"DEATH OF THE MILO DREAM" The Other Paper

Bringing together private investment, public dollars and the arts & cultural community is one of the largest challenges we face in Columbus' as we look to what will be an important factor in the evolution of central city as we go into the future:

Link: DEATH OF THE MILO DREAM
After 18 years, the arts center’s owner is tapped out, and a sheriff’s sale looms
By Jordan Gentile
The Other Paper
December 14, 2006

..."It's clear to me that your passion drives the work you do," he wrote. "I only hope your personal support for this venture won't wring you dry."

So far, those with the largest visions and the driving passion for the city are quite often disconnected from that larger community when it comes implementing their (dare I say our) plans.

I don't know enough about the Milo-Grogan Arts Center to fully evaluate the situation, but as someone who has chased a dream at great personal sacrifice and failed in the first attempt, at great cost, I can appreciate the situation.

Sitting back and looking at where my own passion has gotten me over the past two and a half years, I can empathize for the situation at the Arts Center. But as I am working to upright my floundered attempt at giving my passion and vision business wings, I too will be seeing the next few years as a time to like my wounds while keeping my dream alive. More importantly, as a time to reflect on my mistakes so that I don't repeat them.

A dream without practical implementation is nothing more than fool's errand and a high-risk gamble taken out of an unrealistic assumption that our passion alone will pay the bills. Sometimes, folks get lucky. Most of the time, they do not.

There is a lesson to be learned at Milo Arts and for each of us it may be a little different. The one common thread that we can't ignore is that for great visions to become reality, we cannot do it alone.

It takes a team, a community, to achieve greatness of any degree when it comes to building a city and all of the parts within it.

"He who perseveres is victorious"

"Artists’ pad faces closure" The Columbus Dispatch

We don't get too much news coming out of Milo-Grogan these days accept for back when there were talks about redeveloping the former Timken site. One of the city's only artist live-work spaces may be shutting down:

Link: Artists’ pad faces closure
Milo Arts owner losing building he created as live-work space for artists to sheriff’s sale
Friday, December 08, 2006
Debbie Gebolys
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

An inner-city artists’ haven faces an uncertain future because the building the group lives and works in is set to go to a sheriff’s sale on Jan 5.

Milo Arts Center might be the only place to combine artist studios and living quarters in central Ohio. Real-estate investor Richard Mann created it in 1988 in a former elementary school on the North Side...

"Timken bid still chasing state help" Business First of Columbus

Jerome Solove is still trying like a champ to land Clean Ohio Revitalization funds to clean up the former Timken Co. site to help him get one step closer to executing his development plans for that area of Milo-Grogan:

Link: Timken bid still chasing state help
Business First of Columbus
March 10, 2006
by Brian R. Ball

The prospective developer of the former Timken Co. site in Columbus will try again to land state funding to transform the industrial site into a retail and commercial center.

But developer Jerome Solove will once more face stiff competition for the money as the Clean Ohio Assistance Fund gains popularity...

Timken Site in the news

Timken is in the news again but not with any new developments aside from the appearance of additional partners in the proposed retail project to the northeast of Jeffrey Place just outside of Italian Village in the Milo-Grogan neighborhood:

Link: GROUP HOPES TO BUILD RETAIL CENTER ON FORMER TIMKEN SITE
(you'll have to do a search for the title once you arrive at the URL)
The Columbus Dispatch
Mike Pramik
August 15th, 2005

...There's no timeline for shopping-center construction, and no companies have been signed. But those who back the bid for state money say retail development would spur investment in the Milo-Grogan neighborhood and beyond, said Howard Beder of Samstel Investment Group. The latter is joining Jerome Solove Development on the Timken project....

Follow-up on Timken Site, Proposed CityGate development

Found some more background on the Timken site at Cleveland and and Fifth Avenues to the northeast of the 41.5 acre Jeffrey Place project:

Link: WBNS-10TV Columbus, Ohio: Development Could Lead To Eminent Domain.
December 12th, 2004

...About a hundred people met at a Gibbard Avenue church Saturday night to shore up opposition to plans being proposed by developer Jerome Solove. People living in the near north side neighborhood do not oppose the idea of revitalizing the area. But they object to tearing down homes in order to do it. They say his idea to make something of the old Timken bearing factory at Cleveland and Fifth avenues is fine. They want Solove to find another way than asking the city to condemn hundreds of homes surrounding 31 acre factory side. "He's already rich,” Daisy Milner said of Solove. “We're poor folks. We work every day. Why can't we be heard? Can't we be heard?" But the city may already be listening to residents of the area...

A little more research in the Dispatch revealed that the eminent domain that was being sought for the 200 homes near the project on the east side of Cleveland Avenue has been dropped.

The developer, Jerome Solove, still wants to buy the homes but will probably do so on a home-by-home basis. To my understanding he wants the land in order to put in a retail shopping center.

5th Avenue Lumber is interested in in part of Solove's 30 acre Timken site in order to expand their business.

Quite a curious combination of elements over there. This will be one to watch.

"City Council to seek money for Timken site cleanup" Columbus Business First

Enter stage left: CityGate...the newest proposed project. Looks to be a 12.6 acre mixed-use development (of 30.9) in the Milo-Grogan area. The site is located at the southwest corner of Cleveland Ave and East 5th Avenue:

View the Google Map

This is a little outside my typical urban areas, but it is near and dear to The University District and just northeast of Jeffrey Place Italian Village across the train tracks to the east. This bodes well for Columbus as the redevelopment of another old brownfield site...but...the developer, Jerome Solove, was also trying to get the city to declare the neighborhoods directly to the east of the sight as blighted, use eminent domain, and then turn the properties over to him for redevelopment ("New jobs might hinge on eminent domain", Monday, December 06, 2004, Debbie Gebolys and Jodi Andes, THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH)

It's not clear in the article, but I believe that the city council has given the OK for the developer to go after Clean Ohio Grant Fund money, the same fund Jeffrey Place and Harrison Park where able to tap into in order to excavate, test, and perform any necessary envrionmental clean up their sites:

Link: City Council to seek money for Timken site cleanup
May 21st, 2005
Columbus Business First

...Columbus developer Jerome Solove is working to redevelop the 30.9-acre property. Solove told Business First in September he set up a nonprofit development agency, the Milo-Grogan Community Urban Redevelopment Corp., to handle the site. Tentative plans call for a $12.5 million, 550,000-square-foot mixed-use project.

Canton-based Timken operated a ball bearing plant on the site for 90 years, but closed it in 2001...