'A disposable neighborhood'

A squat brick building sits at the corner of High Street and West Northwood Avenue. In a cluttered room on the second floor, a familiar sign rests on the floor. Neon tubing against a green wooden background spells out "Larry's."

The sign once marked the entrance to a bar at 2040 N. High St. In December, Larry's closed to make way for Señor Buckeye's, which quickly became the Sloppy Donkey Sports Saloon.

The changing sign is a reminder that the bar, like the neighborhood that surrounds it, is a place in search of an identity.

This month, The Lantern has looked at some of the issues that the University District's predominantly student population faces: crime, graffiti, panhandling, garbage and lousy housing.

The density of students living in the area is a major driver of these problems, but it's not the only cause.

Today, in the last of a three-part series examining the University District, The Lantern examines its lack of a cohesive neighborhood identity.

'A collection of neighborhoods'

At the heart of the issue is the fragmentation of the district.

"The reason this area has been challenged with branding itself is because we are not a neighborhood," said architect Pasquale Grado, the executive director of the University Community Business Association. "We are a collection of neighborhoods."

Home to about 48,000 people representing almost 80 nationalities, the district includes several established neighborhoods.

Unlike these neighborhoods, though, the predominantly student-populated core off-campus area is lacking its own identity, University Area Commission President Ian MacConnell said in an e-mail.

"Where there is a stronger identity, there is generally higher homeownership and with that comes stability and higher community standards," he said.

Although other neighborhoods in the district have clear borders, the core area's boundaries are roughly defined by the University Area Commission as High Street, Indianola Avenue, East Seventh Avenue and East 17th Avenue, MacConnell said.

The area's population is dense and transient.

In the 1960s, the core area was zoned to allow a population density "that would exceed everything else in the entire city," Grado said.

Because of the prevalence of student renters, the core area's population is much more transient than the surrounding neighborhoods. The values of the properties in the area are based on rent income rather than the traditional property values used for owner-occupied homes, Grado said.

'A disposable neighborhood'

The lack of identity in the predominantly student-populated core area "reduces a student's sense of place in the community, allowing for lower standards, which in turn leads to a decline in quality of life across the district," MacConnell said.

There are real consequences for a neighborhood that lacks a unifying identity.

"One of the challenges in the past has been a feeling by too many people, including the folks who lived in the neighborhood, that it was kind of a disposable neighborhood," said Steve Sterrett, the community relations director for Campus Partners, a nonprofit organization created by Ohio State in 1995 to improve the neighborhoods around the university.

Residents felt that the district "was a place you could come and people didn't care too much about litter, they didn't care too much about graffiti, it just was the way it was," Sterrett said.

Treating the district poorly doesn't go unnoticed, Sterrett said.

"It also sends a signal to criminals and others that this is a neighborhood where it's easy pickings - people don't really care, they're not paying attention, and this is a place where you can come and do things that you wouldn't get away with in other neighborhoods," he said.

Failure to act can cause small problems to snowball, MacConnell said.

"The more graffiti and litter you see on the streets, the less safe people feel, the less they feel like they can do something about it," he said. "This leads to an overwhelming sense that these quality of life challenges are insurmountable, but they are not."

These problems are primarily a result of a lack of clear community standards, MacConnell said.

"If we unify behind a set of standards that say we will not accept trashed housing stock, or littered streets, then we will work together to change it," he said.

The process for working toward change in the core area begins with addressing the need for an identity.

"Once the details of the area identity have been worked out, a clear set of community standards needs to be created and adopted, along with a sustainable educational or informational program for students," MacConnell said.

Creating an identity

It appears that creating an identity is the keystone to solving many of the University District's problems.

The question then becomes: how to create an identity?

It's a problem that has been the focus of serious attention for almost 20 years. In 1990, Pasquale Grado and several others wrote "Proposals for Change," a planning document that identified many of the issues facing the district, and recommended solutions. The document was presented to OSU President E. Gordon Gee during his first tenure at the university.

The section of "Proposals for Change" dealing with developing a sense of community made four recommendations, calling for:

• The creation of an "Office of Off-Campus Housing" to train resident advisers for the off-campus area. While there are no resident advisers off campus, the Office of Off-Campus Student Services offers resources for help with housing, roommates, landlords and commuting, among other services.

• The Lantern to take an increased role in covering the off-campus community.

• OSU to develop a community education program to make students aware of their surroundings.