The city wants to add traffic calming devices and parking along 2nd street to reduce accidents, reduce parking enforcement in outlining areas, and steel is on the way for the NexusPark construction.
On this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Columbus Mayor Jim Lienhoop addresses these issues and more. Listen to the full conversation with Indiana Newsdesk anchor Joe Hren by clicking on the play button above, or read some of the questions and answers below. A portion of this segment airs 6:45 and 8:45 a.m. Wednesday on WFIU.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
Hren: A couple hundred Columbus residents stood against Asian hate after the Bloomington and Los Angeles incident this past month, but only the beginning of what needs to be done.
Lienhoop: Columbus and Bloomington are a lot alike in many respects. The people who live here felt a loss with respect to what happened in Bloomington, and maybe a trite phrase, but we share the pain, if you will. And so it was important to us to, to recognize that.
We want to let people know that we do care about everybody's safety, and particularly those who maybe are new to this country. We wanted to take the opportunity to have that discussion. And, I thought it was very well attended. I was kind of surprised that we had that many people there. But we did and, I thought it spoke well for our community and was glad to be able to host it.
Hren: I want to follow up on the downtown fire we covered back in December that has been ruled undetermined. So why has the cause not been found?
Lienhoop: That was really a result of the destruction that had occurred to the investigators who would have otherwise gone in there and tried to determine the cause were not safe. And so they declined to enter and reported that, we'll call that declination to the Indiana State Fire Marshal that agreed that there was no real need, in this case to do any further investigation.
I drove by there at lunchtime today. I would estimate about a third of the building is down. The third of it that is closest to the remaining structure that used to house the Chamber of Commerce. I'm really pleased to see that they've made some progress. And hopefully, at the rate they're going, there'll be done here within a couple of weeks.
Hren: I see a few streets down from there around Second St., the city is looking to add some parking and traffic calming devices. What's needed there and why?
Lienhoop: One is that we have had a few accidents near the jail on Second Street, and the predominant parking for the jail is across Second Street. So we've got a need for visitors to the jail to cross the what is the three lanes of State Road 46, all headed in the same direction. And it's just a challenge for anybody who wants to do that.
And we have in the plans to build a hotel conference center on that block. People tend to drive to the environment that they're in, maybe we would like for them to drive to this posted speed limit. But sometimes they don't do that. And so one of the suggested solutions is to calm the traffic to change that vision, so that that's not what you see as you're driving down through that. And among the ways to do that are to narrow the lanes and to provide for on street parking. And this will just sort of change the visual effect.
We also talk about what's called bump outs. And so at the various corners, you may push the curb out a lane on either side. So that those pedestrians who want to cross don't have quite as much pavement to cover. We don't have a program yet for Third St., but that should follow within a couple of months.
Hren: We've talked about a downtown parking committee in the past, and I see a recommendation about reduced parking enforcement. But I don't know the context, do you have anything on that?
Lienhoop: We found ourselves in a situation where there were folks who were just going to park downtown, and it didn't matter to them what the sign said or the fine. We're really kind of reluctant to boot cars or tow them. And we find ourselves today that we don't have quite the turnover in parking that we would like on Washington Street. And that seems to be the focus of our attention where the majority of the merchants are.
And so we've begun to think that well, we'll begin to reinforce a little bit more strictly the parking there and in return, the trade off will be that we will no longer restrict over on Franklin Street or Jackson Street, the edges of the downtown area. And we'll just give that a chance to see how it works.
Hren: Let's get to NexusPark. I know construction is ongoing. You've been hinting the last few months to wait till February, because you're going to see a lot of steel that's on the way.
Lienhoop: We're going to have an event on February 8, late morning. We typically get when we do a project at the start, there'll be a groundbreaking, but this particular project, we're going to be doing some interior demolition, to make way for some community rooms in our parks, department offices, and so forth. So instead of shovels, we chose sledgehammers.
The contractors have been pouring their footers and it's a fair amount of concrete going into the ground and preparation of steel erection. And I'm told that will happen late February, or the first of March.
Hren: But also, city council's busy looking ahead, to be able to fund full time positions, employees that are going to run that facility as well, right?
Lienhoop: Once we fill the the rental space, we think we're confident that the place will pay for the people we hire, to run it, it'll pay for the utilities, and so forth. And in addition to ongoing repairs, and maintenance, and capital upgrades, but there's always a little bit of a get ready or a ramp up period. And so that's what we're trying to address with this request for appropriation from the city council, we anticipate that we might have to hire four or five people sometime this year, and the timing will vary based upon the construction.
While we're waiting for the facility to be completed, we need to have them on staff and ready to go so that we can begin to book events and then have them there on day one. I mean, it does take some money to sort of get started and that's the reason for the request.
Hren: I hear the 1821 Trail is close to being finished?
Lienhoop: That's our Bicentennial legacy project. It's going to eventually run from the riverfront project to the apartment project on Second and Lafayette. We've got a bunch of markers down there that talk to the history of Columbus that go back to 1821, or maybe even a little earlier, and sort of help people understand why Columbus is here and some of the important events that have occurred over the last 200 years. At nighttime these are lit, and they're quite attractive.
Hren: And stay tuned for the State of the City Address?
Lienhoop: Right now we're looking at March 6 at 6 p.m. One of the things we'll be able to celebrate is that we are really proud that the Indiana State Chamber of Commerce selected Columbus as it's community of the year. So we're going to do a couple of things. One will be to look backwards a little bit. I mean, we all understand this will be my last State of the City address. So we want to make it a big shindig, as they say, I want people to enjoy themselves and be reminded that we've got a lot done the last seven years and we've got a few things left on the agenda to finish so come on down to The Commons and have some fun.
