in the Short North or in German Village or Upper Arlington. Why has the idea not only survived but thrived in the Bexley, Berwick and Eastmoor area?

• It’s a smallish area, approximately 9.3 square miles.
• Between Broad Street, Main Street, Livingston Avenue and James Road, a large amount of cars pass by the Open House signs every month.
• Affiliates of the local real estate association help to underwrite a full page ad in the Bexley News the week prior which details the homes to be held open.
• In Bexley, a relatively small number of agents have many of the active listings at any one time and they urge the homeowners to participate.
• I believe that the last informal tally I heard indicated that 12 homes sold in 2009 where the buyer first saw the home on a Thursday in Bexley, Berwick or Eastmoor. Success begets more chances.

From last count, these are some of the homes that will be Open Thursday March 18 from aprox. 5-7 PM.