The Capital Crossroads and Discovery Special Improvement Districts (SID) released its annual State of Downtown report this week.
Marc Conte, Executive Director of the Downtown SIDs, summarized the findings of the report during a Columbus Metropolitan Club forum on Wednesday.
“Three years after the pandemic, we are getting some clarity on the future of Downtown, and that future looks bright,” said Conte. “We can now see the pandemic disrupted but did not destroy the momentum of Downtown development that was built over the last 20 years.”
The report highlights the continued growth in Downtown population – now at an estimated 11,650 people – and maps out all the development projects completed in 2022, in addition to the ones proposed and currently under construction.
Conte also pointed out that 2023 has already seen some significant announcements – in January, Columbus State announced plans for a new child care center; on Monday, Grant Medical Center announced a $400 million expansion of its campus; and the Downtown Commission on Tuesday reviewed proposals containing nearly 450 new residential units, many of them featuring affordable or workforce housing.
One major question mark that remains, Conte acknowledged, is the office sector – it’s easy to track vacancy rates, but that only tells us what space is being rented, not how many workers are actually in the office on any given day.
Kastle Systems publishes a report on keycard access activity, and looking at some of our peer cities covered in that report may give us a rough idea of where Columbus stands, he said.
“If Austin is any indication, then Columbus likely has somewhere between 51% and 74% of the workforce back in the office depending on the day,” said Conte, with Mondays and Fridays being the lowest occupied days and Tuesdays the highest.
Office Conversions
The rest of the forum was dedicated to a discussion of office-to-residential conversions.
Philip Aftuck, Director of Investments for the Bernstein Companies, talked about his firm’s plan to convert the 26-story Continental Centre from office space to apartments.
That building is just old enough to qualify for state historic tax credits – which it was awarded last year – and is located in a great spot for new apartments; down the street from restaurants and bars on Gay Street, and just a couple blocks from Capitol Square.
The Continental Centre was also only “30-to-40 percent leased,” when Bernstein bought it, according to Aftuck, who said that many of the existing tenants were happy to get out of their leases after the pandemic had completely changed their office needs.
There are several other conversions in the works or planned Downtown – the PNC building is scheduled to open this year with a mix of apartments, office space and retail; a long-vacant office building on Front Street is getting a mixed-use renovation, and a plan was presented last fall to covert this historic High Street building into residences.
Moderator Sam Rosenthal, Principal and CEO of the Columbus-based architecture firm Schooley Caldwell, also spoke of his experience in converting the historic Leveque Tower into a fully mixed-use building after decades as an office tower.
Not every building Downtown is going to tick all the boxes for an office-to-residential conversion, and that’s ok, said Tracy Hadden Loh, a Fellow with the Brookings Institution, who stressed that it’s important for Downtown to remain the “single most important job center” in the city.
“The most important placemaking thing that adding housing Downtown does is that it strengthens demand for the remaining office product, because commuting is terrible,” she said. “Having housing near jobs [has] been a good idea for a long time – we did not need Covid to tell us that this was a good idea, people didn’t like commuting before everybody knew how to use zoom – it gives those jobs access to a workforce that has a really low-friction commute.”
Converting existing office buildings can also be a sustainable way to add housing, Aftuck pointed out.
“We’re taking this building and reusing it – recycling it – we’re not using a bunch of lumber and new steel to go ground-up, we’re using something that was there, and I think at its core adaptive reuse projects are very green,” he said. “You’re putting new, high-efficiency systems in, modern appliances; all these things make buildings greener and recycles them.”
Hadden Loh emphasized that cities need to recognize that reusing and repurposing buildings is just one tool in what needs to be a very large and inclusive toolbox.
“We need to take what we have, and do what we can to improve it, and that’s exactly what the adaptive reuse conversation is all about, just think even bigger about it,” she said. “This isn’t just about the adaptive reuse of buildings – what about streets? what about public spaces? what about governance and institutions? – all of these things should be flexible and adaptive and more responsive to the current moment and to the trends that are going to shape the future.”
For the full video of the forum discussion, see columbusmetroclub.org. The State of Downtown report is available at downtownservices.org.
Additional Reading:
More Residents & Entertainment Are Key For Future of Downtown Columbus
Downtown Plan: Redesigned Streets, High-Density Neighborhoods
The Confluence Cast: Columbus Downtown Development Corporation
