The weekly update for June 3-6 continues to show progress on the site’s restoration. This included the following: -The Completed Development page received extensive additions for the years 2015-2019. -The January Weather records page was fully restored and includes 2019 data. -The Columbus Tornado History page got a large addition. -A few new graphs were added to the Columbus City Demographics page. -Columbus Transportation History received multiple entries. -Odds and ends were added to several other pages across the site.
On April 22nd of this year, All Columbus Data suffered a major hack. Several attempts were made to restore the website in full and to save the content through backups. At least twice, the site was restored only for it to fall back into the hacked configuration- some kind of jewelry website. Eventually, it was determined that there was corruption within the core files themselves, and since it could not be safely determined which ones, the host refused to restore any of the original content, as the attack was malicious enough to threaten the hosting servers themselves. So, the site was completely scrubbed and at least some of the original content that was not otherwise saved on archived websites was lost. After 7 years of work, it was a sickening result. Now, the rebuilding process has begun. Fortunately, a lot of the core lost data much of the site was built upon still existed in my own personal files, so for many of the pages, it’s simply a matter of putting that information back up on new pages. That is what I’ve been working on this week. Here is what I’ve done so far this week:
-2 new articles were added. -Monthly weather pages for April and May have been restored, complete with updated data for 2019. -Several pages within the Historic Building Database have had at least a few buildings added. -Partially restored the Completed page for Columbus Development . -Added several population graphs to the Columbus city, county and metro area demographics pages. -Partially restored- and expanded- the Columbus Tornado History page, one of All Columbus Data’s most popular.
I will continue to work to restore more pages and posts over time, but it will be an extended process.
A lot has happened in the past week, so Week in Review 4 is jammed full with site updates.
First up, the proposed new Hilton Hotel at the Convention Center continues to get taller, and now stands currently proposed for 28 stories. Construction is not set to begin until possibly next fall, so we have a while to see if any further changes occur.
The latest rendering.
Crew fans got huge news a few months back that a new ownership group was looking to buy the team and keep them in Columbus. This week, it was announced as to what would happen to both Mapfre Stadium, as well as the first renderings and location of a brand new Arena District stadium. The new stadium would be built along with a new mixed-use neighborhood called Confluence Village. It would include offices, restaurant/retail space, 885 apartments and a riverfront park.
Franklinton continues to move up in the world with the new renderingsof the CoverMyMeds campus. The $240 million project would be one of the largest investment in the neighborhood in perhaps… ever.
Other news… Google may build a $600 million data center in New Albany.
And “Planet Oasis”, the proposed $2 billion entertainment complex in Delaware county, still looks unlikely to happen as the feud between its former development partners continues.
The oldest buildings on Capital Square finally received some funding for the proposal to renovate them into office space. The buildings date to 1869 and 1901.
The former Graham Ford dealership in Franklinton was purchased by Pizzuti Companies. The 7-acre site is to the west of 315, away from where recent development has been concentrated, so the site may remain undeveloped for a while yet. But it indicates where the future of Franklinton overall is headed.
The Week in Review 3 includes some big news that has me very excited. The Columbus Metropolitan Library announced that it had reached an agreement with The Columbus Dispatch and its parent company to purchase the rights to its entire newspaper collection, which it will make available in digital form on its website as early as November. The Columbus Dispatch has been publishing since 1871, but the library has had Dispatch content from 1985-present only, and only in text format for a limited number of articles. The agreement will allow the library to offer every issue of the paper online since 1871 in its entirety, including its enormous photograph collection. This is an massive win and game-changer for researchers and history buffs alike. This information has largely been difficult to access. Microfilm at the library was impossible to search through unless you knew the exact date of an article. The digital collection will allow for easy searching for any content with just a simple search box, as it has with its other digital collections.
The other news this week was the ongoing saga with the North Market Tower project. A few weeks back, I posted renderings that were released, perhaps be accident, on an architect’s website. Well, this week we saw yet another rendering, seen below:
All I can say is… I hope to god this isn’t the final design. Not only is it shorter (and the planners promised that the project would absolutely NOT be reduced in height regardless of the final design), but it has none of the interesting architecture of any previous renderings. It’s just another box on top of another box. I call this style Modern Vanilla. It’s so painfully boring and architecturally sterile that to see this being built would remove all the excitement from this project. The height reduction would be pure Columbus.
In this first Week in Review series, we will do a quick rundown of the past week in Columbus.
First, in terms of development, we had a few updates. -The Market Tower project at the North Market has apparently gotten a new design. It’s gone from this-
To this-
The new design may actually be at least 40 stories instead of the originally-proposed 35. No official announcements on the height increase have been released, but I suspect we’ll be hearing something soon on this.
-The Gravity 2.0 project in Franklinton got its initial approvals from the neighborhood development commission, including approval on the 12-story tower, which has also gotten an updated rendering, seen below.
