| High Street Urban Design Study | University District Code Enforcement Task Force |
| Gateway Redevelopment Project | Public Safety |
| OSU Homeownership Incentive Program | Refuse Collection |
Campus Partners staff and consultant David Dixon has responded in writing to 19 questions raised by the University Area Commission's planning committee as part of its review of the drafts of the two reports from Goody, Clancy & Associates, titled A Plan for High Street: Creating a 21st Century Main Street and High Street-University District Development and Design Guidelines. Ron Hupman, UAC president, and Doreen Uhas-Sauer, chair of the planning committee, are scheduled to meet with Campus Partners staff on Friday, Dec. 18. The UAC expects to take action on the two reports at its meeting in mid-January.
Campus Partners staff is completing a draft of the Request for Proposals which will be distributed to the three pre-qualified teams of developers. In addition, the staff is scheduling a two-day visit to Ohio State by each developer team in the first half of January. The purpose of the visit is to provide an opportunity for public input early in the RFP process and to help the developers better understand the desires, concerns and expectations of local stakeholders, particularly students. Public open houses and small group sessions with students will be scheduled as part of each visit. A schedule and itinerary for each visit will be distributed to you as soon as they are available. We invite your participation in these visits.
We will encourage developers to go beyond the scheduled visits in January to hear community input and assess local conditions. We have distributed to the developers a list of local resource people who can help them in their assessments. Developers also will be establishing interest among major tenants, undertaking appropriate levels of market and financial due diligence, and preparing preliminary design proposals. We then will seek responses from the community and other stakeholders to the proposals after they are submitted. The proposals are likely to be due in late February. More about Gateway
Ohio State's faculty-staff newspaper, onCampus, published an update on The Ohio State University Faculty and Staff Neighborhood Homeownership Incentive Program on Dec. 10. Meanwhile, the next workshop for employees interested in the program is scheduled for Saturday, Jan. 23, from 10 a.m. to noon at the Northwood-High Building, 2231 N. High St. As of early December, 18 employees have applied for the $3,000 in downpayment assistance and 14 checks have been issued for closings. The 14 employees who have closed include six faculty members, four administrative and professional employees, one senior administrative and professional employee, and three classified civil service employees. Eight are female and six are male; 12 described themselves as white, one as Asian and one as "other"; 12 were renters and two were homeowners. All but two of the homes purchased are in area B (north of Lane Avenue). Of the two in area A, one home is on Iuka Avenue and the other on King Avenue. Two-thirds of the funds are targeted to area A. We will be conducting brief telephone interviews with each of the employees to help us with an assessment of the program and will report further in the near future.
The University District Code Enforcement Task Force at its meeting Dec. 8 heard an update the development of the city's "envelope program" to assist low- and fixed-income homeowners in making needed exterior repairs to their houses as ordered by code enforcement. A volunteer program also is being established to assist with exterior home improvements. Code enforcement officers reported on the systematic exterior code enforcement inspections which continue in the third target area. In addition, the task force continued its discussion of the legal definition of and enforcement of rules regarding rooming houses and shared living facilities in the University District. The next meeting of the task force will Tuesday, Jan. 12, at 3 p.m. in the Campus Partners office, 1824 N. High St.
Columbus Police, University Police and the Community Crime Patrol have begun their joint effort to stop burglaries and other crimes of opportunity in the University District during the break between autumn and winter quarters at Ohio State. According to Mark Hatch, executive director of CCP, one hour into their joint operation, police officers arrested a man wearing a bright green hat with bright yellow bolt cutters who was preparing to cut a chain and steal a bicycle.
At its meeting Dec. 9, the Campus Partners Safety Coordinating Committee discussed crime in the Weinland Park neighborhood. Columbus Police Cmdr. Paul Denton reported that police have been tracking crime in that neighborhood and that there have been four homicides in 1998, all but one by gunshots and all related to drugs. He noted that Columbus police, in cooperation with the U.S. Marshal's office, are completing a "warrant sweep" in Weinland Park. So far, there had been 15 arrests of people who live in the area or who conduct their criminal activity in the area. Sgt. Michael Piccininni reported that four officers per night had been committed to a patrol of juvenile curfew violations for two months last summer in Weinland Park. There were only 20 juveniles stopped for curfew violations and no repeaters. Based on the relatively few curfew violators, Sgt. Piccininni said juveniles don't appear to be a major problem in the area.
Cmdr. Denton also told the committee that fires being set in dumpsters and couches being ignited in the streets continue to be a problem in the University District. Columbus Fire Capt. Phil Christ reported that during the weekend of the Ohio State-Michigan football game, the fire division made 96 runs in the University District on Friday night and 112 on Saturday night. Representatives of the city's Refuse Collection Division and Code Enforcement will be invited to the next meeting of the committee to participate in further discussion of this problem. The next committee meeting will be Wednesday, Jan. 13, at 2:30 p.m. in the Fawcett Center, 2400 Olentangy River Road.
The Campus Partners Public Service Committee will hold its next meeting Jan. 20 at 3:30 p.m. in the Campus Partners office. Street Sweeping The next meeting of the Campus Partners Public Service Committee on street sweeping will be Wednesday, Feb. 17, at 3:30 p.m. in the Campus Partners office.
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Campus Partners for Community Urban Redevelopment, Inc.
1824 N. High St., Columbus, OH 43201
(614) 294-7300; fax (614) 294-7333