When the body of Ohio State freshman Stephanie Hummer was found raped and murdered in March of 1994, OSU officials finally sat up and paid attention to the deteriorating state of neighborhoods in the campus area.Former OSU President Gordon Gee announced a joint commitment between OSU and the City of Columbus to improve the neighborhoods immediately surrounding the OSU campus. Following that announcement a task force was appointed and recommendations made to form a non-profit organization charged with handling all the issues that would come with an effort to rejuvenate the campus area neighborhoods.That organization became Campus Partners for Community Urban Redevelopment, more commonly known as Campus Partners, once the university incorporated the group in January 1995.Born out of the need to address the increasing crime rates and crumbling rental properties in predominantly student-populated residential districts to the east and south of campus, Campus Partners was hailed as the answer to all the problems of an urban campus in decline.The main focus of Campus Partners is “the revitalization and maintenance of the university district.” The University District roughly includes the business and residential neighborhoods along the east side of High Street from as far south as Fifth Avenue stretching north to Arcadia Avenue and extending east beyond Fourth Street to the railroad tracks. The University Neighborhoods Revitalization Plan was published in July of 1996 and outlined more than 250 recommendations for action. This plan was put together by a multi-disciplinary team of consultants brought together by Campus Partners that were directed to study and examine the areas of: safety and law enforcement; market and financial feasibility; transportation, circulation and parking; social services; public services; education, health and economic development; and planning, design, and architectural and historic issues. In essence, study every aspect of the community.By 1996 Campus Partners moved from development to implementation of their plan after working with members of the community, university officials and city officials. Terry Foegler was hired as president of Campus Partners that same year.One of the most highly publicized parts of the Campus Partners plan has been the Gateway Center, a project slated for construction on the corner of 9th Avenue and High Street. Gateway will be a total redevelopment of 7.5 acres of the run-down area of High Street on south campus with entertainment, shops, parking, offices and housing that Campus Partners and OSU view as “the new front door to OSU.”The Gateway Project, with vast student, university and city support, has been a point of contention for many business and property owners in the area to be developed. The construction will require the relocation of businesses and the demolition of the majority of buildings there, something that will require the city’s intervention and possibly the use of eminent domain.There are members of the community that find the city’s use of eminent domain objectionable in this situation. At least one major property owner will likely end up dragging Campus Partners and the city into court over that very issue, potentially delaying the whole project. A similar use of eminent domain at the University of Texas at Austin in the early 1970s damaged community relations to the degree that only recently has UT been able to heal those wounds – mainly by promising never to do it again. UT also found that simply bringing in big chain stores and pricey boutiques didn’t have a dramatic impact on the appearance of their main business district. Most of the public attention devoted to Campus Partners over the past five years has focused on “the land grab,” as some observers have called it, and very little attention has been paid to the social and public service aspects of the original recommendations submitted to Campus Partners. Though programs such as the Campus Collaborative address the social and public service aspects of Campus Partners’ overall plan by tapping the university’s vast resources of experts in social work, economics, education and health services the most noticeable accomplishments of Campus Partners have focused on economic redevelopment of the High Street business corridor and public safety efforts- both of which have been largely successful. Although Campus Partners is billed as a joint effort by the City of Columbus and OSU, make no mistake about where the funding comes from. OSU provides the organization the money they need to acquire property and maintain operations from the university’s endowment fund. Which is why it’s important for Campus Partners to take an active role in the social welfare – not just the economic base – of the people in the campus area neighborhoods.The Campus Collaborative, a program designed to use university resources for community outreach, is a great idea but the program is still developing plans more than implementing them. Looking at similar redevelopment programs at other universities, such as the Service Learning Program at Penn State, there is much more Campus Partners could do to improve the “quality of life” for all those living near campus. In the Penn State program, for example, dental students go out to the elementary schools and test baby teeth children have collected for the presence of lead. The students learn how to do the testing and the children’s parents can be alerted if their home has high levels of lead paint. It’s a win-win situation for the students and the community.OSU could be doing very similar things and hopefully will implement similar programs in the near future with the help and support of Campus Partners. Taking the initiative to have a positive impact beyond making sure trash is picked up in a timely manner could boost the popularity of Campus Partners among members of the community at large, in fact, it could be key to their success.