From: Michael A. Mullett
Columbus
City officials and land use architects should not ignore the 11th Street entrance to Columbus from the north.
Thank you for your lead article in Saturday’s Republic regarding city officials’ initiating a request for proposals from landscape architects to redesign the SR 46 entrance to Columbus. (“Landscape architects are being sought to redesign plazas forming the downtown entrance into Columbus”, Feb. 25.)
For a city that prides itself as the Athens of the Prairie, this is certainly an endeavor worthy of the most creative designs of interested architects to welcome visitors and residents arriving from the west.
That said, I believe that city officials would be remiss if they did not also direct their attention to redesigning the City’s entrance from the north along 11th Street. Indeed, as a resident of historic downtown Columbus, this is the entrance I use the most myself by far. It is also the entrance which I used when I first visited Columbus in 1969, and the entrance I still recommend today to those coming from Indianapolis to visit Columbus, because it was then and is now the shortest way from Interstate 65, U.S 31 and Indianapolis Road to downtown Columbus and to my wife’s and my downtown home.
Moreover, there are multiple other reasons why the 11th Street entrance requires redesign. First and foremost is the conjunction of an awkward bend on Indianapolis Road after it crosses the Driftwood River Bridge and passes the entrance to Mill Race Center shortly before encountering the railroad crossing and traffic circle at the Brown-Lindsey streets intersection and becoming 11th Street. This already worrisome situation would become very problematic were Columbus to become, as recently reported by The Republic, the prime candidate for an Amtrak stop between Indianapolis and Louisville on the planned extension of national passenger rail service from Chicago through Indiana.
The 11th Street entrance to our “different by design” community becomes even more strategic with recent efforts to revitalize “downtown” by creating a vibrant “uptown” in the area of 11th and Washington streets with additional and improved housing, eating and drinking, and retail service options — especially if “uptown” could be better interconnected with Mill Race Center, Mill Race Park and the city’s expanding trail system. In this context, the former Central Middle School track and baseball diamond athletic area between the railroad tracks and the trail between Mill Race and Noblitt Parks certainly warrants attention as well (and not only because it has predictably become a favorite location for tent camping by our unhoused neighbors!)
Columbus should also be ready to learn from other communities with architectural schools such as Savannah, Ga., which have learned to their great benefit that student projects supervised by faculty members can be sources of creative ideas for community improvements in addition to commissioned projects by illustrious private architects! See, e.g., www.dezeen.com/2023/07/09/scad-savannah-college-of-art-and-design-architecture-student-projects-dezeen-schoolshows.
Thanks for reading and considering!
