When I first heard about a year ago that Experience Columbus (aka the Greater Columbus Convention & Visitors Bureau) was thinking about relocating from their Downtown High Street office into a new space in the Arena District, I have to admit that I was pretty bummed out. Many private companies have abandoned their downtown offices for brighter and shinier ones closer to the Arena leaving our downtown area feeling a bit lopsided these days. And at first I was a bit taken aback by the fact that our new Visitor’s Center might be headed in that direction as well.
Well, a year has gone by, and the new Experience Columbus Visitor’s Center is now open in the Arena District. And I guess now that I’ve thought about this a bit more, it makes sense for them to go where the people are. They want to promote our city, and there’s much more visitor traffic in the Arena District than there in the middle of downtown right now.
What Experience Columbus will do with those visitors is share information about the rest of the city and hopefully entice them to explore the other areas of downtown, German Village, The Short North, and so on and so forth.
So for them to remain downtown just for the sake of being downtown would be sort of defeatist for what they’re trying to accomplish. Or at least my interpretation of what they’re trying to accomplish. Our visitors will be better served by their new location.
Oh, and the indoor wall sign is impressive. It’s a large-scale version of the Experience Columbus logo, and the “Columbus” lettering is displayed on LCD screens that rotate through photos from around the city. Very creative and very eyecatching… even from outside on the sidewalk. Worth a stop by just to check that out. Here’s a terrible animated gif version below. I suppose I should have just recorded a video instead of snapping photos yesterday. Oh well. You get the idea.
I would be curious what their foot traffic is at their new location compared to their old one. I find their new location to be sort of oddly placed since it is at the base of the new development and does not have a strong street presence i.e. closer to the Nationwide Arena. The location will improve slightly once the Cooper Stadium opens up since it will be right in the middle of the two activity centers.
However, the main problems is that this Visitors Center is only open M-F, 8-5. So while the center has located to a more popular center it is not available to the individuals for when they are actually there. For example the majority of Blue Jackets games begin at 7:00 p.m. and by then the center is closed.
I am not sure if the move was the greatest thing for the organization. I liked their old location- it only needed to be modernized- and it was not only close to the Arena District but also idealy situated near the up and coming Gay Street corridor, proposed City Center redevelopment site, Columbus Museum of Art, etc.