The City of Hilliard Sustainability Plan

Hilliard Sustainability PlanGahanna’s Creekside Case Study Side BoxGahanna has a potential mixed-use development project for Hilliardto refer to with their Creekside development. Gahanna provides a goodcomparison since, like Hilliard; it is also an outer ring suburb situatedoutside of I-270 and contains a relatively small, centralized core area. Ascan be seen in Figure 3.6 Gahanna’s demographic figures are relativelysimilar to Hilliard’s.Figure 3.6: Hilliard and Gahanna Demographic Comparisons)HILLIARD GAHANNA2010 Population 24,230 32,636Medium Value of Owner-Occupied 209,300 189,800Housing UnitsMedium Household Income 81,933 72,693Gahanna has focused significant attention on redeveloping OldeGahanna into a denser, mixed-use district and creating an area with astrong sense of place. Gahanna started this process with the Creeksidedevelopment in the early 2000s. This $55 million project includes240,000 square feet of retail and office uses, condominiums, and parkspace. 22 Broken out into detail, the project has 50,000 square feet ofoffice and retail space, 71 condominiums, and a 24-acre central park. 23The development project did go into foreclosure in 2011. However,this largely resulted from the economic downturn in 2008 whichmade it nearly impossible to sell the project’s condominiums. 24 Thereare, however, a number of lessons Hilliard can learn from this projectbefore trying to imitate it. First it is important that a developmenton this scale offer diversity of residential options. This would protectthe development from market weakness in either rental or for salehousing and also bring a more diverse social-demographic groupto the development. The second lesson is the need to keep retailrents at a reasonable rate. At least some of the retail and restaurantowners, including the owners of the Bread Basket Family Bakery andWine Guy Wine Shop Wine Bar and Bistro, struggled to pay their rentrates. 25,26 According to Craig Decker, the rents for the owners of theWine Shop Wine Bar and Bistro were as high as $24 per square foot. 27It is important to keep in mind that since Gahanna and Hilliard arestill mainly auto-centric communities, high volumes of foot trafficare much more challenging to sustain. 28 To put this into perspective,property owners in the Short North district in Columbus quote retailrental rates per square foot ranging between $20-24 and this is an areawith much higher foot traffic than Olde Gahanna. 29Image 3.5, 3.6. Bexley Gateway North» Integrated into the project is an attractive public park» Ground floor retail are located consistently throughout the project» Source: Nathaniel Kaelin, 2008ECON. EXECUTIVELAND DEV. USESOCIAL SUMMARY& URBAN EQ.ECOLOGY69