A plan to demolish the former Douglas Alternative Elementary School in Olde Towne East is moving forward. The 1970s-era building, located on a four-acre parcel just south of East Broad Street, was purchased by the city of Columbus in 2020.
In its place, a new facility will be built – to be called the Broad Street Arts and Senior Campus – which will provide space for a variety of Columbus Recreation and Parks Department programming, including the Golden Hobby Shop and activities once run out of the Martin Janis Senior Center.
A rendering of the new building has been posted to the project website, and a public meeting to discuss details of the design is scheduled for August 18. A timeline on the website states that construction could start in the spring or summer of next year, with a planned opening of the new campus in the fall of 2024.
The Columbus Fire Department plans to conduct training exercises on the site during the last two weeks of September, before the building is torn down.
City officials have said that they hope the new facility will draw users from throughout the city while also providing a new park and community meeting space that can be utilized by its Near East Side neighbors. The location, at 51 S. Douglass St., will be convenient for COTA users given its proximity to the #10 bus on Broad Street.
The Golden Hobby Shop, a gift shop that sold crafts made by seniors, was run for decades out of a historic schoolhouse in German Village. That building, at 630 S. Third St., was sold by the city to the Catholic Diocese of Columbus, to be used by the St. Mary School.
The Golden Hobby Shop relocated temporarily to the Columbus Performing Arts Center, at 549 Franklin Ave.
A public meeting to discuss the design of the new facility will be held at 11 a.m. on Thursday, August 18, at Thompson Community Center. For more information, see columbusrecparks.com.