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Ohio Center

By Albert Warson

Ohio Center, a mall linked to the Greater Columbus Convention Center, is being redesigned.

What could be better for shopping center developers than a location that draws hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of visitors a year — visitors with large expense accounts, and a seemingly endless hankering for food, gifts and entertainment?

Convention center cities provide a venue with all the above-mentioned attributes, yet not many retail developers have taken advantage of the opportunities offered at these locales.

One that does is Ohio Center, a retail center linked by an enclosed elevated passageway to the Greater Columbus Convention Center in the downtown core of the state’s largest city (population more than 1.4 million). Both the shopping center and the convention center are being redeveloped to accommodate larger conventions and trade shows and to gear the shopping center’s goods and services more relevantly to that market.

“Cities are increasingly embarrassed by deterioration in their cores,’’ said Ronald Taylor, managing director of O&Y/SMG Canada, Toronto, which is managing the redevelopment. “And convention centers with shopping centers are one way to help resolve those problems. They are catalysts to downtown revitalization.’’

An 80,000-square-foot portion of the Ohio Center will be redeveloped at a cost of $8 million. The rehab, which began in September and ends in the fall of 2000, will accommodate:

• an anchor-like travel center (travel agency, car rentals, airline ticketing, sports and entertainment ticketing agents, books, accessories, maps, etc.);

• impulse retail (souvenirs, gifts, jewelry, accessories, florist, etc.) business and convention services (registration, equipment and furniture rentals, audio-visual, etc.);

• full-service business center;

• food court and cafes (200- to 450-square-foot concessions to more substantial fast food menus);

• two cafes for freshly prepared take-out and eat-in foods;

• a restaurant/entertainment destination for convention, hotel, after-work office and resident populations;

• an education/conference facility (off-campus resource center or adult education venue).

When the shopping center opened more than 25 years ago, the emphasis was on fashion, and the mix of retailers reflected that.

This redevelopment will mean added value for convention and trade show organizers, with the emphasis on impulse retail, fast-food restaurants, business and convention services for business travelers, said Taylor. O&Y/SMG Canada is managing the project for the City of Columbus, which owns both facilities and is financing the redevelopment.

O&Y/SMG is a partnership of O&Y Properties, which owns and manages real estate properties, and SMG of Philadelphia, the largest public assembly facility manager in the United States, with 65 public facilities. SMG is owned by Hyatt Hotels and Aramark, a food concession firm.

The convention center will be more marketable, Taylor added, because the redeveloped shopping center will be more attractive to the larger numbers of business visitors as well as become an amenity for hotel guests and downtown office workers.

The 1.4 million-square-foot convention center, designed by Peter Eisenman, a New York City architect who designed the celebrated Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State, had also lost business, mainly because it wasn’t big enough to accommodate most trade shows and conventions.

The convention center is being expanded at a cost of $73 million to about 1.7 million square feet, which is expected to increase the volume of visitors from 850,000 in 1998 to an estimated 1.5 million visitors when it is completed in 2000. Some 1,000 parking spaces will be added within that expansion, for a total of about 3,200 underground and surface spaces.

But the retail center’s potential does not end with conventiongoers. Columbus, the state capital, also is near the state’s geographical center, home to the 50,000-student Ohio State University.

A stable market of about 20,000 office workers is located within a five-minute walk, and 190,000 guests a year stay at hotels within a one-block radius, including the Hyatt Regency Hotel on the shopping center perimeter. Several other hotels are under development within a three-block radius, which will further bolster the shopping center’s sales potential.

Sporting events also should increase downtown traffic. A 21,000-seat arena under construction two blocks away will be the home of the Columbus Blue Jackets NHL team. The sports team is expected to help bolster the fast-food/restaurant component of the redeveloped shopping center, as games and other events are likely to be scheduled when conventioneers aren’t around.

The travel center, food court and the entrance from the main street, as well as other key areas, will be highlighted through ceiling design, lighting and decorative treatment, and also to help people find their way.

As of this summer, about 40% of the remerchandised space had been leased — to a deli, Greek restaurant, steak house, sandwich shop and frozen yogurt franchise, pie store and computer service. Negotiations with a business center, global travel agency, specialty gifts and other retail tenants are in progress.

Young says the redevelopment will bridge a retailing gap between the downtown City Center and Shore North, a trendy neighborhood of shops, galleries, restaurants and markets.

Speaking more generally, Taylor said earlier generations of convention centers were little more than “concrete bunkers.’’ Over the years, the public has come to expect a much better urban streetscape and more animation. A new generation of convention centers, particularly those that include retail, are likely to be able to generate revenue to cover operating costs, he noted.

Albert Warson covers Canadian development for SCT.