Random Columbus Photo 12

For today’s Random Columbus Photo 12, we don’t go back too far in history, but the before and after are definitely one of the more dramatic comparisons featured so far. Larger versions of both photos are available if you click on them.

Before: N. High Street at Hubbard Avenue looking northeast, around 1980.
The Short North by the 1970s was considered a declined neighborhood with significant crime and prostitution problems. Police were called there often, and history tells that it was the police themselves who coined the name of the neighborhood, since it was an area that was just “short of Downtown”.
In the photo, you can see buildings at 790 N. High and beyond. At the time, they were a Trailways bus station and some kind of office building. Trailways was eventually replaced by other businesses and restaurants over the years, the last being the restaurant Haiku until it was all demolished for the current hotel building.
Random Columbus photos 12 High and Hubbard

After: The same view in 2024.
The picture from 2024 shows a drastically transformed neighborhood. After more than 40 years of renovations, revitalization and construction, the Short North has shed it’s drab and shady past. Crime stubbornly persists despite the improvements, but not nearly to the same degree. The taller apartment building in the older photo was torn down in the 1990s.
Hubbard and High

Failed Project- Ohio’s Atom Collider




Ohio's atom collider

The approximate location of the proposed atom collider tunnel.

Today’s failed project is a short, but interesting one- Ohio’s atom collider.

On August 9, 1985, the Columbus Dispatch ran an article about an “atom tunnel” to be located underneath parts of Delaware, Marion, Morrow and Union counties. This 60-100 mile long tunnel was to be one of the first of its kind, an early version of the Hadron Collider in Europe. The $3 billion dollar tunnel was to be buried 200 feet down and be about 10 feet in diameter. Ohio was not the only state vying for the project, but Ohio was considered to be near the top of the list. Ohio would’ve had to spend $66 million to get the site ready, anchored by a 5,000 acre project laboratory in Delaware County. The project, expected to bring 3,000 construction jobs and 6,000 permanent jobs, was expected to put the state at the forefront of scientific research.

This project largely failed for one reason: The Reagan Administration. Though the Department of Energy and the science community wanted this and other science advancements funded, it never went through, so the funding never became available. Instead, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) took the lead and built the now famous Large Hadron Collider, between 1998 and 2008. While Ohio’s “atom tunnel” would by now be far outdated, who knows what kind of research and technological advancement, even to this day, would’ve taken place under the Columbus metro’s northern counties.