COLUMBUS, Ohio — Any small business owner today will tell you that things are tough. Inflation. Rents are getting higher. Fewer people are consuming. And big developers are swooping in.
“These businesses have been an anchor for the neighborhood,” Tim Vetty said last month before the Downtown Development Commission regarding an apartment tower proposal that would wipe out several brick buildings along South 4th Street near Rich Street.
“To have a proposal before you like this that tears down historic buildings and those buildings have thriving businesses in them right now today is – simply put – not forward-thinking,” said Vetty, who lives across the street from the potential development.
This story is part of 10TV's "Boomtown" initiative — our commitment to covering every angle of central Ohio's rapid growth. This includes highlighting success stories, shining a light on growing pains and seeking solutions to issues in your everyday life.
A developer just this week tweaked the controversial proposal for the Estrella that would save Dirty Franks Hot Dog Palace and other small businesses along South 4th Street. The project will still bring a proposed 24-story tower to include apartments but keep the existing brick buildings intact.
Other boomtowns in America have succumbed to big developers who prefer to tear down the old and build up the new. In Austin, Texas, business owners along the popular South Congress Avenue district say some stores were forced to close after seeing their rents rise triple-digit percent.
“Some of the sort of corporate negotiations up the street have for us - small businesses- been mind-boggling numbers,” Brandon Hodge said. He opened the Big Top Candy Shop along “SoCo” in 2007. He also owns the Monkey See Monkey Do store nearby.
Hodge says one thing that helped bring customers back to South Congress was increasing parking and retooling permits for residents. “They are now metered, which historically, up until just a few months ago was not metered,” Hodge explained. “There was a lot of local pushbacks from that … but the benefit being there's now nearly 2000 parking spaces in the immediate adjacent neighborhoods where our customers can park.”
Parking can sometimes be an issue in the Short North area just north of downtown Columbus. But the Short North Alliance shows 8,900 parking spaces, including more than two-thousand in parking garages.
A market study released in February showed the economic impact of the stores, restaurants, and bars in the Short North totaled nearly $4 billion a year. But stretches of this trendy hot spot along North High Street have higher vacancy rates than what leaders want - upwards of 21%.
Ohio State associate professor Jason Reece says that's just the cost of growth.
“Growth is a good problem to have compared to those experiences in places that have been struggling just to maintain their population to maintain basic city services,” says Reece. “I always kind of look at it as a tradeoff that the net benefit outweighs the cost," he said.