Town Street Version 2.0
By Josh Fitzwater |
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Whether you live in downtown Columbus in a posh condo, frequent the judicial court system, or just like the scenery at Cafe Brioso, you have almost certainly seen that there has been a lot of moving-and-shaking happening in the Town Street area between High Street and Civic Center Drive. To the untrained eye, it might look like another roadway reconstruction project, way behind schedule, forcing you to take an inconvenient route to get to your favorite watering hole. However, what is happening on Town Street is actually an exciting step in our city's planning for the future, and the innovative green technology being employed will also help make the City of Columbus a little bit cleaner, one rainy day at a time.
Although the premise of a street that essentially helps clean the city sounds like something out of Orwell's 1984, it is a step towards revitalization for Columbus. The Columbus Downtown Development Corporation masterminded the 850-foot redevelopment project - but it is the futuristic engineering of local firm Evans, Mechwart, Hambleton, & Tilton Inc., that has helped set a new standard for Columbus streetscapes.
The inventive aspect of the new roadway is the addition of urban bio-retention basins. Although this sounds like something you need your hazmat gear for, the basins are basically underground sinks that help hold and purify rainwater. Even the plant life and soil has been technologically altered to help naturally clean the rainfall and allow it to slowly filter into the bio-retention basins, where it passes through several layers of aggregate filter material before making its way to a gray-water system and, eventually the Scioto River and beyond.
Co-creator of Town Street's bio-retention basins, Franco Manno, takes away all the technological jargon and calls the new system "a highly advanced, really fancy water filter."
"We want to take the polluted stormwater - which is all the water that comes out of the sky that hits the road and picks up oil, dirt, and grime off our cars - and funnel it to the basin," explained Franco Manno of EMH&T. "The soil and the plants that make up the basin filter the water so that, by the time it goes from the top to bottom of the soil, the water that comes out is clean."
Even plant life and soil have been technoligcally altered to help naturally clean the rainfall and allow it to slowly filter into the bio retention basins
Photo: Christopher Atwood
As one walks along Town Street, there appears to be an innocuous median covered with rugged ornamental grasses between the road and sidewalk - but, like the storm drains, it's also more than meets the eye. This highly motivated vegetation is planted with the purpose of purifying water. The system uses the incline of the street and nature to purify toxic water before it is returned to the water cycle: an idea that should have been implemented years ago, and one that could easily become the model for all such systems in the future.
However, like much new technology, the system comes with a price tag. There is a little more to a bio-retention basin than sticking a giant Brita water filter in the ground and calling it a day - about $1.5 million more.
The overall ecological and aesthetic renewal of Town Street will cost roughly $5 million. This is including the entire demolition overhaul, utility relocation and coordination, street paving, sidewalks, and green bio-retention technology. You can take $1.5 million of that and toss it solely to the altered soil and 'fancy water filter.'
Without carefully engineered and designed water holding systems that can deal with a heavy rainfall, the water does not drain properly and there is a dangerous potential for a combined stormwater/sewer overflow to reach capacity, the end result of which is sewage in our streets, yards, streams, and rivers - in which case you would need your hazmat gear.
The Town Street project and its correlating green technology plays a pivotal role in Mayor Coleman's 'Columbus 2012' project that stretches tax dollars and federal stimulus money to make the city cleaner, more efficient, and more accessible. This redevelopment area is one of the first in Columbus to transition into utilizing natural elements like dirt and vegetation to help clean stormwater runoff.
Over the next few years, downtown Columbus will be evolving into a city with an eco-conscience, a community that bolsters innovative progress by putting back into the ground what it has taken by keeping our rivers and streams clean. The City of Columbus, Columbus Downtown Development Corporation, and EMH&T are fundamentally engineering a cleaner downtown, and it has begun on Town Street. So, if you happen to be in the area, stop by and grab a look at the future of Columbus.
Originally Published: October 1, 2009
