COLUMBUS, Ind. — Columbus is moving forward with its one-year pilot program with the Columbus Area Visitors Center for work on downtown activation and the 2021 Ethnic Expo.
Columbus City Council members have approved a resolution for the department of community development to use $18,000 to help fund a position at the visitors center for this work.
Executive Director of Administration and Community Development Mary Ferdon explained that the amount, which was formerly budgeted to fund the part-time position of Ethnic Expo coordinator, will be transferred to the professional services line item and paid quarterly to the visitors center. This will help fund the visitors center’s downtown community coordinator position held by Haley Meek-Anderson, said Visitors Center Executive Director Karen Niverson.
The city’s Ethnic Expo coordinator quit last year in late spring, and she and assistant director of community development Robin Hilber decided to keep the job open, as the future of the Expo was still unclear.
The city announced in May that the 2020 Ethnic Expo, normally held in the fall, was canceled. The annual Expo, launched in 1984 by late first lady Barbara Stewart, aims to allow the city’s international residents, often brought here for work with corporations such as Cummins Inc., to share their culture with others. Plus, Stewart wanted to help those residents feel more comfortable in south central Indiana, especially when they were missing their homeland.
Organizers with the city of Columbus estimate that 25,000 people yearly attended the two-day festival highlighting food, music and an international bazaar.
“Through multiple discussions, we’ve met with the Columbus Area Visitors Center and developed what we’re calling a ‘pilot plan’ to help the downtown activation and help design some form of Ethnic Expo,” Ferdon said.
She said that while they don’t think people will attend large events with 20,000 or 30,000 people, they might begin attending events with a couple hundred or a thousand people (if sufficiently spread out), come spring and summertime.
“Our goal is to spread Ethnic Expo over multiple weekends, I think in late summer, early fall,” Ferdon said. “We haven’t nailed that down yet.”
She said that Meek-Anderson will work on “activation for the entire downtown throughout the spring, summer and next fall, as well as the Ethnic Expo smaller celebrations.”
Niverson defined downtown activation is “a form of placemaking.”
“It is a term we use to describe efforts to create a vibrant environment that becomes a leisure destination for area residents to shop, dine and meet with friends,” she told the Republic. “An active downtown welcomes everyone with a mix of planned events and informal gatherings. The benefits of successful downtown activation include a strong downtown business community and an appealing quality of life.”
She also said that the center is “pleased” about its partnership with the city on Ethnic Expo.
While the city’s focus is mainly on Ethnic Expo, the visitors center will be able to help with downtown events in the summer that are held not just by the city, but also by other organizations, Ferdon said. The work may also tie into the 2021 bicentennial and help bring back downtown events that were canceled in 2020.
“We’re really excited, because it gives us the opportunity to use someone’s expertise and try something different,” she said.
City’s funds provide for about a third of the downtown community coordinator position’s cost; the rest is covered by the visitors’ center.
“We do have oversight as part of the agreement,” she said. “… Robin will provide oversight from the city to the Columbus Area Visitors Center and make sure that whatever is planned for the Ethnic Expo piece will be under our umbrella. And we’ve got some exciting things kind of in the works. And the goal is to keep the overall focus on Ethnic Expo.”
She also said that the city will be able to “weigh in on the direction that the Columbus Area Visitors Center is going with using this person’s time.”
The city’s contract with the visitors center is just for one year. If, by this summer or fall, the city decides it would rather manage Ethnic Expo in-house, they can “go ahead and just rebudget it as part of the part-time.”
“We’ll see how it works,” she said. “We don’t know, again, what 2022 will look like. But we feel like by this summer we’ll have a better idea of what we want Ethnic Expo to look like in the future.”
Mayor Jim Lienhoop said that the city is “excited” about the partnership and downtown activation. He said that the city hopes to make local events, such as Ethnic Expo, attractive to visitors as well as residents.
“Our desire is to make Columbus an interesting, exciting and fun place,” he said. “And so this is a step in that direction.”
