Columbus Arena District

[penguinnick]

Too bad Youngstown can't do something similar:

At a time when municipalities question public investment in arena projects, Columbus's Arena District shines as an example of urban renewal.

From The New York Times:

A decade ago, a 75-acre area along the Scioto River less than a mile west of this capital city's downtown was an industrial no man's land, consisting of barren rail yards, old warehouses and a shuttered 19th-century penitentiary. But that was before Nationwide Realty Investors, an affiliate of Nationwide Mutual Insurance, turned the area into the Arena District.

The district, a $750 million mixed-use neighborhood of housing, offices, retailing and entertainment, has attracted some of the city's most prominent architecture, law, real estate development and advertising firms and is regarded as one of the Midwest's most successful urban redevelopment projects.

Late in October, the Columbus City Council approved the development plan for the Arena District's final phase: a $250 million project to add 450 units of housing, 300,000 square feet of office space in two buildings, an 80,000-square-foot grocery store, an eight-level garage with 1,600 spaces and as much as 40,000 square feet of retail space.