Creative minds from around the country have been attracted to the city of Columbus — and visited recently to consider the future of the FairOaks Mall.
Workshops were held regarding the city and Columbus Regional Health’s project to turn FairOaks Mall into a wellness and recreation center known as NexusPark.
One of these sessions took place during the past week, with city officials, Columbus Regional Health leaders and others gathering at the mall for discussions.
City Director of Administration and Community Development Mary Ferdon said it was the third three-day workshop this summer.
“The city and the CRH teams come together with our architect teams and then our shared engineering firm,” she said. “And so we work independently and then we work jointly as we plan the project.”
Workshops have included firms engaged by either side who are involved in areas such as branding, architecture, engineering and design.
“For the past three months, we’ve met on a monthly basis in the same room, advancing both of our plans and our designs together and then also leveraging kind of the best thinking of all the people in the room,” said John Buggy, principal with RSP Architects. The firm has been engaged to work on medical planning and interior design for CRH’s side of the project.
Todd Snapp, lead principal with Perkins & Will, said that workshop discussions have included looking at “detailed space planning” as well as site plan and master plan perspectives. The city has engaged Perkins & Will as the architect for its field house and parks department spaces.
The schematic design on the city’s current pieces should be completed in September, Ferdon said. After that, the city will move to design development and then construction documents.
David Lenart, director of facilities and materials for the hospital, said that the CRH is currently in the design stage of its “Phase 1.” This phase will involve bringing physician clinics and practices to the mall site and developing space for physical therapy.
“We want to, again, put in services that are complimentary to what the city’s visions are,” he said. “And it’s really a focus toward the whole health, wellness lifestyle improvement. … So starting with medical intervention, moving through rehabilitative services, building towards better lifestyle practices.”
Buggy said that his group is currently in the schematic design phase.
“That’s where the project begins to get order,” he said. “It begins to develop its identity. It begins to get very, very real in terms of design and planning and cost and schedule. And it’s a really exciting time because this is where the vision is starting to come out.”
The next phase will be design development.
Architecture firm BSA LifeStructures has been engaged on CRH’s side of the project. BSA President Timothy Spence said that CRH President and CEO Jim Bickel has communicated that if NexusPark still feels like a mall or a clinic after they’re done, then it would not have been done correctly. Both aspects are to be reimagined.
Ideally, the space will foster “a culture and a community of wellness,” he said.
“The overall goal is to create a structure that is all around wellness and fitness for the community,” said Spence. “… So it’s taking a dilapidated piece of city fabric and reconstituting that so that it could be used for the wellness of the whole community.”
Buggy called NexusPark “a really special project.”
“It’s exciting to see, because I think Columbus is kind of ahead of a lot of other cities in terms of embracing real estate development and health and recreation and wellness,” he said. “… I think, when this is complete, there are going to be other cities coming to Columbus, and there are going to be other health care systems coming to Columbus to learn from what we’re doing right now.”
