COLUMBUS, Ind. – The City of Columbus Redevelopment Commission has announced that it has selected Indianapolis and Pittsburgh-based Merritt Chase to redesign a 1.5-acre plaza at the city’s most prominent entrance into downtown. The project is in collaboration with Columbus Design Institute, a technical service arm of Landmark Columbus Foundation.
The site is split north and south by four-lane State Road 46 and encompasses two adjacent memorials, the POW/MIA/Law Enforcement Plaza and Robert D. Garton Veterans Plaza. The two halves form a circle, a key feature of the design completed by Michael VanValkenburgh and Associates (MVVA) in 2000.
As a main entry into Columbus, approximately 28,000 vehicles pass through this plaza daily. Upon vehicular entry to downtown and the plaza, the Robert N. Stewart Bridge frames the Bartholomew County Courthouse.
The entrance plaza is now overgrown and underutilized. In the future, it will serve as an important entryway into Downtown Columbus, and this project represents an opportunity to integrate this space into other current or future developments in the area.
The project aims to transform the landscape into a more desirable space, collaborate with local partners and adjacent projects, improve key design features and connectivity, and ensure the project’s integrity and universal accessibility.
The next steps include a full site survey, a formal introduction by Merritt Chase at the June Redevelopment Commission meeting, and stakeholder visioning sessions.
There will be a kick-off event, open to the public, on June 24, which will include a community-wide engagement workshop.
