All downtown is a stage

Sometimes my brain starts swimming in all the facts and opinions that are out there about the various initiatives and issues that Columbus faces on a daily basis. It is too easy to get caught up in the details of all the individual issues and never stop to zoom out to a 10,000 foot view of all the issues, how they play together and what it all means. I see that as a problem, personally.

It is the big-picture that is what has always kept me interested in following the story of downtown Columbus' efforts of revitalization. But it's that big-picture that gets lost in a sea of details. I guess it's a case of not being able to "see the city through the buildings" in a manner of speaking.

Currently though, as the buzz about the downtown condos is but an echoing memory and as we once again let City Center fall to the back burner as we wait for the next piece of breaking news, we can witness downtown itself fall off the radar a bit, even in the midst of a critical issue such as the streetcars.

With the streetcars for example, folks get caught up in potentially overlapping COTA routes and bus service offerings or investing in safety equipment or spending money on other programs and departments that are in need of funding. Businesses, with concerns about their stores being strained for customers if and when construction on a streetcar line were to take place, focus on the few months that there storefront might be partially blocked off.

These are all valid concerns and issues for citizens and businesses alike that do need to be addressed, but the big-picture becomes impossibly out of view when we're down in the details of individual issues.

In my mind, the answer to seeing the big-picture lies in finding a way to tell Columbus' story over the next 20 years by pulling together all the issues we face and the initiatives we have going that are designed to address them. As I always say, that is no easy task, but it is not impossible. I'll go so far as to say that I think it is actually imperative that we start to address telling a much more comprehensive story for Columbus as we roll out some of our more skepticism-prone initiatives.

People say they want to see what the bigger plans are for Columbus, be it with streetcar, rail transit, bike paths, downtown retail...etc. But I'll suggest that all the pieces are there and already working in unison, but the story is not being told as one. The stories are playing concurrently in separate theaters, but if you watch just one, it won't make any sense. Watch them all and you can see that they are all very clearly connected.

If you just skim all the titles from this week's RetroMetro newsletter, do you see the connections between many of them?

What does the Columbus Symphony's budget shortfalls have to do with a shrinking 25-44 year old workforce? How does that tie in with the fact that gas prices continue to climb and freight rail is making a comeback? What does the future of City Center have to do with the fact that Columbus is paying $2.5 billion to separate storm water lines from sewer lines throughout the city? How does the streetcar tie together the Convention Center, OSU and downtown in a way that is different from a bus? Where are all the opportunities and overlaps with these issues and how do we identify them?

If you use downtown Columbus as the anchor for the drama, it becomes very easy to tell a bigger story where the issues and initiatives are the actors and the Central Business District (CBD) is the stage. If we select a common theme of revitalizing downtown to the end of generating a massive increase in tax revenue in the CBD because of its potential for high density, mixed-use growth, in a place with paid-for infrastructure then we have an outcome that benefits every single citizen in Columbus. More tax revenue gives us the funds to provide more and better services to downtown and all of its suburbs, not just downtown. And that's just the opening act.

It's time to start writing the story I suppose, or at least begin drawing more connections between all of our initiatives on a more regular basis. There is a greater story yet to be told...