By Bhakti Bania
Columbus’ tight housing market is headed toward a full-blown crisis.
That’s certainly the sentiment among the development community, city leaders and those searching for homes and apartments.
We’re growing quickly. We have a population of about 1 million now and are poised to exceed 3 million by 2050, according to the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission.
As it stands, we know we aren’t building enough housing to accommodate that growth. If something doesn’t change, housing prices and rents will continue to rise, squeezing lower-income earners out, increasing commute times and traffic, and creating segregated and monolithic communities. Ultimately, this means slower economic growth in our region.
This issue is nuanced and complex. But as our firm has worked on housing projects across the city, one alarming trend stands out to me as a possible root cause.
In neighborhoods around the region, we’ve recently navigated increasingly rigid design review processes, fraught with lack of compromise.
As has happened in politics over the past few years, people seem to be spreading further apart from the middle and becoming less willing to understand the viewpoints of others—to the detriment of the region at large. The parties involved want what they want. For neighborhoods, that often means things like preserving something historical, limiting height allowances or keep rental units to a minimum. And despite a clear and present need for housing, they often refuse to look for middle ground, slowing the process—or stopping it altogether.
To them, this may feel like a win in the short term. But if we look at the big picture, this exacerbates a problem that they themselves understand needs to be addressed. After all, our lack of housing spans every income level. And not only does that impact housing prices for everyone, it can also stunt the kind of exciting growth that has brought so many businesses, restaurants, retail spaces and people here in the first place.
Other states, like Washington, have become so thwarted by this issue that they’ve considered eliminating the design review process altogether.
But the process can work if people would stop operating from a place of fear and embrace the art of compromise. I’ve observed it many times.
Take, for example, our work on The View on Pavey Square. The site contained a streetscape with six historically significant buildings that neighborhood groups wanted to maintain. We also needed to incorporate residential units, parking and amenity spaces.
Our final design includes the rehabbed buildings and balances both the historic and open nature of the site with the density and activity of modern life. This required compromise, but the result works well for both the neighborhood veterans and the new residents.
We also worked closely with a design review board on the King Avenue Apartments. This site presented several challenges, including density limitations, height restrictions and design conformance with its historic Victorian context.
Our approach was to modernize the Victorian aesthetic with brownstone-style apartments. We took color inspiration from the neighborhood, incorporated roof lines inspired by surrounding structures and created pedestrian access points. Despite initial hesitation, we’ve received positive feedback from the board and community.
In both examples, all parties involved in the design review process came to the table with clear, but realistic, objectives. Everyone wanted to get to a yes, despite our often-conflicting goals and expectations. So we worked together and made some concessions, but we all walked away with something, and our city is better for it.
As Columbus continues to prove itself to be a viable market for new businesses and residents, my hope is that the design review process can find ways to incorporate a healthy amount of compromise.
That way, we’re all proud of our city and neighborhoods in 2050—and beyond.
Bhakti Bania is CEO of BBCO, a Columbus, Ohio-based architecture firm that has designed hundreds of dynamic projects worldwide—from mixed-use urban redevelopment to educational spaces to over 200 retail stores for Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works.