![]() ![]() At the time, a Pizzuti spokesman said the store would remain, that it was a “privilege” for the Giant Eagle to serve the surrounding community. In 2017, Pizzuti bought the site, which included 2.3 acres and the grocery store building, for $5.3 million. “People walked there to visit the pharmacy, to get their groceries,” says Gischel, who has lived in Schumacher Place for decades. It was small by grocery store standards, covering about 30,000 square feet, but it was a neighborhood resource. By 2004, though, the company was in trouble, and the store became a Giant Eagle. The Schumacher Place Big Bear opened in 1950. That chain started in Columbus in the 1930s and eventually grew to include 65 locations across Ohio and West Virginia. The East Whittier Street site was once a Big Bear grocery store. What has happened with the redevelopment on East Whittier might offer some clues about how that process will unfold-and shows how important it is that Columbus comes to grips with its population growth and housing issues soon. Ultimately, this is the puzzle every American city needs to solve as it grows: What kind of community do we want to be in 10, 25, 50 years? How will we make sure there’s space for everyone who wants to be here, and how can we make sure each of those people has the best possible chance to thrive? How do we make sure the decision-makers here look out for everyone-even the people who don’t have time to march in the streets or wage letter-writing campaigns or form activist groups on one side or the other? How do we make this an equitable place to live? “And I can tell you that the bluest parts of Columbus and the reddest parts of Delaware County all seem to have the same perspective on residential development, which is, ‘I’m in favor of it, just not right there.’” “People talk about how divided we are as a country politically,” says Jon Melchi, executive director of the Building Industry Association of Central Ohio, an organization that advocates for and supports builders. ![]() is an example of the kind of debate that already is playing out in neighborhoods across Columbus-the kind of debate that is only likely to get more contentious as more and more people move to this area. The tension around the development of 280 E. Read more of the news that matters: Subscribe to Columbus Monthly's weekly newsletter, Top Reads But it’s different when the new condo or apartment complex is right across the street. (Consider the frustration of sitting in traffic during your morning or evening commute and add the greenhouse gases and air pollution emitted by all those cars-avoiding those issues are just two of the benefits to concentrating people in the heart of the city.) Most people seem to get that, on a broad, citywide, theoretical level. The city’s population is growing, the people moving here have to live somewhere, and there are ample reasons why denser neighborhoods close to the city’s core are better than suburban sprawl. But there’s more at stake here than the typical neighborhood squabble. On the surface, this might seem like a classic NIMBY-“not in my backyard”-concern. “But we didn’t want a five-story building that stuck out in this neighborhood, and we didn’t want something that isolated the development from our community.” “It’s not that we didn’t want it developed,” says Brenda Gischel, president of the Schumacher Place Civic Association and a founder of the group Neighborhoods for Responsible Development, which has opposed Pizzuti’s plans for the East Whittier site. If Pizzuti couldn’t develop the site appropriately, who could?īut many of the people who lived near the former Giant Eagle had concerns: They didn’t want a big shiny apartment complex dropped in the middle of their community they worried about traffic, a sharp increase in population, the way the building might affect their property values. It’s built some of the city’s most prestigious high-rises, including the Miranova office and condo complex near the Scioto Mile and Le Méridien Columbus, The Joseph in the Short North- gleaming buildings that city leaders say have added value to the surrounding neighborhoods. The developer is the well-respected Pizzuti Cos. ![]() Their cause: blocking, or at least substantially changing, plans for a new apartment complex on the 2.3 acre site of the now-vacant grocery store on East Whittier Street in Schumacher Place. A woman dressed in a onesie designed to make her look like a killer whale. In the scheme of recent protests, the ones over the proposed redevelopment of a former Giant Eagle site near German Village earlier this year were almost comical: One resident carried an inflatable killer whale in protest of the “whale” of a development. ![]()
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