Business First: Personal income growth in Columbus region outpaces most of state

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Business First

Date: Tuesday, August 9, 2011, 3:03pm EDT - Last Modified: Wednesday, August 10, 2011, 9:17am EDT

Total income among Central Ohioans grew only a shade faster than the national average in 2010 but outpaced most other cities in the state, according to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The data, released Tuesday and analyzed by Columbus Business First online affiliate Business Journals, show the total personal income in the Columbus Metropolitan Statistical Area hit $70.6 billion last year, up 3.1 percent from $68.5 billion in 2009. Total personal income is defined as the income received by all people from all sources in a given year, ranging from employment wages to Social Security and welfare payments.

Among 366 metropolitan areas nationwide, income grew an average of 2.9 percent after falling nearly 2 percent the year before. Business Journals in a searchable online database features data on all metros in the U.S.

Columbus’ personal income is topped by two other Ohio metros: Cincinnati and Cleveland, both touting nearly $85 billion in income. The city’s growth rate, however, was topped only by the Youngstown and Sandusky areas.

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Columbus Named a “Best Fall Trip” of 2011 by National Geographic

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Columbus, Ohio

Photograph by Shari Lewis, Dispatch Photos

Ohio’s capital and largest city celebrates harvest season with a bounty of traditional fall festivals, farmers markets, and corn mazes. Pick your own apples (September) and pumpkins (October) at Lynd’s Fruit Farm in Pataskala, and, the first weekend in October (contingent on the harvest), jump in the barrel to stomp whole grapes at Via Vecchi Winery’s annual grape crush. Enjoy east-central Ohio’s spectacular fall colors by walking, biking, hiking, or camping at one of the 17 Columbus-area Metro Parks. The largest, Battelle Darby Creek in Galloway, covers more than 7,000 acres of flowering prairies, restored wetlands, and forests, and is home to diverse wildlife, including six female bison introduced to the park in February. In October, Columbus also hosts thousands of migratory birds at the Grange Insurance Audubon Center. The 72-acre Scioto River oasis, built on a reclaimed industrial waste site, is a ten-minute walk from downtown. Other areas to explore on foot include the brick-paved streets of the historic German Village neighborhood—originally settled by German immigrants in the mid-1800s—and the Short North Arts District, home to galleries, restaurants, pubs, and one of the hometown-favorite Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams shops.

Pictured here: Customers pack a Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams shop in the Short North Arts District of Columbus, Ohio.

Columbus: An Open Look (Video from the Columbus Foundation)

A Tribute to Our Community

Diversity. Community engagement. Creative culture. Entrepreneurs. Business support for new ideas and people who have them. That’s cool, that’s Columbus. Open for business, Open for your life.

More information is here

Columbus Neighborhoods: A site you should visit

You can watch the videos below. As more are introduced, I will post them

clipped from www.columbusneighborhoods.org About Columbus Neighborhoods Welcome to columbusneighborhoods.org! We invite you to browse these pages and celebrate the different neighborhoods that collectively make up Columbus, Ohio. We ask in return that you join us in telling the story of central Ohio by sharing your cherished photographs, your favorite video clips, your most amusing or poignant audio clips, or your memories and thoughts around your own particular neighborhood. Thanks for coming along for the fun—your contributions will make this site richer and the celebration of our community more powerful.

Inspired by WOSU's six-documentary series, Columbus Neighborhoods, WOSU and The Columbus Metropolitan Library built this site to offer our neighbors an opportunity to share what's great about their own neighborhoods. The Ohio State University Medical Center, State Auto, AEP Ohio, and Bailey Cavalieri LLC heard about what we were doing (as did Bob and Missy Weiler, Tad and Nancy Jeffrey, Barbara Fergus, the James W. Overstreet Fund of The Columbus Foundation plus a variety of other supporters), and they graciously offered to support these projects because they too believe in the power of community.

Columbus Dispatch: Gay-friendly, and growing - Franklin County tops in same-sex Ohio households

Tom Grote, left, and partner Rick Neal share a porch swing with their 2-year-old daughter, Amoret, in the backyard of their home in German Village. Grote says more gay couples are "settling down" and adopting.

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Census Numbers

Gay-friendly, and growing

Franklin County tops in same-sex Ohio households

Thursday, July 28, 2011 04:25 AM

By Bill Bush and Rita Price

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

In the past decade, Franklin County added more households led by same-sex couples than any other Ohio county, new census information shows.

The 5,132 gay households make up just 2.3 percent of the Franklin County homes in which a couple lived together in 2010, but the number grew by almost 1,900, or 58 percent, during the decade.

The next-largest gain was in Cuyahoga County, which added 750 same-sex-couple households, or 28 percent. The statewide number grew by 51 percent, to 28,600 households.

Franklin also has more gay couples overall.

"None of this really surprises me," said Mike Daniels, co-publisher of Outlook: Columbus, a magazine geared to the gay community. "Columbus is a top-10 gay city across America, but Columbus is a very interesting place because it is a very welcoming environment for absolutely everyone."

(Click for a larger view)

The census probably "somewhere between mildly and grossly underestimates the number," Daniels added.

Same-sex couples are counted because the census tracks relationships within households. It does not ask about sexual orientation more broadly, so there is no census count of the total number of gays, including single people and couples who do not live together.

It's difficult to know whether the growing number of same-sex households means that more gay couples live in Franklin County, or whether more have become willing to identify themselves that way.

"I would suspect there might be a little of both," said Tom Grote, who lives in German Village with his partner, Rick Neal, and their 2-year-old daughter. "More people are probably familiar with that checkbox on the census form, and more people are in fact checking it."

The Columbus area feels welcoming to gay couples and families, and many employers - both public and private - offer friendly work environments and domestic-partner insurance benefits, he said.

"There's probably more settling-down going on," said Grote, 46, the chief financial officer at ButylFuel, a biofuel company. He also is a trustee for the United Way of Central Ohio and Miami University.

"I think you have more and more gay couples comfortable with coming out and living in the suburbs," Grote said. "We know a lot more people who are adopting - that definitely is a trend."

Neal, 45, who moved to Columbus from Washington, D.C.,said the city is a great place for families.

(Click for a larger view)

"It was really the right decision to come here," he said. "People here are very, very nice."

There are about the same number of gay and lesbian households in Franklin County, at just under 2,600 each, and about 21 percent reported that they have a child living with them. Statewide, about 26 percent of gay couples were raising children. About 41 percent of straight couples in Ohio - whether married or not - reported having a child in their home.

Five other central Ohio counties - Union, Delaware, Madison, Pickaway and Fairfield - were in the top 11 counties statewide as far as percentage growth in gay households. Union County was No. 1, up 185 percent to 114 households.

"When I was kid, if you were a same-sex couple, you moved to New York or San Francisco or someplace that you felt welcome," said Ed Mullen, executive director of Equality Ohio, an advocacy group for gay, bisexual and transgender people. Today, "people don't feel the need to."

For many gays, living in Columbus has a legal benefit: Neither state nor federal law protects gay people against discrimination, while the city of Columbus has a human-rights ordinance that considers sexual orientation, Mullen said.

The city has included gays as a protected class for more than two decades, and Columbus added "transgender residents" - men who consider themselves women and women who consider themselves men - in 2008. The ordinance applies to all private landlords and sellers of homes, employers and operators of public accommodations in the city, said Napoleon Bell, director of the Columbus Community Relations Commission.

The city of Columbus, Columbus City Schools, Franklin County, Ohio State University and some large private employers that are based here offer domestic-partner health benefits, also luring gays.

"Columbus has become a Mecca for GLBT folks," Daniels said.

The Census Bureau is advising that it will release "alternative estimates" later this year for same-sex partner numbers to account for "data capture errors." A census spokeswoman couldn't say how those estimates might differ from the current numbers.

bbush@dispatch.com
rprice@dispatch.com

Columbus Dispatch: Kroger designs store to blend with Short North streetscape

The link with more pictures is here

Sunday, July 24, 2011 03:14 AM

By Tracy Turner

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

The newest store on N. High Street near the Short North has an entrance just off the sidewalk, big windows and retro signs befitting the neighborhood of art galleries, specialty shops and coffeehouses.

Oh, and it's a Kroger.

The store, which opens to the public Tuesday, was designed not only to sell area residents milk and bread but to serve visually and commercially as a bridge between the expanding development that is starting to link the Short North and the Ohio State University campus area.

For Kroger, it's the first time in central Ohio that the company has used such a design - one that extends the building up to the sidewalk. There's no yawning parking to interrupt the flow between buildings along High Street; instead, the main entrance and parking can be found facing 7th Avenue.

The goal of the new design, and the zoning requirements that inspired it, is to not only create business continuity down N. High Street but to ensure that the area's urban atmosphere remains intact, said Dick Makley, a planning manager for the city of Columbus.

This ensures that new businesses on N. High Street have storefronts that are real storefronts instead of brick walls, he said, "so you don't end up with a City Center mall effect, where there is no visible retail presence on the street, where you have to (physically) go inside the store to actually see anything."

"Having the buildings street-level allows for a more pleasant walking area and allows more easy access to the building on foot," Makley said.

All new commercial buildings along a stretch of N. High Street must incorporate a streetscape design because of the revised Urban Commercial Zoning Overlay the city began requiring in 2002, he said. The rules require that new commercial buildings sit right on the sidewalk and that 60 percent of the storefront of the building be windows.

Kroger joins a growing list of companies that recently have built new stores close to N. High Street, such as Taco Bell, Donatos, Buffalo Wild Wings Grill & Bar, CVS, Turkey Hill Minit Market and Giant Eagle's GetGo fuel stations.

New urbanism is the charge leading this trend, said Dan Stanek, executive vice president of Big Red Rooster, a Columbus-based retail innovation and design firm.

While compact, street-front development is common in big cities such as New York and Boston or in Europe, it's also a trend catching on more broadly as there's more desire to have stores and neighborhoods more integrated, he said.

Even big-box retailers in some cities are shrinking their size in an attempt to fit in.

"It's a combination of more younger people who prefer to live in an urban environment and the boomer market that is finding it more appealing to live in a condo or urban setting," Stanek said. "I think you'll see more of this urban trend because stores are going where the people are moving."

Kroger's new store, 1350 N. High St., attempts to appeal to the diverse clientele: OSU students, more-affluent shoppers from the Short North and moderate-income residents in neighborhoods to the east.

The store will offer a professional chef, an in-store bistro with seating, a sushi bar and expanded prepared-food offerings.

Customers will be able to look into the store's bistro area, which has a salad bar, large produce section and floral department, from on the sidewalk, spokeswoman Beth Wilkin said.

"It's the only store in our Columbus division like that and is something we'd look at doing in the future if the situation warranted," Wilkin said.

The 60,000-square-foot store is twice the size of the store it is replacing , which was demolished last month. Wilkin said Kroger held focus groups to determine what the community wanted for the area between the Short North and OSU.

"We see ourselves as the bridge between the two neighborhoods," Wilkin said.

So does Campus Partners, developer of the South Campus Gateway project just up the road, spokeswoman Erin Prosser said. She said Kroger's efforts are a significant investment that will help spur other private investment along that stretch of N. High Street.

"High Street is such a strong spine of the city and that connection between the two neighborhoods is beneficial for everyone," Prosser said.

Michael Wilkos couldn't agree more. He is a senior grants officer at the Columbus Foundation and resident of the Weinland Park neighborhood, which is one of the neighborhoods the new store serves.

Wilkos, who also sits on the Weinland Park Collaborative, a group that is working to rebuild the neighborhood, said the store is a "tremendous improvement for the neighborhood."

"It supports the pedestrian and transit focus of the neighborhood," he said, noting that half of the people in the neighborhood don't have access to a car.

"Kroger understands the diverse people in the neighborhood," Wilkos said. "From students to families, those with high incomes, middle incomes and low incomes, the store's design understands that mix and works to meet all those needs."

Short North businesses also are happy with the new design, said Diesha Condon, senior director of the Short North Business Association.

Attention to detail - right down to the color of the brick used to build the store - is just one reason why the store is key in generating new business to the area, she said.

"They were thoughtful and careful to make sure the building kept that historic look," Condon said. "We're very thankful that Kroger invested in our neighborhood and are excited about this being a big step in bridging the gap between the business districts."

tturner@dispatch.com

Features

Kroger's new store at 1350 N. High St. is designed to appeal to the store's diverse clientele: Ohio State University students, more-affluent shoppers coming from the Short North and more moderate-income residents in nearby neighborhoods. Some of its features:

• Eat-in options, including a salad bar, soup bar, beverage center and sandwich station

• In-store seating and dining

area with Wi-Fi

• BuckID, OSU's identification and debit card, can be used to make purchases

• Specialty products are offered, including sushi, bulk natural foods and organic items

• Expanded selections of food, produce and baby items

Source: Kroger

Wonderland Columbus to secure new facility

For Immediate Release

Contact: Adam Brouillette, info@wonderlandcolumbus.com

Wonderland Columbus to secure new facility

In the continuing efforts to create a physical home for Wonderland Columbus, to better fulfill its mission to offer Columbus new cultural, educational and collaborative opportunities, board and staff of the emerging non-profit are currently investigating a variety of locations around Columbus. Initial plans to locate the project within the former Wonder Bread factory in the Short North ultimately proved unfeasible.

Through a process involving input from independent property appraisers and several developers consulting with Wonderland, including a review of comparable properties in and around Downtown, it was determined that the final asking price for the building was not fiscally defensible for a tax-exempt organization seeking public support. According to executive director Adam Brouillette, this development will do nothing to slow the projectʼs momentum and may help expedite Wonderlandʼs application for 501c3 non-profit status with the IRS.

The search for a new physical home for Wonderland Columbus has begun with the help of a committee of trusted advisors who have volunteered their time to the task. So far, several locations with great potential have been identified. The architecture firm of BBCO Design will remain with the project and is also assisting with the search effort.

“The community response to this project has been overwhelmingly positive,” Brouillette said. “Iʼm encouraged by the continued support Wonderland is getting in its efforts to find a new home. With the help of our community supporters, weʼll be able to create an even better asset than what we had planned before." Representatives from Wonderland will be available to the public for questions and feedback at a variety of upcoming programs on the Wonderland calendar, starting with the creative networking event Wunderblender August 2 at The Jury Room. Progress updates will also be shared at www.wonderlandcolumbus.com