You know you have opinions, especially about downtown. What attracts you to your favorite space. What is it that makes you want to kick back and hang for a while? The Discovery Special Improvement District (SID) wants to help create a vision and a plan for the Discovery District, the eastern side of downtown where culture, art and academia converge. Now, here’s your chance to engage—make your needs, wants and dreams known. All that’s needed is a little bit of your time (and opinions of course).
The Discovery SID and MKSK, a local urban planning and design firm, will develop a placemaking plan for the Discovery District. Think Topiary Park, the museum, Thurber House, Columbus State and so much more. But wait, what exactly is placemaking and what will it mean to you?
The term placemaking was made popular by the Project for Public Spaces.
“Placemaking inspires people to collectively reimagine and reinvent public spaces as the heart of every community.” —Project for Public Spaces
Bottom line, placemaking takes a creative, people-centered approach to designing public spaces. Designs create visually appealing spaces, which bring people together and create an emotional connection.
Your input is needed to develop a great plan for the Discovery District. Community feedback will help to create a vision, define goals and outline specific steps for placemaking opportunities in the Discovery District.
There are several engagement sessions scheduled this week, and everyone is invited. The brainstorming activities take only 10-15 minutes so we hope you will stop by and share what improvements you’d like to see in the Discovery District as well as what you’d like to see this area become.
The sessions are listed below. If you can’t fit this in your schedule, there are also online surveys that you can fill out here.
Tuesday, November 1
10 a.m. – 2 p.m. Columbus State Community College, Courtyard (Nestor Hall Lounge in case of rain)
3 – 5 p.m. Main Library, Room 1A
Wednesday, November 2
11:30 a.m. – 1p.m. Motorists Insurance, Concourse
12 – 1 p.m. Capital Law, Capital Lobby
5 – 6 p.m. Capital Law, Capital Lobby
Thursday, November 3
11 a.m. – 1 p.m. Grant Hospital, Cafeteria
If you have questions about the engagement sessions, please contact Shannon Fergus at safergus@sidservices.com or (614) 591-4512.
And if you want more information about placemaking, mark your calendar for the Capital Crossroads and Discovery Special Improvement Districts annual meeting on November 10. Nationally recognized placemaking expert and author Peter Kageyama will speak about how to create a city that you will fall in love with. For event information or to RSVP to the meeting, click here.