In a wide-ranging interview with COSI President and CEO David Chesebrough at ColumbusUnderground.com, an interesting subject arose with regards to the largely unused space between COSI–on the banks of the Scioto opposite downtown Columbus–and the sprawling Mt. Carmel Hospital complex.
Franklinton, the original seat of the city of Columbus, has fallen on hard time the past several decades, but with the reconstruction of several bridges connecting the West Side of Columbus to Downtown, Chesebrough sees a tremendous opportunity for green development and growth.
We’ve started to at least talk about what would be an ideal use of the space. What could happen if any development around us takes on the energy and flavor that we’re adding into COSI. We could really make a model community. What would it look like if we really made it a green community, which the mayor says he’s for. We have a blank palette. We have to protect our parking, and we’ll have to sort that out over time… but how can COSI spill out into the community?
Then you take another angle into this… you have the Scioto Mile right across the river. There’s the bridges that they are building, and the Scioto Audubon too. All this great development on the river. What if we start taking a look at the COSI property and really start to do more with building activity levels around COSI? We’re thinking about taking the science part, pulling it out and putting it back out front so that anyone in the public can participate in it. What can we put on the river side that would add levels of activity? Like our Farm Days for example. Or solar cells or wind turbines. We’re really looking at our ability to anchor that area. We’ve been having public forums to have these conversations. I think it is a tremendous opportunity for the city to take advantage of the strength of our footprint there and really build off of it. We’re hoping the city sees a way to get more return on a $120M investment they made on COSI. Just sticking us over here and hoping we survive is not a good use of the money that was invested. But using us as an anchor for redeveloping that area makes all of the sense in the world.
