Midtown residents get peek at plans for Wynnton streetscape
$1 million project to transform area
By BEN WRIGHT - benw@ledger-enquirer.com
A mini park, sidewalks, trees and other improvements are aimed at revitalizing a half-mile section of Wynnton Road in the midtown area of Columbus.
“I’m excited,” said Cedric Ashe who lives on Gardenia Street.
He was among the residents who crowded into the cafeteria of Wynnton Elementary School Thursday to get a glimpse of the Wynnton Road Streetscape Improvement Project. Using $800,000 from a state grant and $200,000 from MidTown Inc., the $1 million project will transform an area from Brown and Peacock Avenues east to Hilton Avenue.
Teresa Tomlinson, director of MidTown Inc., said a pocket park will be at Forest Avenue and an arbor at the end of Hilton Avenue. None of the work will require any additional right-of-way.
Creating more greenspace in parking lots may require MidTown to raise additional funds for irrigation or use shrubbery that can withstand the summer heat.
Bryan Lindsey, an engineer with TY Lin International of Atlanta, said the project could get under way next summer and take about nine months to complete.
“It’s really step one to move to the next step to revitalize the area,” he said. “The whole idea is to revitalize.”
Next year, Lindsey said he hopes to be working on phase two, which could make similar improvements from Hilton Avenue east to Interstate 185. Eventually, MidTown would like to take improvements west to downtown where a massive and more costly streetscapes project transformed major intersections and medians.
“We are really trying to take Broadway ideas and bring them out here with a little smaller scale,” Lindsey said. “We used smaller elements of that.”
In additions to the improvements, director Rick Jones of the city’s Planning Department said signals and mast for the traffic lights will have to be reviewed.
“We are dressing it up,” Jones said.
Whether you are in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles, Ashe said midtown is always the show place in the city.
“People move to suburbs and only find they have to come through midtown to get downtown,” he said. “I bought a house in midtown two years ago. When I first heard about this, I said it is a great thing for Columbus.”