Columbus ranks just above Hell as an appealing place for a vacation.Yet local business tycoons are banking on Columbus becoming a mecca for Midwesterners, and are covering the area with sports stadiums and megamalls in anticipation.Welcome to the white trash capital of the USA.If you’re like me, you landed in Columbus because the other Ohio cities with universities were too damn depressing. With the overwhelming hugeness of Ohio State, this town has an appeal for young people more enticing than oh, let’s say, Akron.But after graduation, here’s hoping I’m on the first bus out of this burg. If you think Columbus is hillbilly heaven now, give it a few years when the construction is done.Columbus is successfully shedding its Cowtown moniker by raping its rural areas with monuments to capitalism. Columbus 2000 will be place with crappy shopping, obnoxious sports, and fast food restaurants in every direction as far as the eye can see.The latest announcement is the construction of a $200 million, 1.5 million-square-foot mall at I-71 and Polaris to be opened in 2000 with six department stores, and an entertainment district with a 22-screen cinema. It’s apparently aimed at the people too lazy to drive 20 minutes away to Les Wexner’s 3.5 million square feet of development at Morse Road and I-270 being built in the next few years. For diversity’s sake, that project includes a dozen superstores, an entertainment district with a 30-screen movie theater, and a – surprise! – megamall with several department stores.Don’t forget that just last year a 128-store mall was opened at I-270 and Tuttle Crossing Boulevard. Not to mention the Northland, Eastland and Westland malls, the City Center, the Continent, and the countless strip malls which speckle the Columbus landscape.Can you say overkill?That doesn’t even begin to cover the entertainment – and I use that word loosely – options Central Ohioans will have in the 21st century. Our very own university will soon open its own monument to bad priorities, the Schottenstein Center, for basketball, hockey, and – oh god, let’s hope – circuses and country music festivals. The Horseshoe continues its transformation into not being very shoe-like at all with the addition of enough seating to keep more than 100,000 idiots happy.Pinch me, Bubba!The big question is who these stores expect as customers. Central Ohio is growing, from a population of 1.1 million in 1970 to 1.5 million in 1996. But there is a saturation point for the area’s disposable income, so the planners must anticipate money coming from the outside.Here’s a fact that threw me for a loop: Ohio is the sixth-most-visited state in the nation. In 1996, 79 million people spent $9.9 billion here. So people do come.”Why” is a big question, but “where from” is equally perplexing. A new $700,000 ad campaign titled “Surprise. It’s Columbus.” is featured in newspaper ads in Akron, Canton, Charleston-Huntington, W.Va., and other cities within two to three hours’ drive.One depicts a Short North night scene and reads: “SoHo? Surprise. It’s Columbus.” Other ads compare Columbus to Toronto, Washington, Paris and Geneva and with places like Madison Square Garden, the Museum of Modern Art and Carnegie Hall.Obviously, the creators of these ads have never been farther than two blocks out of Columbus. Only the severely reality-challenged – or someone paid by the reality-challenged – would dare utter those other cities in the same breath as this flat, gray town.Most people in Akron and Canton haven’t been to Paris or Geneva, so maybe they’ll buy it. As for West Virginians, you might want a special ad comparing Columbus to their favorite hot spots, like the dog track, shooting range, and Uncle Elmer’s annual pig roast.The Columbus economy is unbelievably hot and the unemployment rate is absurdly low. But nothing lasts forever, and the glut of stores in the area is going to break someone’s back. Whether it be a lack of people to work at these establishments, the crushing of smaller competition, or an inevitable recession to put these developers in their place, the party won’t last forever. It won’t matter how many West Virginians you bus in. Call it : “Surprise. It’s bankruptcy.”I pray I’m not here to see it.
Nathan Crabbe is a junior from Akron who is going to vote for the USG presidential candidate with the least amount of posters cluttering campus. His radio show can now be heard Tuesday at 7 P.M. on the student-run station.
