Columbus “The Collab City” vs Calgary "The Drab City"
This is the third in a series of blogs based on the book “Our Towns” A 100,000 mile journey into the heart of America, by James and Deborah Fallows. The blog also looks at how Calgary compares to Columbus with respect to the redevelopment of its downtown over the past 20+ years. There are some amazing similarities to what Columbus faced 30 years ago and what Calgary is facing today.
Over the past 20 years, Calgary has done many of the things Columbus and other North American cities have done to revitalize their downtowns, but it doesn’t seem to be working in Calgary.
LInk: Calgary: Exchanging “A Sense of Place” for “Endless Blandness.”
Downtown Columbus and Scioto River.
Downtown Columbus and surrounding neighbourhoods.
Columbus gets no respect
While Columbus is the 15th largest city in the US by population (913,921 with a metro population slightly over two million) just behind San Francisco, it is relatively unknown by Americans and those outside the USA. It is twice as large as Cleveland, the state’s second largest city and more widely known. That is why when people say they are from “Columbus” they always add “Ohio” to help people understand where it is.
Columbus lacks the media, sports and pop-culture attention that other cities its size normally gets, even though it is the state capital, home to the Ohio State University (think Buckeyes Football team) and where Dave Thomas opened the first Wendy’s restaurant.
From Downtown Columbus website
Columbus Renaissance
In the late 1990s and early 2000s downtown Columbus was a wasteland – department stores closing, small spaces vacant or occupied by pawnshops, residents and businesses migrating to the suburbs, downtown streets deserted and often dangerous after dark. An old decaying state penitentiary sat in the middle of town.
Today the downtown is on the rise with the former penitentiary site becoming a new arena for the NHL’s Columbus Blue Jackets and a billion dollars’ worth of surrounding development. It is was the model for Edmonton’s downtown Ice District.
What the Fallows saw when they visited in the mid-2010s was “a humming stylish downtown…retail stores with lots of daytime business, restaurants, bars, theatres and brewpubs busy at night…parks that were busy at lunch time with office workers, old retail and warehouse buildings that had been converted into residential. All the elements of a “normal” healthy downtown.”
The Fallows sat down with Alex Fischer the CEO of the Columbus Partnership to understand the city’s metamorphosis.
I couldn’t help but wonder if there were some lessons for Calgary.
From Downtown Columbus website
Columbus’ Revival
Fischer noted it is important to realize Columbus is a major financial center with its largest private employer being JPMorgan Chase (16,000 employees), followed by Nationwide Insurance (11,000) and very large hospital and medical-care sector. Being an inland city it also was a major transportation and distribution hub, as well as having steady base of state government jobs.
The first thing Columbus as a “Rust Belt City” needed to recognize was “the city’s infrastructure was built for an era and an economy that no longer existed.” The era of huge factories with 1,000s of workers streaming in and out at the end of each shift was over. It needed to make physical changes to its downtown area – more offices, more walkable streets, less car-centric – to become a 21st century city. (Doesn’t this sound familiar for Calgary and Alberta).
This included:
A historic department store that closed in 2003, was reopened six years later as a modern office and retail space.
A former ‘70s eyesore parking garage became a new park.
Outdated buildings became condos and apartments.
Historic Carnegie Library in Topiary Park was renovated.
A downtown high school was build next to the library.
A new arena/entertainment district was created.
The result was the downtown evolved from an embarrassing wasteland to an amazing asset that fostered a “pervasive culture of positivity.”
The creation of a Sports Hospitality Entertainment District (SHED) (arena, baseball stadium, hotels, office, residences, street activities) has been credited with the revival of Columbus’ downtown.
Collab City
Fischer noted that Columbus was able to rebuild its downtown by collaboration, a spirit of openness, long-term commitment to the community and local patriotism. In his opinion, what is needed for urban renewal is a group of business leaders who realize they have to work together to make the place better. They then have to collaborate with government, philanthropists, start-up, education, civic institutions, the arts and create innovative private-public partnership. Everyone has to buy-in that change is needed and they need to be part of it.
In Columbus the “culture of collaboration” was so pervasive that it resulted in the coining of a new word “collab” that was used by everyone as a short form for “collaboration,” as in we need to “collab” on this project.
The City realized it needed a vibrant downtown to attract young people to the city. It also realized it needed to change the country’s perception of the city by branding itself as “smart and open.” They knew “every city wanted something similar,” but they knew Columbus’ scale (not too big and not too small) and culture gave it an edge.
The “collab” spirit of the city gradually made the city more attractive to young entrepreneurs looking for a mid-size city where they could afford to live and try new things. The city created a “small business concierge” to cut through the red tape and provide advice for small ventures from food trucks to boutiques, brew pubs to fashion designers. Over the past decade Columbus has become third largest fashion centre in America after New York and Los Angeles. Who knew?
The Atlantic: When ‘Collaboration’ Is More Than a Buzzword.
Strong Mayor
Michael Coleman a prominent lawyer and city council member became Columbus’ first African-American mayor in 2000 at the age of 44. He was re-elected for a total of four more terms, before he decided not to run for a 5th term.
Coleman noted the best decision council made over the past 20 year was a “tax increase.” Yes a TAX INCREASE! The citizens voted to increase their taxes and invest in the “Columbus of the future,” in middle of the 2008 financial crisis.
Coleman noted cities are obligated to balance their budget each year, so when the crisis resulted in a 25% decline in tax revenue Council was left to with the choice to “either ask for more from the citizens in taxes, or cut back in services if offers to schools, police and fire protection, road maintenance and other upkeep – all ingredients of a healthy civic life.”
While Coleman’s first reaction to crisis was to cut spending and layoff police and fireman, he was concerned this would result is a downward spiral that would take years to recover from. He proposed raising the city’s income tax rate from 2% to 2.5%, which by state law had to be approved by city’s electorate. In August 2009 it was approved by 52% of the voters (ironically the turnout was relatively low).
Fisher thought the reason voters approved the increase was “The mayor had a good track record. The City’s finances were well run. The citizens and business community trusted the mayor and council.”
Coleman said one of the keys to his municipal government success is “to insulate themselves from the paralysis of national-level politics.” He noted city governance is “where the action is.” The key to a successful city is in “a strong-mayor system within a functioning civic culture.”
From Downtown Columbus website
Library & Homeless & Entrepreneurs
Like Calgary, Columbus has a long library history dating back to the early 20th Century when they received a donation from the Carnegie Foundation to build their first library in the middle of a seven-acre Topiary Park (in Calgary’s case it was Central Memorial Park and Library). Today it is not only an important part of the city’s learning culture, but home for the city homeless.
Fallows note that no matter what city they visited the library was the unofficial home of the homeless during the day. They found in Columbus the homeless understood expectations for appropriate behavior: no sleeping, no bathing and in the case of strong odor, counselling on where to go to get a shower. There are warnings and penalties for inappropriate behaviour, including a day’s or week’s sabbatical from the library.
They also noted libraries are important places for young entrepreneurs to set up offices for the day, taking meetings and phone calls all day long.
After criss-crossing the country, the Fallows have determined that libraries are the “heart and soul of American communities. We learned that in the library, we could discover the spirit of the town, get a feel for the people’s needs, wants and gauge their energy and mettle. Libraries reflect and serve the people in the areas of technology, education and community.”
Link: Downtown Columbus
Calgary vs Columbus
As Calgary struggles to reinvent its greater downtown from an office tower business park, to a more diversified people place are their lessons to be learn from Columbus.
Like Columbus over the past 20 years we have enhanced our downtown with:
new Central library and Music Museum (total investment $436M)
10,000+ new condos and apartments and two major homeless shelters,
new parks, bike lanes, pathways and public spaces ($45M for St. Patrick’s Island redevelopment, $25M each for Peace Bridge and George King Bridge, $11M for West Eau Claire park)
expanded convention centre and built new hotels.
expanded existing downtown college and created a satellite university campus. ($160M new South Campus building)
built a new Health Centre.
redeveloped old hospital site, into a park, main street and housing. (The Bridges, 17 new residential buildings)
added a new LRT leg to connect with the west side of the city. Approved plans from major new 46 km north to southeast line. ($1.4B for West Leg, $183M for 7th Ave Transit Corridor improvements)
renovated a ‘70s office/retail complex into modern shopping centre with a second department store ($225M)
We are in the middle of creating a new urban village (East Village), as well as revitalizing Stampede Park as a year-round entertainment district with new arena and expanded BMO event centre. Plans are also in place for major arts centre improvements - Arts Commons, The Glenbow and Contemporary Calgary. ($396M in East Village infrastructure and development programs).
Too much office space
The biggest difference is that Calgary has 12 million square feet of empty office space (more than Columbus’ total office space), most of it relatively new. It will be difficult to fill up or find other uses for 12 million square feet of office space post COVID.
For Columbus it was easy to justify demolishing or repurposing decaying old buildings, that is much harder to do with new office space. And Columbus wasn’t so dependent on downtown office space as its major municipal tax revenue.
Last Word
Calgary has probably done more over the past 20 years than Columbus in the way of urban renewal projects of our downtown and surrounding neighbourhoods. We are doing all of the things other cities have done to successfully revitalize their downtown and yet ours is still struggling.
Is it a lack of collaboration? Lack of a strong city council? Lack of strong leadership from the downtown business community?
What are we missing?
If you like these blogs you might like these links:
Columbus Ohio is booming but will it last?
25 things you should know about Columbus Ohio