THE WEX’S LEADERSHIP SHAKE-UP
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Longaberger is
BACK (No, seriously)
NOVEMBER 2021
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Contents NOVEMBER 2021
ON THE COVER: Photo by Rob Hardin
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THE NEW LONGABERGER
The iconic brand is back—and it’s not your grandmother’s basket maker anymore.
Features 38 ALMOST FAMOUS
The triumphs and tragedies of Dawn Powell, Central Ohio’s forgotten literary genius
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PHOTO: TIM JOHNSON
FIELD OF SCHEMES
Long before the rest of the world heard of Bishop Sycamore, Ben Ferree was speaking out about the controversial school. Why was he ignored? Chris Ripple finishes a Longaberger basket at the Dresden & Co. workshop.
NOVEMBER 2021 COLUMBUS MONTHLY
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Contents
T D
NOVEMBER 2021
20 86
78 Home & Style
Dining
16 ARTS
74 Q&A
86 GUIDE
20 LEADERSHIP
76 PRODUCTS
27 PERSPECTIVE
78 HOME
Illuminating Van Gogh at CMA A shake-up at the Wex Amy Butcher reclaims the wilderness.
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From A&F to landscaping Intriguing lamps and fixtures A global abode in Bexley
Tour Granville’s new food and drink options.
90 SHORT ORDER A vegan Persian pop-up
94 DRINK
Sandeep Mehta, chai master
IN EVERY ISSUE
8 FROM THE EDITOR 10 SMALL TALK 24 DATEBOOK 25 PEOPLE 84 TOP 25 REAL ESTATE TRANSACTIONS 104 CITY QUOTIENT
PHOTOS: TIM JOHNSON
Arch City
COLUMBUS MONTHLY NOVEMBER 2021
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PHOTOS: TIM JOHNSON
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VOLUME 47 / NUMBER 11 Columbus Monthly (ISSN 2333-4150) is published monthly by Gannett. All contents of this magazine are copyrighted © Gannett Co., Inc. 2021, all rights reserved. Reproduction or use, without written permission, of editorial or graphic content in any manner is prohibited. Publisher assumes no responsibility for return of unsolicited materials. Known office of publication is 62 E. Broad St., Columbus, Ohio 43215. Periodicals postage paid at Columbus, Ohio, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Columbus Monthly, PO Box 460160, Escondido, CA 92046.
COLUMBUS MONTHLY NOVEMBER 2021
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From the Editor
As the Basket Turns
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Is D’Loren interested in buying the building? “Maybe in the future, but not at the moment,” D’Loren says. He might not get that chance, however. ShaiHess’ Brandon Hess told me in early October that the building is in contract. Because the deal isn’t finalized yet, Hess declined to share any additional details about the buyer and possible uses for the building. Though the deal isn’t done, it does appear likely (at least for now) that Longaberger will remain apart from its most visible symbol. But if the values behind the Big Basket stay with the brand—audacity, eccentricity, daring—then it should do just fine without it. *** Speaking of real estate, close readers of this magazine may have noticed it’s becoming more common for all the homes on our monthly list of the area’s biggest residential sales to cross the million-dollar threshold (“Top 25,” Page 84). Well, Home & Style editor Sherry Beck Paprocki tells me that eight sales of $1 million or more didn’t even make the list this month—possibly a record. Big spenders beware.
Andrew King
profiled Bishop Sycamore truth-teller Ben Ferree (Page 44). King has written for ThisWeek Community News, The Athletic and MLSsoccer.com.
Amy Butcher
is the author of “Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America,” to be published in November. Her essay, “Reclaiming the Wilderness,” appears on Page 27.
Peter Tonguette
Dave Ghose dghose@columbusmonthly.com
spent 10 months researching his feature on novelist Dawn Powell (Page 38). His work has appeared in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
PHOTOS: CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT, ROB HARDIN; TIM JOHNSON; ADAM STIFFLER; BROOKE LAVALLEY
It’s not really about the baskets. For this issue, I wrote our cover story about the revival of Longaberger, the iconic Central Ohio basket brand that was brought back to life by an unlikely savior: a fashion insider from New York named Bob D’Loren (“The New Longaberger,” Page 30). I feel a certain kinship with D’Loren, the CEO of Xcel Brands. I, too, don’t fit the Longaberger mold, but I have spent a lot of time thinking about the comWHAT WE pany since I wrote my first major LEARNED THIS piece about it back in 2017. MONTH Even then, when the business was in a spiral that evenOne of Columbus City Attortually led to a 2018 bankruptcy, ney Zach Klein’s first moves the brand retained a core of in office was to sue the Trump administration (Page 19). fans who adored it and what it represented: underdog entreAn Aug. 8 Longaberger preneurism, a century-old livestreaming event generbasket-making tradition and, ated more than $100,000 in sales, most significantly, the legacy of or $3,000 per minute (Page 30). company founder Dave LongaGreater Columbus, the home berger, an Appalachian dreamer of about 30,000 Bhutanesewith gumption and big ideas. Nepali refugees, has at least 14 In fact, those values attracted Nepalese restaurants (Page 92). D’Loren, too, just like the basket collectors. “It’s an icon,” D’Loren says of of the Longaberger brand. “And icons don’t go away.” But even as a modernized version of Longaberger takes shape— livestreaming, artisan partnerships, the end of home parties—the biggest symbol (literally) of its past remains in limbo. The company’s former headquarters, the so-called Big Basket building, Dave Longaberger’s most unusual brainchild, continues to have an uncertain future. Former Longaberger parent JRJR Networks vacated the famed seven-story building in the shape of a picnic basket in 2016. With foreclosure looming, a pair of developers—Steve Coon of Canton and Bobby George of Cleveland—bought it for $1.2 million in December 2017. Two years later, Coon announced plans to turn it into a 150-room hotel, but The Newark Advocate reported earlier this year that those plans fell through amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, the building is listed with Shai-Hess Commercial Real Estate in Granville.
Contributors
COLUMBUS MONTHLY NOVEMBER 2021
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PHOTOS: CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT, ROB HARDIN; TIM JOHNSON; ADAM STIFFLER; BROOKE LAVALLEY
Small Talk STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP MANAGEMENT AND CIRCULATION 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
10. 11.
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(Required by 39 USC 3685) Publication Title: Columbus Monthly Publication Number: 093-290 Filing Date: October 1, 2021 Issue Frequency: Monthly Number of Issues Published Annually: 12 Annual Subscription Price: $18 Complete Mailing Address of Known Office of Publication: 62 East Broad Street, Columbus, Franklin County, Ohio 43216. Contact Person: Mike Murphy. Telephone: (317) 444-5381. Complete Mailing Address of Headquarters or General Business Office of Publisher: Same as Above. Full Names and Complete Mailing Addresses of Publisher, Editor and Managing Editor: Publisher - Bernard Szachara, 175 Sully’s Trail, 3rd Floor, Pittsford, NY 14534; Editor – Maribel Wadsworth, 7950 Jones Branch Dr, McLean, VA 22107. Owner: Gannett Co., Inc. 7950 Jones Branch Drive, McLean, VA 22107 Known Bondholders, Mortgagees, and Other Security Holders Owning or holding 1 percent or More of Total Amount of Bonds, Mortgages, or Other Securities: Citibank, N.A. as Administrative Agent, Collateral Agency and Lender; Citibank, N.A. Citybank Delaware; Attn: Agency Operations One Penn’s Way OPS II New Castle, DE 19720. With a copy to: Latham & Watkins LLP; Attn: Alfred &. Zue, 885 Third Avenue New York, NY 10022; BlackRock Fund Advisors, 400 Howard St., San Francisco, California 94105-2228; The Vanguard Group, Inc., 100 Vanguard Blvd., V26, Malvern, Pennsylvania 19355; Miller Value Partners LLC, One South St., #2550, Baltimore, Maryland 21205 Tax Status (For completion by nonprofit organizations authorized to mail at non-profit rates). Does not apply. Publication Title; Columbus Monthly Issue Date for Circulation Data below: July 1, 2021
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a. Total Number of Copies (Net Press Run) 18,956 17,938 b. Paid Circulation (By Mail and Outside the Mail) (1) Mailed Outside-County Paid Subscription Stated on PS Form 3541 (Include paid distribution above nominal rate, advertiser’s proof copies, and exchange copies) 6,210 6,873 (2) Mailed In-County Paid Subscriptions Stated on PS Form 3541 (Include paid distribution above nominal rate, advertiser’s proof copies, and ex change copies) 9,017 8,657 (3) Paid Distribution Outside the Mails Including Sales Through Dealers and Carriers, Street Vendors, Counter Sales, and Other Paid Distribution Outside USPS® 2,442 2,156 (4) Paid Distribution by Other Classes of Mail Through the USPS® (e.g., First-Class Mail) 0 0 c. Total Paid Distribution (Sum of 15b (1), (2), (3), and (4)) 17,669 17,686 d. Free or Nominal Rate Distribution (By Mail and Outside Mail) (1) Free or Nominal Rate Outside-County Copies included on PS Form 3541 0 0 (2) Free or Nominal Rate In-County Copies Included on PS Form 3541 0 0 (3) Free or Nominal Rate Copies Mailed at Other Classes Through the USPS (e.g., First-Class Mail) 0 0 (4) Free or Nominal Rate Distribution Outside the Mail (Carriers or other means) 422 220 e. Total Free or Nominal Rate Distribution (Sum of 15d (1), (2), (3) and (4) 422 220 f. Total Distribution (Sum of 15c and 15e) 18,091 17,906 g. Copies not Distributed 865 32 h. Total (Sum of 15f and 15g) 18,956 17,938 i. Percent Paid (15c divided by 15f times 100) 97.7% 98.8% 16. Total Circulation Includes Electronic Copies. Report Circulation on PS Form 3526-X Worksheet. N/A 17. Publication of Statement of Ownership. If the publication is a general publication, publication of this statement is required. Will be printed in the November 2021 issue of this publication. 18. Signature And Title Of Editor, Publisher, Business Manager, or Owner. Jerry Hill SVP, Print Growth & Retention I certify that all information furnished on this form is true and complete. I understand that anyone who furnishes false or misleading information on this form or who omits material or information requested on the form may be subject to criminal sanctions (including fines and imprisonment) and/or civil sanctions (including civil penalties).
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Local Eats Thank you for introducing the Restaurant Guide’s new format (October 2021)! We were surprised and delighted when our October issue arrived, and we turned to the back of the magazine to see area restaurants organized by cuisine—and there’s an index! We eat out often and are always looking to find someplace based on what ethnic food we desire for a particular meal. This new guide will make things so much easier for us and for others. Kudos to whomever came up with this fabulous idea! —Julie and Mike Jacobson, Columbus
Family History What a heartwarming story about Hilliard renaming a park in honor of the Merchant family (“The Merchants of Hilliard,” October 2021)—one of the first Black families to own land in that area! The mention that their ancestor, Yammer Merchant, arrived in Ohio with “$200 and a horse” made me wonder how many other Black families could have experienced similar successes. Race relations in the U.S. would have been profoundly different had President Lincoln’s promise of “40 acres and a mule” to each freed slave not been rescinded by President Andrew Johnson after Lincoln’s assassination. —Carla Dilley Behal, Columbus Law & Order Columbus’ race problem is at the root of Black inequality, poverty and violence. No Black female police chief (“Chief of Change,” August 2021) alone can solve this problem with Band-Aids on festering cancers (racism). The solutions start with diagnosing the correct problem and not the symptoms (violence). —@Retail_VR via Twitter A Mother’s Love As a mom of two African American young men, I feel [writer Katrina Lee’s] pain (“An Asian American Mother’s Sadness and Hope,” September 2021). Admittedly, on
many days, I stop at sadness. Some days, there’s not a lot of hope for this America. —@bgibson15 via Twitter Correction At Super Bowl XLII in February 2008, the New York Giants defeated the New England Patriots, 17-14. A September feature about master thief Sean Murphy included an incorrect final score.
We want to hear from you. Send to: Editor, Columbus Monthly, 62 E. Broad St., P.O. Box 1289, Columbus, OH 43216. Or email: letters@columbusmonthly.com. A letter must include the writer’s name, address and daytime phone number. Letters will be edited for length and clarity. All letters sent to Columbus Monthly are considered for publication, either in print or online.
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COLUMBUS MONTHLY NOVEMBER 2021
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ArchCity ARTS P. 16 | POLITICS P. 18 | PEOPLE P. 25 | PERSPECTIVE P. 27
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CHANGE AT THE WEX
Johanna Burton’s early exit startles the museum’s “spoiled” fans.
PHOTO BY TIM JOHNSON
NOVEMBER 2021 COLUMBUS MONTHLY
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Arch City SPORTS
Is Ohio State about to field its most educated men’s college basketball team ever? BY CHRIS DEVILLE
It remains to be seen whether Ohio State’s men’s basketball team will school their opponents this year, but Chris Holtmann’s players are clearly well-schooled themselves. Largely thanks to a COVID-era exemption allowing an extra year of eligibility for athletes whose season was affected by the pandemic, six of 15 players on the Buckeyes’ 2021–2022 roster are graduate students. Per a team rep, that’s the most in program history. While new NCAA rule changes allow student athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness, they still have to be enrolled in classes to compete in varsity-level college basketball. And according to a 2018 NCAA report, men’s basketball players are increasingly finishing their undergraduate studies, with graduation rates rising to an all-time high of 82 percent. (Citing competing federal data, skeptics such Poynter Institute’s Politifact suggest the real figure is less than 50 percent.) On the other hand, following in the footsteps of football quarterback Russell Wilson—who famously wrapped up his degree at NC State, then used the “graduate transfer exemption” to immediately suit up for Wisconsin as a master’s candidate in 2011—many programs are seeing an influx of graduates keeping their pro hopes alive by transferring in from other schools. Five of the six grads on the Buckeyes roster joined the program this way. Here’s a look at the Buckeyes’ six graduate students, many of whom are pursuing advanced degrees in, perhaps unsurprisingly, sport management. 14
JOEY BRUNK The center began his career in 2016 at Butler but missed most of his first season caring for his father as he died from brain cancer. As a result, the NCAA granted him an extra year of eligibility. After two more seasons at Butler, he graduated with a bachelor’s in elementary education. He transferred to Indiana for 2019–2020, then missed 2020–2021 due to back surgery. After earning a master’s in recreation administration, he’s now at Ohio State, pursuing a second graduate degree in criminal justice administration.
CEDRIC RUSSELL Russell, a guard, passed up scholarship offers from Baylor, LSU, Houston, Texas Tech and VCU to stay close to his newborn son. After playing four seasons with Louisiana, he graduated with a degree in sport management this year. While balling for the Buckeyes in 2021–2022 he’ll be working toward a master’s in sport industry/ sport management.
JIMMY SOTOS After three seasons playing guard at Bucknell, Sotos completed an economics degree and switched to Ohio State for the 2020–2021 season. As he bounces back from February’s season-ending shoulder surgery, he’s seeking a master’s in sport management.
SETH TOWNS Towns, a forward, played two seasons at Harvard then missed two more due to injury. Having completed his undergrad studies in sociology, he switched to Ohio State last season and is pursuing a master’s in sport management. Following back surgery in September, Towns is expected to be ready to play before year’s end.
JAMARI WHEELER Wheeler never missed a game in four seasons for Penn State while securing a bachelor’s in rehabilitation and human services. At Ohio State, the guard is pursuing a master’s in sports coaching.
KYLE YOUNG Young is the only Buckeye grad student who also went to Ohio State for undergrad. Now that he’s earned a bachelor’s degree in sport industry, the forward is studying sport management in grad school.
PHOTOS: COURTESY OHIO STATE ATHLETICS
Masters of the Court
COLUMBUS MONTHLY NOVEMBER 2021
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PHOTOS: COURTESY OHIO STATE ATHLETICS
Named best monthly in the state.
Columbus Monthly took home the prestigious “Best of Show” win in the 2021 Ohio’s Best Journalism Contest, an annual statewide competition sponsored by the Cincinnati, Cleveland and Columbus chapters of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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Arch City ARTS
Illuminating Van Gogh An art-lover who grew up in Columbus helped collect the works to be displayed alongside Van Gogh’s at CMA. BY PETER TONGUETTE
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A large number of these works are from the collection of Van Gogh biographers Steven Naifeh of Aiken, South Carolina, and his late husband, Greg White Smith. In 2011, Naifeh and Smith coauthored “Van Gogh: The Life,” a rigorously researched, widely admired biography. They also amassed a substantial art collection, which didn’t include pieces by Van Gogh himself—prices of his works were out of sight—but did include works by others that could illuminate a Van Gogh exhibition. Clockwise from top right, “Still Life with a Blue Box of Gloves” by Armand Guillaumin; “Oleanders” by Vincent van Gogh; a portrait of Steven Naifeh (left) and Greg White Smith
For example, Van Gogh was taken with the work of French impressionist Armand Guillaumin, whose paintings he commended to his art-dealer sibling, Theo. One still life in their collection (seen below), Naifeh says, directly relates to a work by Van Gogh in the “lushness of the color” they share and even in the scene they depict. Naifeh chose the Columbus Museum of Art as host for the show partly in homage to his life and writing partner, Smith, who
PHOTO: COURTESY STEVEN NAIFEH; ARTWORK: TOP, GLENN CASTELLANO; BOTTOM, THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART; GIFT OF MR. AND MRS. JOHN L. LOEB, 1962
If ever a great artist was in a class by himself, surely it was Vincent van Gogh. The Dutch painter, who was born in 1853 and died in 1890, captured the world’s imagination with his sunflowers, siestas and starry nights, all realized with ferocious brushwork and brilliant colors that shocked his contemporaries. Yet a new exhibition at the Columbus Museum of Art makes the case that Van Gogh also owed something to his time and place. Through Vincent’s Eyes: Van Gogh and His Sources, which opens Nov. 12 and runs through Feb. 6, supplements 17 original paintings, drawings and prints by Van Gogh with numerous works by artists to whom he owed an artistic debt, including Degas, Manet and Pissarro. “It’s rewarding for the viewer to see the whole panorama of works that were being produced in the 19th century and that an artist like Van Gogh was exposed to,” says chief curator emeritus David Stark, who co-curated the exhibition. “Van Gogh’s art wasn’t produced in a vacuum.”
COLUMBUS MONTHLY NOVEMBER 2021
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BOOK COVER: COURTESY RANDOM HOUSE
PHOTO: COURTESY STEVEN NAIFEH; ARTWORK: TOP, GLENN CASTELLANO; BOTTOM, THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART; GIFT OF MR. AND MRS. JOHN L. LOEB, 1962
was born in Ithaca, New York, in 1981 but spent most of his childhood in Columbus. Smith died in 2014. “I knew just how profoundly meaningful it would’ve been to Greg to have our collection seen in Columbus,” says Naifeh, who co-curated the show with Stark and whose new book, “Van Gogh and the Artists He Loved,” is just out from Random House. “I knew what people across America don’t necessarily know … and that is what a great museum Columbus is.” Yet the museum owns no Van Goghs. Since Van Gogh’s works are difficult to borrow in large numbers, few museums could undertake a Van Gogh-only exhibition. “We realized that [our collection] would make it possible for regional museums— something other than the Met or the National Gallery or the Art Institute of Chicago—to mount a Van Gogh exhibition of importance,” says Naifeh. After its Columbus run, the exhibition will go to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. One of three children born to William R. Smith, who built hotels and restaurants in Columbus, and Kathryn White Smith, Greg White Smith was a prodigy. At 8, he
was composing novels using his father’s Dictaphone; his mother dutifully typed. Smith attended Columbus Academy and took drawing lessons that informed his own amateur architectural drawings of imaginary houses based on those he encountered in Bexley, where his family lived. “He never really thought of himself as a lover of the visual arts, but he was,” Naifeh says. “He went to as many museums as he could.” Although Naifeh and Smith met while students at Harvard Law School, neither
felt destined for careers in law. Naifeh had a longstanding interest in art and received a fine arts degree. At the same time, when the two set out to write their first art book, 1989’s “Jackson Pollock: An American Saga,” he viewed Smith’s comparative lack of academic study of art as an asset. “When he was approaching the material, he came at it without any preset ideas,” Naifeh says. Following the Pollock book, which took a decade to research and write, Smith and Naifeh undertook the even more arduous Van Gogh book. Since neither spoke Dutch, they employed 11 translators; they paid the bills and helped fund their art collection by publishing a line of annual books that touted the nation’s best doctors and lawyers. But Smith had health issues; a brain tumor, first discovered when he was 22, plagued him all his days, requiring 13 surgeries, and eventually took his life. Two circles are closed with the arrival of this exhibition in Columbus: It returns Van Gogh to his proper cultural context, and it delivers Greg White Smith back home. “He loved the town,” Naifeh says. ◆
NOVEMBER 2021 COLUMBUS MONTHLY
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Arch City POLITICS Former Ohio first lady Frances Strickand with her reissued book, “The Little Girl Who Grew Up to Be Governor.”
Frances Strickland’s Leadership Lessons The former first lady hopes her children’s book will encourage civility. Thirty years ago in 1991, long before her husband, Ted Strickland, became the governor of Ohio, Frances Strickland penned a celebratory children’s chapter book about the life of Kentucky’s first woman governor, Martha Layne Collins, elected in 1983. This year, Strickland, who has a doctorate in educational psychology, has revised and reissued “The Little Girl Who Grew Up to Be Governor” with a 2021-style goal in mind. Collins’ life, she says, offers lessons in bipartisan leadership that speaks to all children—especially girls—who are growing up in a time of deep division, incivility in politics and worse. Each story in the book relates a childhood lesson to a leadership skill. In an early chapter, 3-year-old Collins (née Hall) disobeys her mother by wandering out of the yard and crossing a highway to visit the local grocery store. Instead of punishing the child, her mother reinforces the rules she’s already taught. “Martha Layne had to learn that good leaders don’t do dangerous things that can hurt themselves or others. They try to make things as safe as possible for everyone.” There are times when it’s OK to bend the rules, however, as the young governor-tobe learns when she devises a way to feed a neighbor’s chickens by squeezing through a gap in a fence instead of walking around it, too close to that forbidden highway. “Good governors believe if people are hurting in some way, there has to be a way to help them,” the book advises. “But just like Martha Layne learned, it is important to find ways to help that don’t break the rules.” While Collins is, like Strickland, a Democrat, the former first lady is eager to ensure that her “little book” will function as a tool for educators and families on both sides of the aisle. To that end, she enlisted the guid18
ance of Ohio’s first female attorney general, Betty Montgomery, a Republican, to review the manuscript. She also has organized a public conversation with another Republican, former first lady Hope Taft, at the Bexley Public Library on Dec. 11. Over lunch at Milestone 229 in July, Montgomery shared with Strickland ideas for broadening the book’s descriptions of the Republican party (which Strickland describes as cautious about innovation and interested in ensuring new ideas are cost-effective, safe and feasible), and on how to approach two “really divergent points of view.” Both women agreed that learning to cooperate across ideological divisions begins by getting to know each other. “It’s so much easier to call somebody a horse’s patoot when you don’t know their children’s
names and you don’t know them,” Montgomery says in an interview. Strickland agrees, and she thinks Martha Layne Collins can lead the way. Can an oldfashioned book of stories about a little white girl’s childhood spent feeding farm animals in rural Kentucky resonate with a generation of children growing up in the age of TikTok and Black Lives Matter and threats to overthrow democracy? Strickland admits she’s not sure. But if she’s learned anything from chronicling Martha Layne Collins, it’s that good leaders never stop trying to make life better for others. “We are not living together comfortably with each other right now. And children are seeing this,” she says. “This little book just helps make sure that they’re getting some way of learning how to navigate through.” ◆
PHOTO: TIM JOHNSON
BY JOY FRANK-COLLINS
COLUMBUS MONTHLY NOVEMBER 2021
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Aizuri Quartet
Nov ov 13, 13 3 2021 ~ 7pm @ Southern Southern Theatre
COLUMBUS
• Divorce • Dissolution • Legal separation • Child support • Child custody • Support • Property division • Temporary orders • Post decree matters
Zach Klein’s Ambitious Lawsuits In September, Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of a challenge to Mississippi’s restrictive abortion law. The city’s brief, arguing that residents of cities like Columbus would be disproportionately affected if such laws proliferate because of racial disparities in access to health care, was joined by 29 cities and counties.
William L. Geary
Family Law and Litigation
Suite 101 Waterford Tower • 155 W. Main St. Columbus • (614) 228-1968 www.columbusfamilylawyer.com
Weighing in on a lawsuit over abortion in a distant state might seem like a stretch for an elected official whose core responsibility is to defend the city from lawsuits and to prosecute local misdemeanors. But Klein says there’s a pressing need for Columbus to speak out on national policy issues that affect its residents.
ILLUSTRATION: BORTONIA/GETTY IMAGES
PHOTO: TIM JOHNSON
“Especially at the beginning of the Trump administration, with the assault on women’s reproductive rights, assaults on health care—a lot of the cities that were leading the charges were those on the East and West coasts,” Klein says in an interview. “Columbus has an important voice to be heard.” Indeed, one of Klein’s first moves in office was to sue the Trump administration, claiming a failure to properly implement the Affordable Care Act. In all, Klein’s office has filed eight original lawsuits against entities ranging from Purdue Pharma to the U.S. Department of Commerce, taking a stand on issues from background checks for gun purchases (the process needed to be improved, Klein said) to whether non-citizens should be counted in the census (they should, he argued) to a so-called Clean Energy rider that added fees to residents’ electric bills. (The fee was repealed.) “I felt that the people that I represent, the 14th largest city in the United States, ... all 900,000 people: They also care deeply about these issues.” —Suzanne Goldsmith
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Arch City LEADERSHIP
Wex Director Johanna Burton’s Early Exit A quick leadership change startles Columbus’ “spoiled” arts community.
The Wexner Center for the Arts is on the lookout for a new executive director, as Johanna Burton is stepping down to lead the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles. That leaves some Wexner fans wondering: Why so soon? Burton replaced the Wex’s original director, Sherri Geldin, who led the center for more than 25 years and helped cement its reputation as an avant-garde, multidisciplinary institution. Though Burton threw herself enthusiastically into the position and carried on the Wex’s adventurous and socially conscious programming, her Oct. 29 departure comes little more than 2½ years after she arrived in March 2019. The early exit raises some questions: Does her departure signal a loss of prestige for the institution that helped put Colum20
bus on the contemporary culture map? Or, even more troubling, has an organization chaired, supported and named for Les Wexner’s father been tarnished by the scandal surrounding the late Jeffrey Epstein and his connections to the L Brands founder? No, say a pair of art experts Columbus Monthly asked to comment on the situation. In their view, the L.A. job was simply too good to pass up. Ron Pizzuti, CEO of the Pizzuti Cos. and a prolific art collector who serves on the Wexner Center board, says he was both surprised and unsurprised by the announcement that Burton was stepping down. “I don’t think she had any intention of leaving,” he says, but she just couldn’t ignore the career opportunity the MOCA position presented.
A similar explanation is put forward by Adam Weinberg, director of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, who calls Burton “generally the kind of person who makes long-term commitments.” Even so, he adds, the chance to work with L.A.’s “enormous and extremely active” arts community was too tempting for her to decline. If Wexner fans are disappointed by Burton’s departure, he suggests, it’s because they’ve been “spoiled” by her predecessor’s long tenure. “There are not many directors who’ve stayed 25 years,” Weinberg points out. “The average tenure tends to be more like five years.” Of course, not all years are created equal. Burton acknowledges her time in Columbus seemed longer than it really was, having been complicated by a worldwide pandemic that
PHOTO: TIM JOHNSON
BY RICHARD ADES
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PHOTOS: LEFT, MEGHAN RALSTON; RIGHT, ROB HARDIN
PHOTO: TIM JOHNSON
forced the Wex to cancel events, close galleries, lay off staff and cut salaries, including her own. But these challenges—which, of course, affected galleries worldwide—did not play a role in her decision to leave. “MOCA’s a once-in-a-lifetime job, so I would have considered it no matter when it came,” Burton says. “I don’t know that I could have turned that phone call down.” The phone call came from a search firm that contacted her last spring, after the L.A. position was posted. “I ended up having a number of conversations with the board and various members of the MOCA community,” she recalls. The result was the Wexner Center’s Sept. 3 announcement that Burton would soon be leaving Columbus for Los Angeles. What kind of institution was prominent enough to entice Burton to head west? First of all, MOCA is huge and is divided between two locations: the multidisciplinary Geffen Contemporary space—which alone is three times the size of the Wex’s galleries—and the Grand Avenue exhibition space in downtown L.A. On the other hand, MOCA is an institution that’s had its share of problems over the years, including financial shortcomings that became acute after the Great Recession hit in 2008. The Art Newspaper, an international publication that covers the visual arts, also notes that MOCA changes leaders on a regular basis, as Burton will be its fourth new director in 12 years. And, as it turned out, its leadership was shaken up yet again before she could even move in. The original plan was for Burton to replace executive director Klaus Biesenbach, who would stay on as artistic director. Biesenbach issued a statement saying he looked forward to collaborating with Burton, and on Sept. 9 he welcomed her to the opening of a multimedia exhibition at the Geffen Contemporary space. But the very next day, in a development that Los Angeles Times critic Christopher Knight said was handled awkwardly by the museum, it was announced that Biesenbach had accepted a position as director of the Neue Nationalgalerie in his native Germany. “That was a surprise to everybody,” Burton says. Then, turning philosophical, she adds: “Shift happens in executive leadership … so we just reconfigured things quickly at the executive level.” The museum sub-
Above, Johanna Burton; inset, Sherri Geldin
sequently announced that no new artistic director would be appointed, as Burton will take on that responsibility in addition to her previously agreed-upon duties. So Burton is leaving Columbus for a challenging new position that is now even more demanding than the one she signed up for. Asked what she’s most looking forward to doing at MOCA that she couldn’t do at the Wexner Center, she mentions overseeing “one of the best collections of contemporary art in the world.” That’s a key difference between the two institutions, as the Wex’s famously odd-shaped galleries are devoted to visiting exhibitions rather than a permanent collection. Beyond that, the Reno, Nevada, native says she’s attracted to the idea of returning to the
West Coast and working in L.A. “Lots and lots and lots of artists that I’ve worked with, that I admire, are in that city [and] really part of a tightknit group that I’m excited to join.” The Wexner Center has named two existing staff members—chief operating officer Megan Cavanaugh and chief advancement officer Kelly Stevelt—to serve as co-interim executive directors while it seeks a replacement for Burton. That will take time, says Pizzuti, who was involved in hiring her in 2019. “When we were going through the interview process, we knew as soon as she arrived and presented herself so beautifully that she was the candidate for this position,” he says. “It’s a loss for the center, it’s a loss for the city. It’s a big gain for the folks in California.” ◆ NOVEMBER 2021 COLUMBUS MONTHLY
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Arch City IMAGE
Matt Osowski of Alexandria guides his daughter, Adalene, age 3, over a hill on her balance bike during the weekly organized racing at the new BMX track at Alum Creek South Park in Westerville on Tuesday, Sept. 7. PHOTO BY ADAM CAIRNS
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NOVEMBER 2021 COLUMBUS MONTHLY
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Arch City EDITORS’ PICKS
Datebook Things to See and Do
CONSERVATORY AGLOW Nov. 20–Jan. 9, Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens
MARVEL: UNIVERSE OF SUPER HEROES Nov. 26–May 30, COSI
Marvel fans, unite! Marvel: Universe of Super Heroes debuts at COSI with displays of more than 300 original artworks, costumes and props from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the comics that inspired it. Noteworthy displays include costumes worn by the late Chadwick Boseman and others in “Black Panther,” Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man suit (pictured at right), and even the only known surviving piece of original art from Marvel Comics #1, released in 1939. cosi.org
VADIM & FRIENDS Nov. 6–7, Southern Theatre
ProMusica’s slate for Nov. 6 and 7 will be an experience of battling textures. Combining Beethoven’s Septet and Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso No. 1 is the sonic equivalent of holding silk in one hand and sandpaper in the other. Beethoven soars, croons and rolls, as if a friend was alternating between whispering an intimate secret and talking as fast and as loud as possible; Schnittke plucks, strains and dizzies, as if your muscles were being slowly pulled from your body. The two-night concert series will feature Vadim Gluzman, violinist and ProMusica’s principal guest artist, and will be the ProMusica debut of violinist Julian Rhee. Gluzman and Rhee’s technical and musical abilities will be best showcased in the Concerto Grosso, which is scored for two violins, accompanied by a string orchestra. promusicacolumbus.org
JIM GAFFIGAN Nov. 14, Nationwide Arena
Though he’s been called America’s funniest dad, Jim Gaffigan’s true comedy sweet spot is food—stinky tofu, the absurdity of appetizers and, above all, the profound shame associated with eating a Hot Pocket. Gaffigan is also known to riff on regional delicacies. Here’s hoping someone introduces him to the Thurmanator before his gig. He could probably get 20 minutes of material out of that burger alone. nationwidearena.com
GIVE BACK GIRLS ON THE RUN 5K Columbus Commons, Nov. 20
Participate, volunteer, donate or come out and cheer at this race sponsored by an organization that seeks to inspire girls to build confidence and make intentional decisions while fostering care and compassion for self and others. girlsontheruncentralohio.org 24
JOHN HICKS UNLIMITED LOVE Villa Milano, Nov. 23
This charitable event focused on the OSU-Michigan rivalry features lots of stories and a chance to mingle with football players. Funds raised support Unverferth House, a temporary residence for OSU Wexner Medical Center patients and families who live outside Franklin County. unverferthhouse.org
CELEBRATION OF LEARNING Columbus Metropolitan Library, Nov. 5 The annual fundraiser for the Columbus Metropolitan Library Foundation will feature a talk by 2020 MacArthur genius grant recipient and four-time Newbery Award winner Jacqueline Woodson, author of “Brown Girl Dreaming” and “Red at the Bone.” columbuslibrary.org/foundation
GEORGE BELLOWS AND THE ART OF SPORTS Nov. 4, Columbus Museum of Art
The museum will celebrate the opening of its George Bellows Center with a lecture by Mark Cole, a curator at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Born in New York in 1882, Bellows grew up in Columbus and attended Ohio State. He was known for his realistic paintings of sporting events, landscapes and life in New York, where he lived from 1904 until his death in 1925. columbusmuseum.org
PHOTOS: CLOCKWISE FROM TOP CENTER, SANDRO VANINI; COURTESY FRANKLIN PARK CONSERVATORY AND BOTANICAL GARDENS; TIFFANY A. BLOOMFIELD; ROBERT HANASHIRO
The Conservatory’s annual holiday light extravaganza will showcase debut exhibits as well as classic favorites. New features will include lighted topiary animals in illuminated habitats and a Candyland-inspired children’s area complete with a life-size gingerbread house and a lollipop forest. Returning favorites include the glass ornament trees, the animated light show, the rainbow tunnel and the holiday-themed Paul Busse Garden Railway. fpconservatory.org
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PEOPLE Arch City
A Capital Valentine
1 Amy and Chad Gill, Brian and Rebecca White 2 John and Shellie Kessler 3 Tom Davis, Rob Jordan 4 Amanda Lucas, Mary Howard, Elizabeth Seely, Phyllis Teater 5 Greg and Joseph Zanetos with an entertainer 6 Greg and Maureen Maurer 7 Leo Ruberto, Elizabeth Seely 8 Floyd Jackson, Beverly Tate, Franklin Owusu 9 Mike Rosati, Patti Stephens 10 Jeannie Gualtieri
PHOTOS: RANDY DEPUY WITH PICTURE AMERICA
PHOTOS: CLOCKWISE FROM TOP CENTER, SANDRO VANINI; COURTESY FRANKLIN PARK CONSERVATORY AND BOTANICAL GARDENS; TIFFANY A. BLOOMFIELD; ROBERT HANASHIRO
Ohio Cancer Research honored Elizabeth Seely at its 32nd annual fundraiser. Seely is the chief administrative officer for the hospital division at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. The June 25 gathering was hosted by 10TV News anchor Yolanda Harris at the Hilton Columbus at Easton. Guests enjoyed a dinner buffet, open bar, live music and a silent auction. The event raised $150,000 for cancer research.
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Media Sponsor:
LIVE TO CREATE OPPORTUNITY We live to ensure the Columbus Region is a vibrant place to build businesses and careers. Partners for Regional Growth & Prosperity
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columbusregion.com
10/14/21 1:50 PM
PERSPECTIVE Arch City Author Amy Butcher walks with her dogs, Basil, Piper and Oosk, in Gallant Woods Park in Delaware County.
Reclaiming the Wilderness Dangers, real and imagined
PHOTO: TIM JOHNSON
BY AMY BUTCHER
It’s been seven years since the night I thought I might die in the desert. It was July, Colorado. I was 27—a woman with an orange tent and a romanticized vision of desert camping. I wanted to drive west that summer to see America’s deserts—more specifically, the petroglyphs of Mesa Verde, the early drawings of man and ram and bird, their lined aesthetic in orange rock so very different from the greens and yellows that dominate Ohio. Like so many women, I believed I all but secured my safety by inviting my partner along. We had been together for a year and were in love, and though sometimes his love seemed lined with anger, traveling alone seemed dangerous. So together, we drove from Delaware, Ohio, to Indiana to Illinois to Iowa and then pushed on through Nebraska, then Colorado. We invented games along the
way: Eat this thing from the convenience store. Drink this drink, or else. Somewhere in Nebraska, I tried my first 7-Eleven taquito, filled with jalapeño cream cheese. He tried a soda flavored with tamarind. We laughed at the sight of Kum & Go gas stations, their 100-ounce HuMUGous Mug retailing for a reasonable $14.99. He filled it with coffee, then Pepsi. I questioned his sanity, and also his bladder. Our trip was fun. If we didn’t have fun, it all would’ve been easy. The point was, in fact, that everything about him and us was two ways. There was the fun, and then fun’s opposite, and it was this duality that made leaving so difficult. That first night in our Colorado campsite, we roasted bratwursts over a fire. The bratwursts burst and oozed pink juices between perfect cubes of diced white fat. We sharpened desert sticks into pokers for the bag of
marshmallows we would never open, and together we watched the sun descend slowly into a yellow-lit valley. I remember thinking how strange it looked, a landscape stripped of vegetation, and how the sky went distinctly purple before the stars came out and the evening went black. Then I remember our conversation, its escalation. In the months before this evening, my partner had criticized my values and poked holes in my beliefs. But his comments—while pointed— had never felt threatening. And yet on this night, his tone became unreasonably angry; his words became sharp and accusatory. He told me that God had been speaking to him behind a dumpster, and he’d been listening. I remember thinking, A woman like me doesn’t end up with a guy who hears God behind a dumpster. And yet I could see that the facts of my reality didn’t line up with that self-perception. He began to scream, and I began to cower. Where was I supposed to go? I had been afraid to camp in national parks alone, but now I was a woman in an isolated desert with a man consumed by rage. I didn’t know how to de-escalate; I didn’t know what to do with my body. NOVEMBER 2021 COLUMBUS MONTHLY
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Arch City PERSPECTIVE
I feared for my life. The only thing I could think to do was get him to fall asleep, to be quiet, to be still, so we climbed into our tent and into our separate sleeping bags. He placed his body between mine and the oblong flap of the tent’s exit and I waited for his silence. But his anger only intensified, and there was nothing for me to do but endure it. Outside, the air still smelled of woodsmoke and charcoal. The campfire still smoldered beyond his screaming. * * * Seven years later, I pop my trunk in Gallant Woods, my favorite of Delaware’s Preservation Parks. I’m not alone—or, not entirely: three rescue dogs that I’ve acquired in my healing, wiry little beasts, take off before I can leash them. But I know their pursuit is short-lived and predictable: an Eastern gray squirrel, who scampers and chitters, climbing a thin tree that flanks the parking lot. The dogs bark once, twice, and return. Their leashes slip on easily. This afternoon is soft yellow light, a cool, gentle breeze coming in from the south. Swallows dip between cattails and the smallest of my dogs—a border collie, the rescue told me, though she’s a longhaired and cuddly chihuahua—chomps aimlessly at a butterfly. She’s never caught one in her five years, but that doesn’t keep her from trying, jumping into the air, all four paws extending as if to clasp a gorgeous monarch. I’ve fallen in love with this state and its parks. What I like most are these cool, yellow woods. The green embankments that buffer the water. The birds and the air and the seasons, the abundance of goldenrod and butterweed. All summer, I packed picnics and paddled in my kayak to an island buffered by Hogback Preserve. I pitched a hammock for hours between twisting trees and watched as the dogs fished from their place underneath me. I had the feeling, those days, that Ohio was heaven, and it’s been good for me, more than good: to find heaven in a place, and not a person. It’s important that I do this work alone, without the companionship of a friend or neighbor. I am trying to reclaim the wilderness and, with it, my sense of safety. As a girl, this trust and sense of safety came naturally—I was a child who made a home in the winding creek beds and empty woods and wild weeds that surrounded 28
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I had been afraid to camp in national parks alone, but now I was a woman in an isolated desert with a man consumed by rage. I didn’t know how to de-escalate; I didn’t know what to do with my body.
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our Pennsylvania house. I moved confidently through rivers, plucked crayfish from beneath wet rocks. I felt most free— felt the safest—when I was alone in wilderness, and then that sense of freedom—that sense of safety—was very abruptly, at 27, taken from me. For the past three years, I’ve been writing a book about a woman I met and befriended quickly: Joy “Mothertrucker” Wiebe, a 50-year-old Alaskan who made her living driving big rigs on the James W. Dalton Highway, known as the loneliest and deadliest road in America. We spent April of 2018 tracing 414 miles through some of the nation’s most desolate and breathtakingly beautiful Arctic landscapes—slick summits and gorgeous valleys and tundra torn beneath Arctic grass to reveal neon blue permafrost. When she dropped me off at the Fairbanks, Alaska, airport for my return flight home to Columbus, she promised we’d do the trip again soon. But a few months later, in August, her tanker overturned on a shallow stretch of sunken shoulder, and Joy died instantly. My book was meant to be a profile of a daring woman, but it also became an exploration of female strength and America’s quiet epidemic of intimate partner violence. Because while Joy chose her career for the opportunities the work presented to be a woman alone in wilderness, she also chose it for the financial freedom it provided should she need to leave her abusive husband. To me, the truth of her life is summed up easily: She died on the deadliest road in America because it sometimes felt safer than her own home. Joy “Mothertrucker” conquered an icy terrain two to three times weekly, but she also spent most of her life trying to conquer and overcome male violence. My life’s work now is in her name, and it’s largely to acquire the sort of stillness our time together taught me to love. To overcome
a need that caused me to invite danger into my adventure rather than run from it. To remember how to trust my instincts before one bad night in an American desert turns into two turns into three more years I spent, terrified. To trust, also, the eastern cottontail. The American goldfinch. I trust—wholeheartedly—the whitetail deer. Each time I see one—there are several that reside in Char-Mar Preserve in Galena—I expect my dogs to pull, to bark, but they stand beside me in reverential silence. They’ve come to appreciate these creatures, too, and understand what I do about intimacy: If we like something, we shouldn’t meet it with violence. For so long, I too bought the narrative that it was the outside world that was intent on hurting women. That the wilderness and our state and national parks were not safe for me to explore as a woman alone. “Be careful,” everyone still tells me when I set out. “Drop me a pin,” my friends say, or my mother. But the biggest threat to our collective bodies comes almost always from the people we love, the people we date or dream of marrying. It’s the man who stood beside me in a Colorado parking lot, filling an Igloo cooler with ice to preserve our marshmallows, our chocolate bars. It’s the man who pitched the tent, and then pitched a fit and raged at me. I’ve healed myself, hiking Ohio. Every step forward is a step more committed and closer to health. So I walk the rock-lined path. I dress the dogs in their argyle sweaters. I pack us up on the first snowy morning of the year, and you wouldn’t believe how special it is—to make the first imprint on a snow-covered trail. The dogs race forward and look back to me. I think we’re all wise to look back, occasionally. But one step forward, all of us. And to be able to take it means so much. ◆
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10/14/21 4:26 PM
W E N E TH R E G R E B A G LON THE ICONIC BRAND IS BACK— AND IT’S NOT YOUR GRANDMOTHER’S BASKET MAKER ANYMORE.
BY DAVE GHOSE
The savior of Longaberger is a New Yorker to the core. Bob D’Loren—East Coast fashion insider, Isaac Mizrahi collaborator, Long Island native—stands on a small stage on the grounds of the Franklin Park Conservatory. Even though he’s an outsider, D’Loren knows how to play to a Columbus audience. He starts with a dig at Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh, then shifts to an athletic figure much more popular in Central Ohio. On a video screen behind him, D’Loren shows a clip of Columbus’ favorite ex-Buckeye, Archie Griffin, enthusiastically jumping up from the artificial turf after a swarm of defenders tackled him. Just like in football, D’Loren says, a business must bounce back from brutal hits—and that’s what Longaberger has done. “Guys, we’re up,” he says. On this evening in late July, about 200 Longaberger loyalists gather at the conservatory to participate in what D’Loren and his New York-based team have dubbed “Longaberger Homecoming.” The crowd is minuscule compared to Longaberger’s heyday, when more than 10,000 folks would squeeze into Nationwide Arena for the Longaberger Bee, the company’s annual sales conference. But digital technology—a key part of Longaberger’s recovery plan—extends the reach on this night. Another 2,000 people watch a livestream online.
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PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: BETSY BECKER; PHOTOS: TIM JOHNSON (BASKET BUILDING); ROB HARDIN (WINE); COURTESY LONGABERGER (PRODUCTS); DOEH/GETTY IMAGES (PHONE)
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The event is a coming-out party of sorts for the new Longaberger. Since bringing the brand back to life in 2019, D’Loren’s publicly traded company, Xcel Brands, has refashioned it as a digitally savvy “social commerce retailer” with a focus on home goods and artisanal, handcrafted products. While baskets remain the stars of the show, Xcel also has set up tables and displays at the Homecoming to showcase furniture, spices, mustard, coffee, cutting boards, lotion, jewelry and more. The modernization effort doesn’t stop with products, either. D’Loren and his team have scrapped home parties (the traditional means for selling Longaberger goods), simplified how it organizes its army of independent sales consultants (or “stylists,” as they’re called now) and gained a foothold in the nascent field of livestreaming, predicted to be a huge retail growth area in the coming years. “We will reach people on every social platform, every screen, wherever they are,” D’Loren says. “That’s the mission.” It’s a tricky balancing act. Longaberger needs to attract younger customers while also maintaining its core of older supporters. It needs to honor its heritage—the Homecoming event celebrates the 125th anniversary of the Longaberger family’s basket-making tradition in Ohio—while also staying ahead of digital disruptions and fearsome competitors such as Amazon, Walmart and Wayfair. What’s more, the shaky track record of previous would-be Longaberger revivalists makes it easy to doubt this latest comeback plan. Going back nearly two decades, many Longaberger leaders talked about restoring the brand to the glory it enjoyed under its founder, Dave Longaberger, who died in 1999. None succeeded. But D’Loren and his team do have some advantages those predecessors lacked. For one, he’s got the backing of Tami and Rachel Longaberger, the founder’s two daughters, giving him credibility with the brand’s longtime fans. And D’Loren benefits from a clean slate. Chapter 7 bankruptcy wiped out the vestiges of the old company, allowing D’Loren and his team to establish a brand-new business more open to creativity and experimentation. As D’Loren wraps up his Homecoming speech, the lean and lanky former college swimmer shares one more bit of wisdom from the world of sports, courtesy of a billboard he came across on 10th Avenue in midtown Manhattan about a decade ago. In a moment of doubt during the early days of Xcel Brands, a tagline from a Bud Light ad about the superstitions of sports fans inspired him to keep going: “It’s only weird if it doesn’t work.” The crowd laughs. A city slicker like D’Loren may not have a lot in common with a rural Ohio product like Dave Longaberger and his folksy following. But weird has always been a part of the DNA of a business that was once housed in a seven-story building shaped like a giant picnic basket. Why not bet big again on offbeat ideas?
A Jim Klein considers himself a Longaberger historian. Back in 2016, the New Albany resident, a former Longaberger president, founded a Facebook group devoted to pre32
serving the legacy of the company. At the time, Longaberger was owned by JRJR Networks, a Dallas-based holding company of several direct-selling brands. JRJR had upset many Longaberger devotees by vacating its famed Big Basket office building in Newark and cutting ties with Tami and Rachel Longaberger, both of whom were suing JRJR. Though Klein spent less than two years with Longaberger, he came away with a deep appreciation for its story, and he hoped his new online group could become a vehicle for protecting its values and traditions during a tumultuous time.
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PHOTOS: ROB HARDIN
Above and left, new products at the Longaberger Homecoming event at the Franklin Park Conservatory; right, Bob D’Loren
Klein’s Facebook flock grew to nearly 5,000, but the thriving community wasn’t able to reverse Longaberger’s decline. In June 2018, JRJR filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in its home state of Texas. Four months later, a judge converted the reorganization to a Chapter 7 liquidation, killing off any hope that the company could survive. Around this time, D’Loren got a phone call about the bankruptcy. Best known for his roster of high profile fashion brands like Halston, Judith Ripka and Isaac Mizrahi, D’Loren wasn’t an obvious buyer for a down-home brand like Longaberger. But D’Loren also has a reputation as a turnaround specialist; he helped the charismatic Mizrahi reinvent himself as one of QVC’s top pitchmen. And D’Loren has a history of bankruptcy bargain-hunting. Three years earlier, his company acquired C. Wonder—the preppy retailer founded by J. Christopher Burch, the ex-husband of designer Tory Burch—after it filed for Chapter 11 reorganization. Plus, D’Loren had a personal connection to Longaberger. Starting in 2006, he served on Longaberger’s board of directors for two years. He knew both the company and its founding family well, and he admired what the brand represented: authenticity, loyalty and hand-crafted excellence. “It’s an icon, and icons don’t go away,” he says.
The opportunity intrigued D’Loren, but he felt he needed to make a phone call before he began exploring it more. He called Tami Longaberger, who’d moved to Washington, D.C., to work for a venture capital firm focused on national security, and asked for her support. “This just feels like the right thing to do,” he told her. She felt the same way, as did her sister, Rachel. “Nothing could have made us happier than to get that phone call from Bob,” Tami says. On Nov. 12, 2019, Xcel and a partner, Hilco Global, a financial services company based in the Chicago suburb of Northbrook, acquired Longaberger’s intellectual property for $750,000, according to SEC filings. A day after the acquisition, Rachel Longaberger appeared on QVC to reintroduce the brand, now managed by Xcel. A couple of hours before the Homecoming event in July, D’Loren and the Longaberger sisters sit in a room at the conservatory, talking about their partnership. Tami says she serves as an adviser, working with Xcel leaders such as Scott Halversen, Longaberger’s head of sales, and Joe Falco, Xcel’s president and chief creative officer. “I’m more behind the scenes than I was in the past, and that suits me fine,” Tami says. The same can’t be said for her younger sister, Rachel, who’s become the face of the new Longaberger, NOVEMBER 2021 COLUMBUS MONTHLY
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continuing to represent the company on QVC and hosting monthly livestreams on the Longaberger website since February 2021. (D’Loren says both sisters have an opportunity to earn equity in his company if they successfully help Longaberger grow.) “I don’t know what my title is,” Rachel says with a laugh. “You’re a star,” D’Loren answers. The trio sit next to a spread of new Longaberger products— a 2021 Homecoming gathering basket ($178.20), leatherbanded watches ($280), a sterling silver basketweave triple band ring ($180) and California chardonnay and merlot ($56.40 for both bottles). Later in the evening, Rachel will highlight these items during her special Homecoming livestream, her first before an in-person audience. As Longaberger was reborn under D’Loren, Klein’s Facebook group also changed. He began to use it to share the story of the new Longaberger in addition to celebrating the company’s past. Despite their different backgrounds, D’Loren and Dave Longaberger share similar visions, says Klein, who got to know the Xcel CEO in 2006 when they both were involved with Longaberger. According to its website, Xcel aims “to reimagine shopping, entertainment and social as one.” Klein says that’s eerily similar to Dave Longaberger’s vision to “educate and entertain in a social environment in the home,” only missing the digital piece, though the internet was barely a thing when Dave Longaberger was alive.
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“Xcel Brands is the right company for Longaberger,” Klein says. “They have the values and principles that Dave espoused with a futuristic vision for the company.”
A It’s late September, but Longaberger is already getting ready for Christmas. In a workshop in Dresden, Ohio, a team of weavers—most with decades of experience—hammers, bends, shapes and twists narrow strips of maple into Longaberger’s latest line of baskets: a series of collectibles inspired by the paintings of Norman Rockwell. A few days earlier, Rachel Longaberger introduced the red-and-white, holiday-themed line during her monthly livestream from her Bexley home. Even though many of these weavers learned their trade while working for Longaberger, the company’s not their employer anymore (at least not directly). Since Xcel brought back the brand in 2019, it has outsourced basket manufacturing to a small firm called Dresden & Co., founded by local businessman Jim Lepi. When Longaberger went into bankruptcy in 2019 and ceased operations in Dresden, Lepi joined with several company veterans to form the new basket manufacturer. During Longaberger’s glory days, busloads of tourists would arrive daily in Dresden, Dave Longaberger’s hometown, the manufacturing base for his eponymous business and the birthplace of his improbable entrepreneurial story. Lepi and his partners wanted to prevent this heritage from disappear-
PHOTO: ROB HARDIN
Rachel Longaberger, left, Bob D’Loren and Tami Longaberger at the Homecoming event
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PHOTOS: TIM JOHNSON
PHOTO: ROB HARDIN
ing, as well as preserve jobs in Dresden, which has struggled during Longaberger’s decline. “We just couldn’t accept that this was the end,” Lepi says. After Xcel bought Longaberger’s intellectual property, D’Loren hired Dresden & Co. to make its baskets. The relationship has benefited both groups, say Lepi and Dresden & Co. creative director Michael Kennedy, a former Longaberger executive. Even though both companies are direct sellers, their business models are much different—Dresden & Co. is a more traditional operation—and Lepi says his company probably wouldn’t have survived the pandemic without Longaberger. “They’re really good, supportive people,” Kennedy says. “The only struggle is keeping up. They’re growing so fast.” In fact, Longaberger has forged relationships with several other small artisans around the country (and even the world). Longaberger lists these partners as “Our Friends” on its website. In early October, there were 15, including Michigan’s Frankenmuth Woolen Mill (humanely treated sheep’s wool bedding), Pennsylvania’s Fifth & Cherry (oneof-a-kind cutting boards), Key West’s Dockside Market (desserts with a tropical flair), New York’s Purifoy (organic skin care) and Mozambique’s Gorongosa Coffee (profits support Gorongosa National Park). These partnerships have helped Longaberger expand beyond its core business of baskets and country décor. “I just can’t say enough about the breadth of the product line that has been offered,” says Paula Brose, a stylist from Westerville. But the 2,000-plus goods listed on the website—from necklaces to salsa—might just be the start. D’Loren wants Longaberger to become “the largest marketplace for artisans in the U.S.” While Longaberger has expanded its product line, it’s simplified its sales organization. Direct sellers are notorious for complicated sales hierarchies and payment plans, sometimes 10 levels deep, with compensation for sales consultants varying greatly based on a person’s position within that hierarchy. These multilevel marketing companies—another name for direct sellers—aren’t illegal pyramid schemes, but they sometimes can run afoul of the law when they focus more on bringing in new recruits (and their money) than on making sales. Though Longaberger remains a direct seller—a company that relies on independent salespeople to push its products— its new, simplified, two-tier organization makes it stand out. Stylists pay $49 to join the business, then earn 20 percent of every sale they refer to the company, as well as receiving a 20 percent discount on their own Longaberger purchases. If others join their team, the stylists earn 5 percent from new recruits’ sales. And that’s it. No other levels and stipulations. “It’s easy for people to understand and easy to share with people,” says Barb Arnold, a stylist in Maine. What’s more, Longaberger has gone all-in on digital sales, eliminating home parties altogether (not just as a pandemic pivot). Instead, stylists operate their businesses from their laptops, tablets and smartphones, relying on email, social media and personal websites to sell products, meet new people, expand their teams and stay in touch with loyal
Top, Chris Ripple works on a pumpkin basket; bottom, a statue and monument dedicated to Dave Longaberger in Dresden, Ohio
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customers. The simpler compensation plan can mean less money for those who once oversaw massive networks, but the digital focus flattens the world, which Arnold says makes it easier to build teams. Stylists now draw from the entire country—and even the world. Arnold attracted a team member in Egypt (an American citizen who created a Longaberger boutique for friends in the U.S.). A 30-year veteran of Longaberger, Arnold made good money working for the company in the old days as she assembled a 2,000-person team, enough to allow her to quit her job as an elementary school principal and concentrate on Longaberger full time. But she welcomes these changes to the sales structure—and she thinks they provide an even greater opportunity. “I think the people coming in at the very beginning are going to surpass anything that happened with the old Longaberger,” says Arnold, who now oversees a 250-person team. Longaberger leaders hope that’s true. In February, Xcel hired Halversen, a veteran direct sales executive, to help grow its sales team. He aims to add about 3,000 to 5,000 stylists to the business’ current roster of 2,000 by the end of the year, The Columbus Dispatch reported in July. Meanwhile, Xcel hopes to lift Longaberger sales from $2.5 million in 2020 to $10 million this year, according to The Dispatch, a target that will be unattainable without a more robust sales force. In an early October emailed statement, Halversen reported that he’s making progress on his goals. He said sales have more than tripled this year during the period from April through September, and he expects even better results in the last quarter of 2021. He also said the stylist base grew by 144 percent during that time. But probably the biggest change to come to Longaberger occurred in February, when Xcel launched its Longaberger Live platform. The new livestreaming technology puts the brand ahead of many of its direct-selling and retail peers, most of whom have made few inroads into the new interactive format. It’s a huge opportunity for Longaberger, with potentially billions of dollars up for grabs if the U.S. follows a similar pattern to China. In 2017, livestreaming was a $3 billion business in China, according to Coresight Research. Now, it’s $305 billion, representing 20 percent of China’s e-commerce. Experts predict a U.S. surge in the next couple of years. Coresight forecasts the country’s livestreaming market to jump from $11 billion today to $25 billion in 2023. “Whether you believe that number is right doesn’t really matter,” says Alison Chaltas, global shopper and retail president for Ipsos, the market research firm. “Even if it’s half wrong, it’s still a big business.” D’Loren is a true believer. As the category grows, he says Longaberger’s livestreams will increase from monthly to 36
PHOTOS: TOP, COURTESY XCEL BRANDS; BOTTOM, TIM JOHNSON
Left from top, new Longaberger products and pumpkin baskets; right page, a screenshot from the Aug. 8 Longaberger Live event, featuring Rachel Longaberger and stylist Barb Arnold
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weekly to once per hour. Rachel Longaberger will always be the main livestreaming star, but D’Loren envisions her sharing the spotlight with Longaberger’s artisan partners as that marketplace expands. He also expects Xcel’s other brands to follow the livestreaming path blazed by Longaberger. “This is the great connector,” he says. “This is the future of social commerce.”
A
SCREENSHOT: LONGABERGER
PHOTOS: TOP, COURTESY XCEL BRANDS; BOTTOM, TIM JOHNSON
“Hello and welcome to Longaberger Live!” Rachel Longaberger opens her Aug. 8 livestream with that friendly greeting, and the enthusiasm doesn’t wane for the next 40 minutes. Viewers seem to like what they see. In the first seconds of the show, the screen fills with a fluttering stream of virtual white hearts. “So many hearts,” Rachel says from her home in Bexley. “I see all your hearts. Thank you so much. I love you, too.” She blows a kiss to the camera. For those who’ve never seen a retail livestream, it’s sort of like a QVC or HSN show but with even more viewer interaction. In the Longaberger Live platform, the screen is split into three parts: Rachel in the middle, scrolling viewer comments on the left and product info on the right. As the host, Rachel juggles many duties. On this evening, she offers tech tips, models a necklace and earrings, samples a strawberry Bundt cake, explains special offers and discounts, and generally keeps the mood light and breezy. “I think I’m going to start with a basket,” she says, winking at the camera. “What do you think?” The August show features a fundraising component, too. A portion of all sales go to Horizon of Hope, a longtime Longaberger initiative that supports cancer research.
Stylist Arnold, a breast cancer survivor, is Rachel’s guest. Arnold appears via a feed from her home in Maine. Rachel asks Arnold what Horizon of Hope means to her. “I really love how Longaberger has had a long tradition of giving back, and I actually think your dad was the inspiration behind it,” Arnold says. “He just lived that. He gave back to his family, his community, to others. I just think that’s part of our culture.” The Longaberger family is a recurring theme of the program. While displaying a pie basket, Rachel reminisces about taking pies with her grandmother to church socials. While discussing peony-scented candles, she recalls her youth in Dresden, when she’d gather flowers with her sister, Tami, for the village’s annual Memorial Day parade. With the program beginning to wind down, Rachel asks Arnold to name her favorite item. Arnold mentions the pie basket and a pie plate, then she gets distracted by a little icon of bed sheets that appears on Rachel’s window. Arnold admits she’s getting antsy. “I’m ready to end so I can go start shopping,” she says. Rachel laughs. “We’re fans, too,” she tells the virtual audience. “We love it as much as you do.” Turns out Arnold wasn’t the only eager buyer. Four days later, D’Loren mentions the livestream during Xcel’s quarterly earnings call. He describes the show as the most successful to date, generating more than $100,000, or $3,000 per minute. Based on growth trends, he predicts Longaberger livestreams can generate about $1 million, or $15,000 per minute, by the end of 2022. Fluttering hearts are nice, but dollars make Wall Street swoon. ◆ NOVEMBER 2021 COLUMBUS MONTHLY
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Almost Famous The triumphs and tragedies of Dawn Powell, Central Ohio’s forgotten literary genius By Peter Tonguette
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ILLUSTRATION: BETSY BECKER
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long ago, radio airwaves were filled with wits and wags. In 1939, several great American writers turned up on a short-lived radio game show called Author! Author! The conceit was simple: Ordinary listeners submitted “endings” to stories; the beginnings and middles were furnished by the writer panelists in a presumably entertaining fashion. During one episode broadcast that year on the New York station WOR, humorist S.J. Perelman, drama critic John Chapman and writer Heywood Broun were joined by two Ohioans: writer and cartoonist James Thurber and novelist and playwright Dawn Powell. Thurber was already famous; Powell never would be. Perelman, who emcees the affair, good-naturedly joshes Powell about wearing the “famous Powell rubies at her throat.” Perelman asks: “Isn’t there some famous legend attached to those gems, Miss Powell?” Powell replies: “The only thing attached to them right now, Mr. Perelman, is a chattel mortgage put there by the Greenwich Savings Bank.” Ba-dum-bum. It was one of the sad facts of Powell’s life that she often was the least well known in any company. “Dawn Powell … probably was very eager to get on national radio like that, and she’s very funny,” says New York writer Kevin Fitzpatrick, whose website on the Algonquin Round Table posted the long-lost broadcast after it was sent in by a collector. The imbalance persists even in her home state. Decades after their deaths, Thurber has a house named after him in Columbus, also the site of a prominent literary center and museum; Powell has a lonely historical marker in her hometown of Mount Gilead, where she was born in 1896. The disparity is made worse because Powell’s artistic achievements may be just as significant as Thurber’s—or almost any other American writer’s. DURING HER LIFETIME, Powell was admired but not embraced. She was a prolific writer, producing plays, articles, book reviews, voluminous diary entries and, above all, more than a dozen ferociously tough-minded, largely comic novels. Some, 40
such as “Dance Night” (1930) and “My Home Is Far Away” (1944), were empathetic but unsparing tales of the lonesome inhabitants of the state of her birth; others, the most well-known ones, including “Angels on Toast” (1940) and “A Time to Be Born” (1942), were satirical, sarcastic, sour sendups of the movers, shakers and strivers in her adopted hometown of New York City. A single novel, 1954’s “The Wicked Pavilion,” snuck onto The New York Times’ bestseller list. By then, however, Powell had endured her share of disappointments and tragedies—and after her 1965 death, she was the victim of persistent neglect. An inattentive literary executor did not help matters, but what really plagued Powell was the unsentimental astringency of her own writing. “Dawn’s work is incredibly lonely,” says New Yorker writer Rachel Syme. “The novels are sharp and bitter and acrid, and the diaries are angsty and often feel like the work of a very isolated person.”
More than two decades after Powell was buried in an unmarked mass grave on New York’s Hart Island, her friend Gore Vidal reintroduced her to the public in a 1987 New York Review of Books essay. He was Powell’s first posthumous champion, but he wasn’t the last. In the ensuing years, a host of celebrities, authors and critics have fallen for Powell. Her admirers include the likes of writer Fran Lebowitz, actress Anjelica Huston and Gilmore Girls showrunner Amy Sherman-Palladino, who namechecked Powell in a 2002 episode of the TV series. (“There are some who actually claim that it was Powell who made the jokes that Dorothy Parker got credit for,” aspiring writer Rory Gilmore said.) Earlier this year, Syme’s New Yorker colleague, film critic Richard Brody, became the latest media figure to celebrate Powell, declaring her nine novels written from 1929 to 1948 (including three about Ohio) “one of the most extraordinary outpourings of sustained literary artistry that the United States can boast.”
PHOTOS: TOP, B.B ADLER, DAWN POWELL PAPERS, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY RARE BOOK & MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY; RIGHT, DAWN POWELL PAPERS
Once,
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BOOK COVERS: COURTESY STEERFORTH PRESS
PHOTOS: TOP, B.B ADLER, DAWN POWELL PAPERS, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY RARE BOOK & MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY; RIGHT, DAWN POWELL PAPERS
Left page, a publicity photo of Dawn Powell from the 1940s; this page, left, Powell and husband, Joseph R. Gousha, at Tavern on the Green in Central Park in the mid-1950s; below, several of Powell’s reissued books
Indeed, when readers discover her work, Powell can have an intoxicating effect. WOSU radio host Christopher Purdy has been a Powell devotee since the early 1990s. “The first one I read was ‘A Time to Be Born,’” Purdy says. “I was immediately riveted by the bite of the prose. It was a little like Mozart, in that it sounded like it was written yesterday and not 70 years ago.” Even among Powell’s famous fans, though, none has been more dedicated, persistent or zealous than Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Tim Page, who, after discovering Powell’s work by happenstance in 1991, embarked on a one-man effort to get her read again. Later, in rapid succession, Page assembled a hardcover selection of Powell’s work, 1994’s “Dawn Powell at Her Best”; edited editions of her extraordinary diaries and letters; and wrote an exemplary biography, 1998’s “Dawn Powell: A Biography.” “It was as though a spell came over me,” Page says now. Yet for all this recent love, the Powell revival has been fitful. “She’s had these waves of people getting interested in her,” Syme says. “She is everyone’s favorite discovery, and they tell everyone about it, but it’s not quite ever really caught on.” In 2012, when Page was seeking to sell Powell’s actual diaries to a library or col-
lector who would make them publicly available, the initial lack of interest was so striking that Syme’s New Yorker piece about the efforts bore this headline: “Dawn Powell’s Masterful Gossip: Why Won’t It Sell?” (Columbia University, to which Page had been giving Powell material all along, finally agreed to purchase the diaries.) Even in her hometown of Mount Gilead, located about 40 miles north of Columbus, Powell is largely forgotten. When asked about local interest in Powell’s life and work, former Mount Gilead Public Library director Mark Kirk says that he didn’t see too much evidence of it during his time there. “I hate to say it,” says Kirk, who ran the library from 2006 to 2020 and is now the director of the Galion Public Library. “We always tried to keep her books in the library, just in case somebody was interested. … Dawn Powell’s been gone for 60 years, which shouldn’t have an effect, but it does.” The situation isn’t much different in Columbus. Debra Boggs has spent 35 years working in independent bookstores in Central Ohio, including her current post as the store manager and book buyer at Gramercy Books in Bexley. Yet, in all that time—a time when, thanks to Page’s persistent interventions, Powell’s novels went from being in large measure out of print
to being reissued in attractive paperbacks— Boggs says Powell’s name never came up. “I don’t remember anybody ever asking me about her, or asking for a book about her,” Boggs says. It’s a disappointing final chapter in a life filled with them. “EVEN THOUGH SHE LIVED in New York for 45 years,” Purdy says, “she never left Ohio, I don’t think.” As a girl in Mount Gilead, Powell is known to have lived at two addresses: 53 W. North St., her family’s residence when she was NOVEMBER 2021 COLUMBUS MONTHLY
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POWELL’S EASTWARD TRAJECTORY remained fixed. After leaving Lake Erie College, she headed first to Connecticut, spending a summer on a farm with other artistic types, before landing in the place that would always tug at her emotions: New York City. In 1920, she married Joseph R. Gousha, who later became an advertising executive, and, the following year, she gave birth to their son, Joseph Jr., called “Jojo.” Due to his unpredictable temperament, periodic outbursts and generally “off” behavior, Jojo was said to have had a variety of mental problems, receiving incorrect diagnoses of schizophrenia and cerebral palsy. “Now we would characterize him as autistic,” Page says.
While contending with Jojo’s challenges—as well as fault lines in her marriage that would never be fully resolved—Powell managed to cobble together a busy writing career. Setting up housekeeping in Greenwich Village, the destination for anyone with a bohemian bent, she seemed to thrive on bustle. Powell accepted workaday assignments, such as book reviews for the New York Post, while writing her novels, which, through the 1920s and much of the ’30s, drew explicitly on her Ohio roots. After “Whither” (1925), her debut, came “She Walks in Beauty” (1928), “Dance Night,” “Come to Sorrento” (1932) and “The Story of a Country Boy” (1934). None were large critical
PHOTO: TIM JOHNSON
born, and 115 Cherry St. Like her fellow Midwesterner Ray Bradbury, who was famous for saying that he recalled his own birth, Powell seems to have possessed something like total recall. “Within the family, her memory was renowned; she even claimed to remember being taken to the Bethel farmhouse as an infant,” Page writes in “Dawn Powell: A Biography,” referring to a farmhouse belonging to her mother’s family. “She was reading before she was 5; by the age of 9, she had made her way through the complete works of Alexandre Dumas.” Yet—conforming to her future friend Edmund Wilson’s argument, in his classic book “The Wound and the Bow,” that great personal trauma can be a springboard for writers—Powell wouldn’t have had much to write about had her life not been torn asunder. She was 6 when she lost her mother (the talk was that she died following a botched abortion), and, in a different sort of way, she lost her father, Roy, who not only went out on the road but returned with a new wife, the hateful Sabra. “Her stepmother was really a monster,” says Page, who, in his biography, recounts beatings doled out to Dawn and her sisters as well as a gruesome episode involving a premature child born to Sabra and Roy who died and, having been deemed by Sabra to have been buried in inappropriate attire, was exhumed, dressed again and buried a second time. Page says Powell left out of her autobiographical book “My Home is Far Away” the most horrible Sabra stories because she thought no one would believe them. At 13, when her family relocated to Northeast Ohio’s North Olmsted—a town, Page notes, that lacked a high school—Powell moved in with an aunt in Shelby, where Powell could receive an education. Powell then enrolled at Lake Erie College for Women (today the co-educational Lake Erie College) in Painesville. There, Powell engaged in a torrent of creative activity. She played Puck in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” She was one of the creators of a homemade, handwritten newspaper, The Sheet, and, more officially, she edited the Lake Erie Record. She graduated—“without honors,” Page writes, presumably due to her pursuits outside of the classroom—in 1918. “In some ways,” says Adam Stier, an associate professor of English at the school, “it’s like Lake Erie provided a launching point into the rest of her life.” COLUMBUS MONTHLY NOVEMBER 2021
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“
If anyone dares to do a [ film adaptation] without me, they’ll have hell to pay.
”
Anjelica Huston
PHOTOS: TOP, TIM JOHNSON; BOTTOM, COURTESY LAKE ERIE COLLEGE
PHOTO: TIM JOHNSON
Clockwise from left page, the Dawn Powell historical marker in Mount Gilead; one of the homes Powell lived in as a girl in Mount Gilead; Powell as Puck in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at Lake Erie College
or commercial successes, though they were well-regarded enough to draw interest from Hollywood, where Powell toiled unproductively (though not unprofitably—it was a rare instance in which she made real money from her writing). “The Story of a Country Boy” was made into a movie, as was Powell’s play “Walking Down Broadway.” “They’re both preposterous films,” Page says. Powell’s Ohio novels have their partisans. One fan is WOSU book critic Kassie Rose, who, in 2005, featured Powell as part of a yearlong series of shows on Ohio authors. “She doesn’t romanticize the Ohio smalltown life,” Rose says. “She also doesn’t make it seem bleak and suffocating like Sherwood Anderson.” Starting with “Turn, Magic Wheel” (1936), though, Powell enlarged her can-
vas to include the smart set, the jet set and those striving to join either. By the time she published “A Time to Be Born”—her comic masterpiece centered on heroine Amanda Keeler, a fierce caricature of playwright (and spouse of publisher Henry Luce) Clare Boothe Luce—Powell was known, if she was known for anything at all, not as a regionalist but as a satirist of contemporary manners and mores. “She was a completely different culture from us,” says her great-niece Vicki Johnson, a 72-year-old Massillon resident and the daughter of Carol Warstler, whose mother was Dawn’s younger sister, Phyllis. “She wined and dined with the Algonquin [Round Table]—she just hung out with those artists.” Officially, Powell returned to the literary terrain of Ohio just once. She published her
final Ohio novel, her best, “My Home Is Far Away,” two years after “A Time to Be Born.” But even when taking New York City as her subject, she remained, at heart, an Ohioan gone East. “I think she felt like an outsider in almost every scene that she was part of, even the literary world,” Syme says. “Her diaries are just constant lists of people who she feels like might not be her real friends, might not actually like her as much as they say they do.” Even during her peak years, Powell’s life had a snake-bitten quality. In 1929, she began suffering from what she supposed was a heart condition but which was later revealed to be, ominously, a tumor known as a teratoma. Because this type of tumor can consist of hair and even teeth, the condition was misunderstood by Powell. “She had this idea that it was a failed twin,” Page says. “Apparently, that was a fairly common idea back then, and no one believes it anymore.” Though they stuck out their marriage, Dawn and Joseph led independent lives. Alcohol use did not help. Then there was Jojo, who, his love for his mother notwithstanding, seems to have seriously injured her in an incident vaguely but dramatically alluded to in Powell’s diaries from 1947. Powell wrote then: “Stunned and frightened, Dos”—that’s John Dos Passos—“got me doctor, neurologist. Head no better. As if all forces, particularly treacherously loyal ones, were bent on keeping me from finishing book already at printer’s. Too battered to raise willpower yet but hope to.” “He beat her pretty much within an inch of her life,” Page says of the incident with Jojo. “Dawn was in the hospital for a while. I still don’t know the exact things that happened, or what triggered it, and I guess nobody will ever know now.” continued on Page 100
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BY ANDREW KING
Field of Schemes Long before the rest of the world heard about Bishop Sycamore, Ben Ferree was speaking out about the controversial school. Why was he ignored?
The term “whistleblower” carries with it a certain weight. It evokes thoughts of Edward Snowden, Mark Felt and Daniel Ellsberg—insiders who took great risks to leak important information to the public. These people are rarely rewarded or revered for their courage and are often subject to ridicule, hatred and, in some cases, legal and societal repercussions. Ben Ferree says he doesn’t quite fit that definition, though it’s not entirely off-base, either. Indeed, he’s a skeptic, a truthteller and an unrelenting tipster who got me interested in a story that snowballed into one of the biggest sports scandals in Columbus. But Ferree didn’t uncover wrongdoing that occurred behind closed doors. The things he revealed were in plain sight, easy for people to see—as long as they were willing to open their eyes. You wouldn’t know it to look at his resume or his social media following, but Ferree is a central figure in one of the most intriguing and discussed sports stories of 2021—the rise and fall of Bishop Sycamore. The saga began in 2018, when Ferree learned about a school called Christians of Faith Academy. At the time, Ferree was the assistant director of officiating and sport management at the Ohio High School Athletic Association, the governing body for Ohio’s high school sports. The position was one of the lowest on the organizational totem pole—largely paperwork, routine phone calls and doublechecking. But Ferree managed to carve out a role he found interesting: a jack-of-alltrades investigator. COF Academy was new to Columbus, but soon the high school’s football team began to appear on the schedules of some of Ohio’s most visible programs. Ferree began looking into the school after another OHSAA official struggled to verify its enrollment, a key factor in calculating points earned for eligibility in the association’s playoffs. (A team gets more points for victories over larger schools.) That first conversation led to three years of work, investigation and frustration for Ferree. COF Academy made its way to major programs around Ohio and beyond, leaving behind an impressive legal trail as Roy Johnson, COF coach and self-described “face” of the program, and his business partner Jay Richardson—a WSYX/ABC 6 analyst and former Ohio State and NFL football player—were sued by banks, had vehicles repossessed and outran a number of unpaid debts. No more than about 50 players were ever around at a given time, and the school never had a building or even a functional website. Students reportedly never went to class, and parents began to pull players from the program. COF officials told everyone they were backed by the local chapter of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which later disowned the project entirely.
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Ben Ferree stands near the Stelzer Road site where Bishop Sycamore leaders said they planned to build a school.
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By early 2019, the school folded, but a new one quickly took its place: Bishop Sycamore, which continued to book prime football matchups and avoided public scrutiny, even though its questionable practices didn’t change. On Sunday, Aug. 29, of this year, that anonymity ended. On that day, Bishop Sycamore squared off against Florida’s IMG Academy, the nation’s top high school football program, on ESPN. The game was a travesty, with a profoundly overmatched Bishop Sycamore losing 58-0. Viewers railed on social media about the appalling, nationally televised spectacle. Midway through the second quarter, the score was 30-0 and Sycamore players looked exhausted. (Later, it was revealed that the team had played a game two days earlier.) The Sycamore offensive line struggled to block on nearly every play. Onlookers worried about injuries as Sycamore defenders bounced off IMG ball-carriers. In the first quarter, Sycamore put its offense on the field in a 4th and 15 and had its quarterback punt the ball, only to have it blocked into the endzone for a safety. Since the game, reporters all over the country have written about Bishop Sycamore. Players have spoken up to tell stories 46
of stealing from grocery stores to make up for missed meals. Numerous members of the Bishop Sycamore roster have been shown to be overage. Parents (and even students) have told horror stories of having their credit cards misused for Bishop Sycamore dealings. None of this surprised Ferree, who spent three years sounding the alarm about the program. Along the way, he reached out to reporters, called high school athletic directors and warned coaches, even when he no longer worked for the OHSAA. And until this summer, that work was largely in vain. But now, people are finally listening. The first time I heard about COF Academy was in July 2018, when Ferree introduced the topic in a group chat that included me and two other friends. Our quartet attended Capital University and spent varying amounts of time around one another. But the way we really bonded was through a regular trivia team and a love of sports. With Ferree’s work, his enthusiasm for investigation and the never-ending supply of drama provided by the sports world, he never lacked for group chat material. “Ben’s obsession with minutiae is exhausting, and he’s seemingly most interested in
the details about things that literally no one else in the world cares about,” says Matt Guthrie, another member of the group. “We’ll be done talking or caring about something for days while Ben continues rambling nonsense to us. He’ll start a sentence with, ‘Did you know’ before informing us of the least-fun fact of all time that no one asked for. Ben’s curiosity in things nobody else cares about is his most definable quality.” On that day three years ago, Ferree was frustrated. He had been spending a lot of time at work on an investigation into a new “school” (he always put it in quotation marks) called COF Academy. At that point, Ferree was armed mainly with a list of things that didn’t add up. It was, in his view, “impossible” for a school to appear in Ohio’s capital city with no background, and it was even more ridiculous that it was playing a high school football schedule made almost entirely of powerhouse programs. When Roy Johnson told Ferree the school had 750 students, he was incredulous. How could a school go from nonexistent to the size of Columbus’ Centennial High School overnight? In spite of this, Ferree was still the only one talking about COF. Because he was a part-
PHOTO: COURTESY IMG ACADEMY
IMG Academy linebacker Xavian Sorey makes a tackle against Bishop Sycamore on Oct. 16, 2020.
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PHOTOS: TOP, LORRIE CECIL; BOTTOM, ADAM CAIRNS
PHOTO: COURTESY IMG ACADEMY
time journalist himself and regularly talked with reporters for OHSAA work, he was confident he could find a bigger home for the story. He started with reporters at the biggest news outlets in the state, but he was met with apathy. With nowhere else to turn, he looked to me and the group chat. The story was not immediately met with a significantly better response. “The situation was insane, but not too far outside the stuff we would normally hear in the chat,” says Steve Kall, the fourth member of the group. “It would just pop up every now and then with 100 texts that I missed while I was in one meeting.” At the time, I was a full-time reporter for ThisWeek Community News, a group of weekly papers that covers the suburbs and neighborhoods around the Columbus metro area. (Like Columbus Monthly, ThisWeek is part of the Dispatch media group, now owned by Gannett.) I also worked in sports, covering the Columbus Crew for The Athletic. While ThisWeek employed a collection of high school sports reporters, I was not among them and was not interested in writing about high school sports. The freelance outlets I worked for were national in scope and were not a fit for a niche story about an Ohio football team. But Ferree was out of options and desperate for someone to tell the story. “I gave it to you when everyone else passed,” he told me in September. “I think I remember selling it to you as, ‘There’s meat here. If what I think is true is true, this is a story. This is a news story.’” He didn’t see this as an ESPN story; he saw it as a CNN story. At first, I didn’t see it as much of a story at all. And then, in the same way Ferree had in previous months, I started digging into it. The story I begrudgingly started tracking down became the most extensive coverage of my career. I wrote a variety of investigative stories covering the team, its leaders and their many legal and professional issues in 2018 and 2019. In a business much more interested in an inch-deep, mile-wide approach to news, I was fortunate to have editors who were intrigued enough to let me investigate. The story wasn’t specific to the communities I was assigned to cover, but they let me tackle it anyway. With Ferree’s help, I began to understand COF’s modus operandi, based on his and my research and the many legal cases filed against Johnson and the school. COF opponents benefited from playing the team in a variety of ways, the simplest being that powerhouse teams in Ohio struggle to schedule anyone at all—most teams don’t want to guar-
antee themselves a loss. But the opponents were also promised—usually by Johnson himself—that COF would eventually be a Division I or Division II school. Because qualification for the OHSAA playoffs gives more points for wins over higher-division teams, a victory over a Division I school is valuable. And, as Ferree explained, even if the program never was certified as any division at all, it’s better for a school’s algorithm to beat a non-certified school than to beat a lower division one. All that mattered was that it wasn’t a low-points win. In turn, fledgling COF received stipends from its more established opponents—small potatoes to the large schools but a big deal for COF. (Stipends are a common practice for big programs, Ferree says.)
Above, Roy Johnson in front of the St. Paul AME Church; below, Christians of Faith Academy assistant coach Roy Hall talks to players at a football practice in 2018.
COF Academy eventually crumbled. A combination of Ferree’s hounding and my stories led OHSAA to deny any playoff points to victorious opponents of COF Academy, while the Ohio Department of Education revoked the school’s registration. Still, no larger outlet ever latched onto the story. And so in the aftermath of COF Academy’s failure, Bishop Sycamore rose from its ashes. And this time, no one cared enough to ask questions, not even local news reporters. In 2019, I left ThisWeek to take a job in public relations. “I was always waiting for someone bigger to pick it up, and no one ever did,” Ferree says. Bishop Sycamore leaders—including athletic director Andre Peterson, whose son played for the team—claimed it was founded separately from Johnson and Richardson. They spoke about doing things differently, focusing on school and football while starting fresh without involving the church. At first, Bishop Sycamore played a mostly out-ofstate schedule, but the COVID-19 pandemic made scheduling games a nightmare for Ohio schools, creating an opportunity for the new school. By August 2021, the team reached its peak: the game against IMG. And who was on the sideline, getting face time on ESPN? Roy Johnson, Bishop Sycamore’s coach. “People are saying ‘Bishop Sycamore isn’t a school,’” Johnson says incredulously during a late September interview. “Why is it not a school? ‘Well, because the kids weren’t attending classes at the address you had.’ continued on Page 101
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A Columbus Monthly Suburban Section
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WELCOME TO GAHANNA! LOCATED IN THE SHADOW of John Glenn International Airport and minutes from Downtown Columbus, Gahanna offers the perfect mix of accessible largecity amenities and warm suburban comfort. With its rich heritage (home to one of the first Black country clubs in the nation) and diverse community of 35,000-plus residents, Gahanna prides itself on being welcoming and inviting. Featuring more than 750 acres of parkland with 20-plus miles of trails, strong schools, a thriving business community and a tradition of beloved events, the city offers something for people of all interests and in all stages of life. Just as the Columbus region is experiencing tremendous growth, Gahanna also is enjoying a period of transition, balancing smart economic growth and community needs with a forwardthinking strategy. Our highest priorities are initiatives intended to enhance the quality of life for our current residents and attract our next generation of residents. For those who are on the move, Gahanna’s growing reputation as a hub for the food and beverage industry has added a new vibrancy to our community. New projects that offer modern housing for both young professionals and seniors, and that add medical and manufacturing jobs to the area, are positioning the city as a leader in mixedused opportunities that will diversify and add to our tax base. We are positioned for growth in every sense. Whether growing a career, expanding a business or growing a family, Gahanna is a place where everyone can flourish. We are excited about what lies ahead for Gahanna. By working together, we can be certain that the future is bright for our residents, businesses and schools.
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LIFESTYLES
FACES OF GAHANNA Get to know Gahanna through the eyes of its residents. By Peter Tonguette
AMONG THE APPROXIMATELY 35,000 RESIDENTS who call Gahanna home, some have moved to the scenic community for the excellent and growing school system. Others have been drawn by the quick and easy access to other spots in Central Ohio. Most take advantage of its ample amenities, including retail shops, restaurants and parks and recreation. Some have lived in Gahanna their whole lives and have no plans on leaving. Columbus Monthly spoke with several Gahanna residents about what led them to one of Columbus’ most vibrant suburbs and what keeps them there.
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Chasity Overholt and Kate Sayre After meeting at Ohio University, Gahanna couple Chasity Overholt and Kate Sayre began their lives in Columbus in the Clintonville area. Looking to make a move, the couple chose Gahanna in part because it was centrally located between their two jobs. “I wasn’t super-excited to move to the suburbs when we first came here,” says Sayre, 34, who works in financial services. A Pittsburgh native who moved to Columbus after college, she wasn’t sure about leaving urban life behind. Yet after renting an apartment in Gahanna for two years, Overholt and Sayre decided to take the plunge into home ownership—and stay in their new favorite suburb. “Gahanna really fit,” Sayre says. When Overholt, 33, saw the house they ultimately purchased, she says, “I was like, ‘This is it.’ I just had this picture of what I wanted our house to look like, and it worked out perfectly.” By then, the couple had already gained an appreciation for Gahanna’s unique mix of small-town vibes and hip places to go and things to do. “Creekside is really nice,” says Overholt, a Granville native who is employed by a nonprofit organization that works with children with autism. “There are lots of fun breweries that are popping up all over the Gahanna/ New Albany area.” “When we bought our house, we moved into a neighborhood [where] our neighbors are like our family,” Sayre says. “We spend every weekend with our neighbors, and we love our neighborhood and our community. Everybody is so supportive and so friendly.” And, when they get the itch to do some exploring around other parts of Central Ohio, so many destinations are a hop, skip and jump—or, at least, an Uber ride—away. “[Gahanna] has kind of a smalltown feel while being so close to a bigger city that you can live in the best of both worlds,” Sayre says. “I absolutely love living here.”
PHOTO: TIM JOHNSON
Kate Sayre and Chasity Overholt with their dog, Monte
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Don Earl
PHOTOS: COURTESY CITY OF GAHANNA
Tim Fleischer For Gahanna resident Tim Fleischer, the ideal place to live should be a mixture of urban and rural. The rural part is easy to understand: Fleischer, 36, is the city horticulturalist for Gahanna Parks & Recreation and, even during his time away from the job, he is drawn by the abundance of parkland and trails, many abutting Big Walnut Creek. “That just lends itself to all kinds of different adventures that you can get in,” says Fleischer, who, with his wife, Megan, and 5-year-old daughter, Amelia, lives near the Creekside area. Fleischer and his wife moved to Gahanna in 2015. “You can take a hike through some woodland trails, you can ride a bike, you can fish, you can kayak,” he says of the area. Prior to moving to Gahanna, Fleischer lived in German Village. He liked the neighborhood, but was drawn to the suburbs in search of a more affordable house that could hold a growing family. In Gahanna, Fleischer found not only plenty of outdoor experiences, but a vibrant urban core in the Creekside District. “We have that little bit of an urban, walkable feel, without being in the city,” he says. “There’s ice cream. There’s barbecue. There’s tacos. There’s American food. ... Everything that you might need to spend a morning or an afternoon.” Also appealing is the city’s proximity to Downtown and to the John Glenn Columbus International Airport. “Never take for granted being close to the airport,” he says. “Any other friends that I have who live in the Columbus area ... come to our house, leave their car and then we take them to the airport, because we live 3 minutes [away].” Yet, when all is said and done, it’s the chance to explore Gahanna’s scenic beauty that keeps the young family in the suburb. “We live very close to one of these trailheads, just adjacent to the creek,” he says. “You know how kids are when they get around creeks with rocks.”
You might call Don Earl a Gahanna lifer. Born and raised in the city, the 84-year-old retiree says, “The only time I was away from here was in the [military] service and in college. I’ve been here all my life.” Earl and his wife, Sue, another lifelong Gahanna resident, raised two children in the suburb; their son Tom recently retired as a math teacher at Gahanna Lincoln High School. “It has everything that we ever wanted,” Earl says. “The schools are excellent for our children to go through.” A local business owner, Earl owned and operated Earl Auto Parts from 1968 until 1992, when he sold the company; he later took it over again. “We have nice businesses here,”
he says. “You don’t need to go anywhere. Anything you want to do, you can do right here. ... I like to say that we shop local places rather than going out to other places.” For Earl, that includes golfing: With his son, he often takes to the course at Gahanna Municipal Golf. “My ability, distance and everything has lessened quite a bit with age, but we enjoy playing,” says Earl, who now works part-time at the nearby Jefferson Golf & Country Club in Blacklick. Like many Central Ohio snowbirds, Earl and his wife head south four months out of the year, but the rest of the time, there’s no place like home. “It’s just a nice, comfortable community,” he says.
Don Earl with Gahanna Municipal Golf Course employee Mary Moss GAHANNA: A COLUMBUS MONTHLY SUBURBAN SECTION NOVEMBER 2021
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Eric Miller
A native of Wilmington, Ohio, Sierra Purtee moved to Westerville at age 12—but, even during her adolescence, wondered if she might one day live in Gahanna. “It had always been a dream of mine to live in Gahanna,” says Purtee, 32, who, with her 15-year-old son, Ryan, and 7-year-old daughter, Evangeline, finally made the move just as the pandemic was beginning in March 2020. “I loved the atmosphere, the familyfriendly environment, the activities that they did with the kids,” Purtee remembers. “I would actually travel from Westerville to Gahanna to do all their events that they have every year.” Purtee, who works at the Ashford on Broad assisted living center, wanted to bring the same experience to her own kids.
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“It takes a village to raise kids, and to be able to have a village that will be there to support you and your kids [is wonderful],” Purtee says. “It sounds kind of clichéd, but you have this picture of how wonderful [suburbia] is, and truly, it really is that way in Gahanna.” Two summers in, her children are taking full advantage of the offerings: Evangeline attended a Parks & Recreation camp this past summer, while Ryan worked as a lifeguard at pools in Gahanna. For her part, Purtee was able to make an impact in her new community when Ashford on Broad partnered with Gahanna to provide free meals to area seniors every Friday. “While some people may not have been hurting for the food, it was a blessing to them to even be able to not have to worry about cooking dinner that night,” she says.
PHOTOS: COURTESY CITY OF GAHANNA
Sierra Purtee
In 1975, when Columbus native Eric Miller was looking for a house to raise a family, a Realtor friend pointed him to Gahanna. It was a pretty small town then, but Miller and his wife, Sharon, saw the potential. “I thought, ‘Wow, this seems like a nice house and a nice area, and it’s affordable,’ ” says Miller, 72, a sales representative for Cutter & Buck sportswear. The family—which grew to include three children, all graduates of Gahanna Lincoln High School—started off on the west side of town and then migrated to the east side, but other than that, they’ve stayed put. His wife, a retired teacher, now is a substitute teacher in Gahanna. “I’m 20 minutes from Downtown,” Miller says. “I’m 20 minutes to [Ohio State University’s] campus.” Beyond the convenience, though, the family gravitated to the close-knit vibes of a town that, when the Millers first moved there, had about 16,000 residents. “My kids felt safe; they would just ride their bikes to Olde Gahanna,” he says. “My kids played sports. ... I coached soccer and basketball and baseball.” Over the years, Miller is one of many Gahanna residents to invest time and energy into making the community even better. “I’ve been involved with the Parks department for over 30 years,” he says. “When I first started, really the only park we could go to was Friendship Park, and now we have over 32 parks.” Those parks—not to mention 20 miles of leisure trails, a dog park, a skateboard park and a nature preserve— can’t be quantified when considering the area’s appeal. “It’s all about the quality of life,” says Miller, who points out that, far from being a sleepy burg, Gahanna has plenty of events to keep things lively. “You get hundreds of people down at Creekside at the Blues and Jazz [Festival],” he says. “I don’t have to drive all the way to Downtown Columbus. ... I can see great entertainment 5 minutes from my house.”
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Grow with Us in Gahanna. Whether you’re raising a family, building your career or adventuring on the weekends — discover how you can Grow in Gahanna.
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• One of Columbus’ most diverse suburbs
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CASE STUDY
BREWING SUCCESS Gahanna proves to be a boon for new businesses like Crafted Culture Brewing Co. By Laurie Allen
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Anthony “Sizzle” Perry Jr.
From the beginning, Perry has shared ideas and visions with the city’s mayor, police chief and other leaders. “Gahanna is small enough that you can easily get into these conversations,” he says. “They didn’t just accept us; they welcomed us. We’re here, and it’s working.” He marvels at the way Crafted Culture has evolved organically in the brief time it’s been open. “We have these waves coming in. Tuesday, we’re all ‘nerded up’ and playing trivia; Sundays we have dudes with brims and beards; Saturday nights, it feels like you’re in a club.” During a Star Wars tribute, “it was like Comic-Con in here,” Perry jokes. No matter what day you visit, he says, “when you walk through the doors, it should feel like family.” Perry’s “band of brothers” encouraged and challenged him as he faced serious setbacks in his quest. One reminded him that he was
not at all a stranger to ZIP code 43230. He lived with his grandparents in Gahanna during a critical time in his life, so he might consider it “coming home” after all. “They got tired of me complaining and said, “Why don’t you make the best of a bad situation?” Despite his doubts, when the Kindred site became available, Perry says, “I had nothing else at the moment. I wasn’t working when COVID hit; I was just scrapping it out.” But he did have years of experience in the industry, and after facing his fears about being “the first penguin off the ledge,” he told himself, “I can make this work. ... At some point in our lives, self-talk becomes important.” Reflecting on the journey that led him to Morrison Road, he says, “I’m one of the luckiest people ever. My friends have told me I couldn’t have found a better location than where I am now. ... Gahanna has indeed been a blessing in disguise.”
PHOTOS: COURTESY CITY OF GAHANNA
ANTHONY “SIZZLE” PERRY JR. never saw himself opening Central Ohio’s first Black-owned brewery in a Columbus suburb. He had set his sights on the inner-city neighborhoods he and his friends knew so well. “My mission was East Columbus, not a northeastern suburb,” Perry says of his vision to bring craft beer culture to minority communities. Circumstances and a change in perspective, however, led him to Gahanna, where he and his business are thriving. Perry owns Crafted Culture Brewing Co., which opened last February on the site of the former Kindred Brewing on Morrison Road. Although Gahanna isn’t where he intended to be, he is learning that his journey embodies the saying, “bloom where you are planted.” “I am flabbergasted by what we’ve accomplished,” says Perry, a father of five and Army veteran who served two tours in Afghanistan. By mid-August, Crafted Culture was already at 60 percent of its projected first-year sales, had hired 12 minority bartenders and helped push more than six figures of income to other minority-owned businesses that use its venue for pop-up events. For Perry, cultivating a culture of diversity and inclusion is as important as brewing beer. The company’s tagline, “Be(er) the Change,” reflects his mission to see and do things differently. His consumers are not only Black people who appreciate crafted beer, but also women, members of the LGBTQ community and any member of a minority group who has felt uncomfortable in their surroundings. He appreciates the support he has received for his mission in Gahanna. “As a company founded with the intention of helping promote equity and inclusion, the opportunity to work with community leaders has given us comfort in knowing that the city we do business in is rooted in similar ethics to our own,” he says.
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How does WPCU differ from traditional banks? Credit unions exist to serve their members rather than make revenue for their investors. Our “stakeholders” are the people who live, work and play in the areas we serve. They are our neighbors, the fans sitting in the bleachers next to us cheering on a Little League baseball game, fellow co-workers, and local employers. We help our members and those in the communities we serve find ways to save better, borrow smarter, and learn a lot so they can keep more of their hard-earned money in their pocket. You get it all at WPCU—better value, trusted expertise, and extraordinary service. How many member centers do you have? WPCU serves central and southwest Ohio. We currently have 34 member centers with seven located in Columbus. To find a nearby location, visit WPCU.coop/Locations.
Clintonville 3134 N. High St. Gahanna 1317 N. Hamilton Rd. Graceland 30 Graceland Blvd. Grandview Yard 860 W. Third Ave. Lane Avenue 1761 W. Lane Ave. Reynoldsburg 6525 E. Main St. Short North 1010 N. High St.
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BUSINESS
GOOD FOR BUSINESS Support from city leaders and the community helps companies large and small to thrive.
PHOTO: TIM COURLAS/COURTESY CITY OF GAHANNA
By Virginia Brown
MORE THAN A CENTURY AND A HALF after being founded where three waterways converge into one, Gahanna still offers a convenient crossroads. With easy access to John Glenn Columbus and Rickenbacker international airports, 40 different air freight carriers between both airports, plus access to the Columbus & Ohio River Railroad and more than 150 truck lines in the county, Gahanna is good for business. In 2020, despite the effects of a global pandemic, the city realized $89.5 million in capital investments and created or retained 709 jobs, according to Carrin Wester, communications manager for the city. “Gahanna continues to focus on the needs of our local businesses to retain and grow opportunities locally,” she says. “This includes competitive tax-exemption incentives on development, identifying creative financing solutions through our partner agencies … and continuing to advance partnerships in workforce development.” And it’s those crucial needs that keep three of Gahanna’s key industries—food and beverage, fintech, and construction—competitive. “What really separates Gahanna from our peers is our business success stories,” Wester adds. “Companies locate and expand here because they find place and opportunities here; they remain here because we invest in our companies as much as our companies invest in our community.”
The taproom at Edison Brewing Co.
Food and Beverage Gahanna mainstay Donatos Pizza is one such success story. Founded in 1963 by Jim Grote, the company now boasts 169 franchise- or company-owned restaurant locations in 10 states;
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A rendering of High Bank’s new location in Gahanna, expected to open next spring
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the pies also can be found at 143 Red Robin restaurants, 10 sports and entertainment venues, and 1 REEF Neighborhood Kitchen. In all, Donatos sells slices in more than 300 locations across 21 states. The company’s home office and bakery relocated to Gahanna in 1992, in line with its franchise growth, according to Donatos PR and communications manager Dave Parsons. “The area was extremely convenient for us from a distribution standpoint, with easy access to the interstate and the airport,” he says. “Other businesses and industries were starting or growing in the area, and it felt like a great fit to us.” Chief financial officer Doug Kourie also points to a solid community with good schools and housing options, which are needed to attract a quality workforce. Another tenet of Gahanna leadership, according to Kourie: proactivity. “The city comes out annually to meet with us,” he says, citing a recent need for frozen storage solutions, which the city helped remedy. “They’re businessfriendly,” he adds. “If we ever call … anybody, all the way up to the mayor, [they] will call back.” In 2020, Donatos’ annual revenue was over $203 million, and the company employed
PHOTO: COURTESY HIGH BANK DISTILLERY CO.
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5,000 associates systemwide (including 1,856 associates in Central Ohio). “We are really pleased to have made that decision [to come here],” says Parsons, “and we enjoy being part of the Gahanna community.” Donatos isn’t the only longstanding food-andbeverage company that calls Gahanna home. Other companies based in the city include Kahiki, a longtime supper-club-turned-frozenfoods-brand, which made its headquarters in Gahanna in 2000. Others, like nutrition-forward cocktail mixer company Simple Times Mixers or Noble Cut Distillery, are newer on the scene but no less appreciative of what the city has to offer. “Gahanna offers a unique ecosystem for businesses: It still has a small-town feel, yet it’s big enough to sustain small to mid-sized companies,” says Noble Cut owner Tony Guilfoy. The distillery has been located in Gahanna for six years. Simple Times Mixers was founded in 2017 and moved to Gahanna in 2019. “We had an already-established collaborative network in the Gahanna area with businesses like Noble Cut [Distillery], where we zest our fruit for their limoncello products,” says founder Mark Tinus. “When it came time to establish our own production site, it was important to have the room to grow into even larger sites, and Gahanna provided a great set of industrial parks that had ample space to grow. We felt like the area and community were safe and provided a great atmosphere for our team members.” Guilfoy agrees. “Everyone, from the city councilmembers to the chamber of commerce to the mayor, knows our names and regularly visits or talks to us to ask what we need now or in the future. [They] have our best interests in mind and continually support our growth.” Gahanna was an attractive site for High Bank Distillery Co. as well, which recently announced plans to open a new, 7,500-square-foot facility that will feature a full-service bar and restaurant, barrel storage, a retail store, elements of the brand’s distillery operation and a large outdoor patio. The Grandview-based brand’s second location is expected to open in spring 2022 at 1379 E. Johnstown Road. Wil Schulze, owner of Edison Brewing Co., began conversations with Gahanna city officials in 2017, when he found the parcel of land he wanted to buy to open a business park and brewery. His real estate development company, Franklin Peak, purchased the land from the City of Gahanna and built the office park.
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Education To become more knowledgeable voters and more effective activists Activism To communicate our message, elect candidates, lobby for legislation, and turnout the vote Collaboration To work with like-minded people, organizations and causes in Central Ohio CONTACT US E: gahannademocratsandfriends@gmail.com | P: (614) 342-0089 f gahannadems
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Why Gahanna? It’s simple, Schulze says: “You have proximity to all the major things that you need in the city; costs of things are reasonable; we have access to labor; and the city is very accommodating.” In addition to hosting companies like IJUS engineering consultants and SPIDA Software, the four-story Franklin Peak building also boasts the brewery and a rooftop event space called The Peak at Edison. It’s positioned to soak in the sunset, and, given its proximity to John Glenn Columbus International Airport, watching planes take off and land is part of the scenery. “The site is a destination for people from around the country,” Schultze says. “Edison is a host for a national recreational vehicle membership that allows them to stop and stay for a night. In addition, we have been a top spot for locals to bring friends and family when visiting to see the city,” he says, adding that a couple from Minnesota came through recently on their way to Cincinnati. “Our location was built to bring people to Gahanna,” he says. Construction The business of building is also an integral component of the Gahanna business community. The Superior Group, a national electrical and technology engineering and construction firm, provides the design, construction, service and maintenance services necessary to execute some of the most demanding projects in the industry. With offices in Cincinnati, Louisville, Nashville, Charlotte and Raleigh, The Romanoff Group also makes its headquarters in Gahanna. Since 1981, the company
PHOTO: COURTESY CITY OF GAHANNA
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has provided electrical and heating and cooling services nationwide. Fintech Another company with roots in Central Ohio is KEMBA Financial Credit Union, which has called Gahanna home since 2006. Founded in 1933 for The Kroger Co. employees (the KEMBA acronym stands for Kroger Employee Mutual Benefits Association), the credit union was originally located inside the Kroger Bakery in Downtown Columbus and relocated to Whitehall in 1971. In 2006, Kemba moved to its current home in Gahanna, where it employs 176 of its 262 employees. KEMBA boasts over $1 billion in assets, with roughly 120,000 members. Currently led by Mark Decello, president and CEO, the company has 10 branches across Central Ohio, with online and mobile banking, telephone banking and more than 50,000 ATMs. For KEMBA, and other Gahanna fintech companies like BillGo, a real-time bill management and payments platform, it takes a lot of tech—and forward thinking—to thrive. “Gahanna tends to look toward the near future to see what types of utilities and resources [companies will need],” says Marco Capalino, chief marketing officer at KEMBA. Those resources aren’t limited to basics like water and electricity, he adds, but also include key fintech resources like fiber optics and data transmission. “[Gahanna has] an active chamber of commerce with an active planning committee,” Capalino adds. “The leaders in Gahanna understand the importance of business to a thriving community.”
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A cyclist rides among the Cherry Run and Cherry Bottom Gardens neighborhoods.
HOUSING
NEW AND IMPROVED Rental living in Gahanna is about to get a big upgrade.
GAHANNA HAS ALWAYS been a desirable location to live, given its easy highway access, close proximity to John Glenn Columbus International Airport and vast amounts of parkland. Those looking for single-family homes have traditionally found many options, even despite the recently tight market. “Gahanna is a wonderful city that offers so many different styles of homes at every price point,” says Jason Brewer, a Realtor with Coldwell Banker Realty in Gahanna. “You can find new homes and historic homes. It really is what makes this city unique and lends to the overall charm.”
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“We have starter homes, patio homes, condos,” adds Theresa Emch, a Realtor with Keller Williams Capital Partners and a lifelong Gahanna resident. “Gahanna is such a diverse community. It’s a great place to call home.” Yet rental options, which comprise about 30 percent of the housing market in Gahanna, have been lagging a bit behind owner-occupied properties in the new-build category. According to the City of Gahanna, only 30 percent of all housing units in the city were built after 1990, meaning 70 percent are more than 30 years old. That’s about
to change, however, with the upcoming construction of two new, multifamily developments breaking ground next year. The Everett, which is being developed by Big Sky Realty, will feature 60 apartments on 2.65 acres along West Johnstown Road. “There is a very limited supply of newer multifamily properties in Gahanna,” says Mitch Rubin, owner and principal broker of Big Sky Realty. In the past two years, Big Sky has redeveloped two aging apartment complexes near Creekside in the heart of Gahanna—one with 32 units, the other with 12. The Everett
PHOTO: TIM COURLAS/COURTESY CITY OF GAHANNA
By Nancy Byron
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will mark the company’s first new-build residential development in the community. “Gahanna went years without any new construction, which has led to a significant shortage of [rental] housing options,” Rubin says. “Without new construction, we end up with an unbalanced housing stock. New developments, such as The Everett, help create much-needed housing for the influx of new residents coming to the Columbus region.” The Everett is scheduled to break ground in the spring of 2022 and take 12 to 15 months to complete. It will include in-unit washers and dryers, stainless steel appliances, private outdoor spaces and a fencedin dog park with artificial turf. “We are excited to bring a higher-end option to our residents,” Rubin says. About 3 miles southeast of Big Sky’s development, in a wedge-shaped tract known as Crescent at Central Park, Canini Associates and Casto Communities are teaming up to build a large residential complex as part of the 112-acre multiuse development. A total of 240 units will be built on 14.4 acres, divided between townhouses and garden apartments. Construction will begin in early 2022 and take roughly two years to complete, according to Brent Sobczak, president of Casto Communities. “All units will have outdoor space and our standard finishes, with granite countertops and a lot of attached garages,” Sobczak says. “We’ll also have a fitness center and pool, but the emphasis will be on the outdoor space and activities.” More than 30 acres of open parkland have been set aside along the south side of Crescent, which would more than double the size of adjacent 23-acre Pizzurro Park. Larry Canini, owner of site developer Canini Associates, says several options for developing the open parkland area along Big Walnut Creek have been discussed, including an
Rendering of The Everett
Gahanna offers housing options for every stage of life.
amphitheater, environmental studies center, playground and trails. “Some of the unique features built into Crescent at Central Park are the walkability, the outdoor space and the connectivity to the park at the south,” Sobczak says. The larger Crescent community, which already includes a medical office and wellness center, will also have retail space, restaurants, office space, hotels and an event center, Canini says. “Gahanna has been lacking, over the last 10 years, a newly built residential component to serve the younger workforce and those empty nesters who are looking for a quality rental option,” says Canini. “All the options for that had been outside the city boundaries. We believe the Casto Crescent project will provide just that and hopefully spur others to do [similar projects].” That increased diversity in residential units will have a pronounced effect on the Gahanna population, Sobczak predicts. “Trying to attract and maintain a diverse workforce requires different housing options,” he says. “There are people who want to work and live in their community.”
Having a variety of housing options at a variety of price points is vital to any city, Emch adds. “Businesses are constantly looking for communities that have housing options for employees,” she says. “Having affordable options provides a sense of security. People are happier, healthier and want to stay and invest back in their community.” Having more competition in the rental market could also be a plus for potential residents looking in the Gahanna area. “Competition amongst rental property owners hopefully means better options in terms of pricing and amenities,” Brewer says. But it’s not just newcomers to Gahanna who will benefit from the Big Sky and Canini/Casto developments and any future, similar projects: Brewer tells of clients looking to downsize who have sold their homes in Gahanna, but still want to remain in the community. “They want to move into a rental,” he says. “It is this segment that has been driving up some of the demand for apartments.” Having more rental units can also draw young couples and professionals into the community. “You have to remember, renters hopefully will one day turn into home buyers and/or business owners,” Brewer says. “In the end, it’s about balance.” Like Brewer, Emch has noticed that Gahanna residents often don’t want to move out of the city. “We have a lot of families who end up passing their homes down through families,” she says, noting she, too, still lives in the neighborhood where she grew up. “I feel like when people move in, they stay. It’s not a couple-year stop.”
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EDUCATION
ROOM TO GROW The Gahanna Jefferson Public Schools district greets an influx of new students with welcoming arms and shiny new facilities.
PHOTO: JUDY HENGSTEBECK
By Peter Tonguette
A teacher interacts with students at Blacklick Elementary School.
AT THE BEGINNING of the school year, Beth Davis, a reading specialist who teaches kindergartners through second graders in the newly opened Gahanna Lincoln Elementary School, noticed a crumbled-up yellow sticky note on her desk. Normally, she might have just thrown the scrap of paper away without reading it, but after the last year and a half of distance and hybrid learning, she couldn’t help herself and had a look. “It was in a kid’s handwriting, and all it said was ‘thank you,’ ” says Davis, 50, who has spent her entire 29-year teaching career in Gahanna Jefferson Public Schools. A Gahanna native, Davis is the mother of children who also went through the local schools. “I’m a student myself, the teacher and the parent,” she says. But back to that note. “It had a heart and a squiggly little smiley face,” Davis says. That example of a student appreciating a teacher is emblematic of the atmosphere cultivated by teachers and administrators in the growing school district. “We’re a big town with a small-town feel, and I think our schools are the same way,” Davis says. “We’re a big school district, but we have a small-town school district feel. We take care of each other.” Superintendent Steve Barrett says that the district seeks to build relationships with students, parents and families. “We can’t do that work alone,” Barrett says. “We want kids to have voice and choice in what they learn. ... If we graduate kids with great work ethics, with great character, they’re going to add a lot to the world we live in.” Reflecting its welcoming ethos, the district embraces the diversity of its student body.
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“We have different backgrounds; some of us speak different languages,” Davis says. “We are different learners with different personalities, and that is a positive thing in Gahanna. I tell my students, ‘There is no one else who can bring what you have to school today but you.’ ” The new Gahanna Lincoln Elementary— which, after opening on Aug. 11, became Gahanna’s first new elementary building to open in 27 years—is a physical manifestation of the district’s energy, excitement and growth. “We’re right around 7,800 [students], when you include preschool,” says Barrett, who attributes much of the growth to new housing options in nearby Jefferson Township (which, without its own school system, sends some of its students to Gahanna Jefferson Public Schools). “A lot of the farmland out there that’s no longer being farmed is being developed as we speak,” says Barrett, adding that the excellence of the district is itself a magnet for new residents. “Gahanna schools have been strong for a long time, and we believe that is a big part of the draw to come to Gahanna. Houses here … go on the market, and they’re sold within a couple of hours.” The new, 82,000-square-foot Gahanna Lincoln Elementary, replacing the old Lincoln Elementary, is home to more than 700 students who are making use of 30 classrooms (including two art classrooms and two music classrooms), a state-of-the-art lunchroom and gymnasium. Other features include a reading garden and two playgrounds. “One feature we have that is very much new is we have two hallways, one with an extra room, that is called our ‘sensory
area,’ ” says Barrett, explains that the spaces provide calming zones for young people who, between the pandemic and other life pressures, can experience anxiety. “These are places that are sort of calming areas for kids—if they’re having a moment that’s difficult for them, to get them readjusted and to go back and be ready to learn,” he explains. Davis says that the elementary school staff dubs the new school “Super Lincoln.” “That’s how we feel about it,” she says. “It’s so bright, so spacious. It’s colorful. In fact, it’s color-coded by grade level. It’s just buzzing with enthusiasm.” Yet, acknowledging the surge in new students, school officials stress the importance of assuring that everyone is welcomed into the fold. “We’re very aware that, when you open a new school, you’re not just inviting new families in and merging them with the current families,” Barrett says. “You’re also building a new school community and the relationships that need to take place to build for a strong school.” Davis says that relationships are built day by day. “It starts small,” she says. “You get to know a few [students] at a time.” As part of a levy voters narrowly passed last fall, a new, nearly 500,000-square-foot Gahanna Lincoln High School will be built in the next few years. The new facility is tailormade for an anticipated 2,800 students. Leaders agree it’s time for a new school; the oldest parts of the current high school building were constructed 94 years ago. “It’s going to have a state-of-the-art media center,” Barrett says. “We’re going to build a field house, [which] is a K-12 facility. It’ll
PHOTO: AIMEE AIMER
Cheerleaders and band members celebrate school spirit outside of the newly opened Lincoln Elementary School.
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Holiday Fun in Gahanna Holiday Lights Celebration - November 21 Santa Race 5k - December 4 Holiday Scavenger Hunt in Creekside - December Creekside Luminary Walk December 22
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be primarily used after school by our high school students, but on weekends and throughout the summer, we expect to have our peewee basketball teams, volleyball teams and as many people as we can allow to take advantage of that space.” Intervention specialist Tracy Dyckman, who works with juniors and seniors with learning disabilities, praises the high school for being closeknit despite its current (and anticipated) size. “We are very special in the sense that we only have the one high school,” says Dyckman, 43. “Despite the size of our district and the size
of our high school, our community is not divided. …. It does help keep us one gigantic family.” The new Gahanna Lincoln High School has a projected opening before the 2024-25 school year. Other projects that are part of Gahanna Jefferson Public Schools’ Phase Two Master Facilities Plan include additions to High Point Elementary, Blacklick Elementary and three middle schools: Middle School South, East and West. “We’re just so grateful our community gave us permission to do this work,” Barrett
says. “It is very expensive; taxes went up significantly. We need to be accountable to our community to make sure that we’re good stewards with the investments they’ve made.” But, the way Gahanna is growing, the need remains for the city’s schools to continue to grow along with it. Barrett points to a demographic forecast that shows that, over the next 10 years, the district will be home to nearly 10,000 students. “We need to plan for that growth now and build space for our new families that are going to come,” he says.
Privately Held
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Columbus Academy students record statistics for a multidisciplinary project during a varsity basketball game.
school art club as well as music lessons, according to its website. But what sets it apart is its unique Outdoor Education Program, which principal Michael Fluhart describes as an eye-opening experience. “Many of our students come from inner-city Columbus and have never been to the woods,” Fluhart says. “The Gahanna Woods Trail runs through the campus, and we take full advantage of it.” Shepherd Christian’s tuition is capped at $5,100, and financial aid is available for families who qualify. It has an 18-to-1 student-teacher ratio. One School dates back to 1980, when it was founded as Evangel Christian Academy
by Evangel Temple Assembly of God Church, according to its website. It graduated its first high school senior class in 2000 and became Gahanna Christian Academy, a K–12 school, in 2004. Today it’s aligned with One Church, after rebranding again as One School last year, and serves kindergarten through eighth grade (plus child care and preschool services) with a student-teacher ratio of 12-to-1. Tuition ranges from $5,500 to $6,000. Its Early Learning Community features a blended classroom for kindergarteners and first-graders, according to its website, and the school has a focus on personalized and project-based learning.
St. Matthew the Apostle, affiliated with the on-site Roman Catholic church of the same name, offers a full-day prekindergarten program alongside kindergarten through eighthgrade education. According to its website, instructional aides are present in all classrooms, and the school’s 29 licensed teachers—50 percent of whom hold a master’s degree—average 14 years of experience. Students’ curriculum includes Spanish classes, and the school boasts a 1-to-1 Chromebookto-student ratio with Google app integration, according to its website. Extracurricular activities include 10 sports for grades four through eight, drama and ski clubs, and more. The school has a 21-to-1 student-teacher ratio, and tuition is $6,400. —Tom Hanks Columbus Academy, 4300 Cherry Bottom Road, Gahanna, 614-509-2220, columbusacademy.org; Shepherd Christian School, 425 Hamilton Road, Gahanna, 614471-0859, shepherdchristian. org; One School, 817 N. Hamilton Road, Gahanna, 614471-9270, oneschool.education; St. Matthew the Apostle Catholic School, 795 Havens Corners Road, Gahanna, 614-471-4930, cdstmatthew.org
PHOTO: DORAL CHENOWETH III
While Gahanna’s public school system is robust, the city is also home to four quality private schools: Columbus Academy, serving grades K–12; One School, formerly Gahanna Christian Academy and serving grades K–8; Shepherd Christian School, serving grades pre-K–6; and St. Matthew the Apostle Catholic School, serving grades pre-K–8. Columbus Academy boasts a 231-acre learning environment and an 8-to-1 studentteacher ratio. Tuition ranges from $25,400 for youngsters entering kindergarten to $30,900 for high school seniors, but financial aid is available to families who qualify. Grants from the school’s Tuition Assistance Program range from 3 to 97 percent of tuition. Lauren Leahy, director of admission, praises the school’s familylike atmosphere. She would know—she’s also the parent of two students at the Academy. “My kids’ teachers know them, and as a parent, it’s important that we’re all on the same page,” she says. “That is part of what makes a place like Columbus Academy so special.” For parents who prefer a parochial educational environment, Gahanna offers three options. Shepherd Christian was founded by Shepherd Church of the Nazarene and offers an after-
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Designer Matt Coultrip in an outdoor living space he designed for a Merion Village home
The Grass is Greener A former A&F global manager kicks up a business stylizing Central Ohio’s backyards.
A year ago, Matt Coultrip had a big title that he had earned over the last couple of decades. He was senior director of global store design for Abercrombie & Fitch, a job that took him from Shanghai to Paris to all places in between as the company expanded internationally, opening stores around the globe. Central Ohio is lucky, in an aesthetic sense, that talented designers come from all over to work in the local fashion industry. But, as corporate retail so often evolves, especially during the pandemic, there was a management reorganization at Abercrombie & Fitch. In March, Coultrip’s position was cut. Grounded in Columbus due to COVID dur74
ing the previous year, he found some free time to do landscape design. So, in March he quickly launched his own small business, Coultrip Design and Consulting. “It gave me the opportunity to try something new,” he says. “My focus is exteriors,” says Coultrip. “That doesn’t just include plants but also hardscapes like patios, pergolas, decks, fences, etc. I enjoy extending clients’ living spaces to the outside.” One job quickly led to the next. Thanks to about 20 clients in his very first year, Coultrip’s business is off to a roaring start. For a guy who has spent much time in recent years traveling internationally,
he now seems to be showing up in a lot of Central Ohio backyards. “It’s all been by word of mouth,” he says of the fast growth. Hailing from a small town in Illinois, Coultrip started with Abercrombie & Fitch as a visual designer one week after he graduated from Monmouth College, a small liberal arts school in southwestern Illinois not far from the Iowa border. It has been quite a journey with the local retailer, and Coultrip enjoyed it. He believes his corporate experience helped him quickly launch his own business. Not only does he bring his own aesthetic skills to each landscape job, he puts together a team of people to do the work
PHOTO: TIM JOHNSON
BY SHERRY BECK PAPROCKI
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while he serves as project manager. “After 19 years in corporate, I can manage people very well,” he says. By the end of his first summer in the business, he was still working on the branding for his company’s website. Such is the life of an entrepreneur—everything depends on input from the founder. Today, his work can be spotted on Instagram (@coultripdesign) and in the portfolio of his company’s website (coultripdesign.com). We caught up with him just after he’d taken a red-eye from Los Angeles. Yes, he said, he would consider another corporate job if the situation were right. “It would have to be the right kind of role,” he quickly adds.
As a designer, how would you describe your aesthetic? Personally, my style is modern/farmhouse. I like clean lines but also like a traditional farmhouse style that is comfortable and warm. As I meet new clients, I like to gain an understanding of their style so we can merge the two together to create something amazing. What was your best day as senior global design director at A&F? The days when I promoted people. There is a proud moment when you can award someone for their hard work and help them achieve their career goals. How do you compare that with your best day as an entrepreneur? As an entrepreneur, I truly get to change people’s lives but in a different way. I give them a yard they love, an outdoor space to enjoy or a solution to a problem they could never seem to conquer. That is part of a
homeowner’s goals, to fall in love with the place they live, and I help them do that. What are the latest design trends that you’re currently loving? During this pandemic, homeowners are really making the most of their outdoor spaces, and it’s exciting to see this come to life. I’m loving how creative people have really become, regardless of the space they have to work with. The outdoors have truly become an extension of our indoor spaces, and I don’t think that will end. That said, what are your best recommendations for cozying-up outdoor spaces for the colder months ahead? First of all, fire. No matter the type of fire feature you have, the warm glow of a fire not only keeps you warm, but the nostalgia of relaxing by a fire brings a calm, soothing feel to an individual. I also recommend blankets and pillows that can be used outdoors. Curling up in a blanket is such a cozy, secure feeling that it’s important to have options for blankets that you can take outdoors. There are no longer rules to follow, and whatever suits your lifestyle should be what inspires you. ◆
PHOTO: TIM JOHNSON
How do you apply your corporate skills to your own business? My corporate career has taught me how to manage projects and people, to be a confident leader and to also have direct communication with others. During my career, I managed a wide range of projects that taught me how to problemsolve and be a solution-based individual, which I apply in my everyday life. These skills allow me to be relatable to my
clients, quickly building trust and growing a relationship that allows us to work well together.
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Home & Style PRODUCTS 1
Bask in a Glow What’s the bright side of daylight saving time? The perfect excuse to decorate with intriguing lamps and fixtures that light up the night. Interesting textures, materials and shapes don’t just illuminate, but illustrate substance and style. —Ana Piper
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1 Capiz shell pendant, $821 at RH 2 Glass globe, mobile, six-arm chandelier, $3,506 at RH 3 Rita LED torchiere floor lamp, $269 at Pottery Barn 4 Barnaby rattan table lamp, $629 at Pottery Barn 5 Kensington pendant, $529 at Elm & Iron 6 Iridescent acrylic pendant, $299 at Pottery Barn Kids 7 Chochin chandelier, $619 at Elm & Iron 8 Aster table light, price upon request at Kalco
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PHOTOS: 1 AND 2, COURTESY RH; 3 AND 4, COURTESY POTTERY BARN; 5 AND 7, COURTESY ELM & IRON; 6, COURTESY POTTERY BARN KIDS; 8, COURTESY KALCO
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THANK YOU
PHOTOS: 1 AND 2, COURTESY RH; 3 AND 4, COURTESY POTTERY BARN; 5 AND 7, COURTESY ELM & IRON; 6, COURTESY POTTERY BARN KIDS; 8, COURTESY KALCO
to our 2021 Nationwide Childrens Hospital Columbus Marathon & 1/2 Marathon Mile Sponsors
NATIONWIDECHILDRENS.ORG/MARATHON
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Home & Style HOME
WORLD TOUR A LOCAL DESIGNER’S GLOBAL TRAVELS HAVE LED TO A FAMILY HOME REFLECTIVE OF THOSE EXPERIENCES. BY VIRGINIA BROWN PHOTOS BY TIM JOHNSON
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The living room in the home of Cheryl and Luis Stauffer is a reflection of the couple’s vast global travels. They have visited approximately 70 countries. Cheryl founded Crimson Design nearly 20 years ago and, with Luis, has grown it to include 18 employees. The firm designs both commercial and residential projects.
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Home & Style HOME
W
alking through Cheryl Stauffer’s Bexley living room is like flipping through the pages of a travel magazine. A child’s garment from a tribe in Thailand is displayed in a glass case. Underfoot, a multi-patterned, red runner, purchased from a bazaar in Istanbul, covers the floor. A rose-colored crystal on a front table was left by the home’s previous owner. Other pieces from India and Argentina all share stories and lived experiences. On the mantle, mixed and matched frames display a variety of artworks. “We love art, and when we travel, we often buy pieces. We collect things from around the world,” Stauffer says. She estimates that she and her husband, Luis, have been to 70 countries combined. “I think we were, in another life, wanderers. … We’re still wanderers.” Travel can offer insight into other cultures, provide perspective, and help stretch our comfort with and understanding of others, according to Stauffer, who founded Crimson Design Group in 2003. Her designs are influenced by this philosophy, not only in her own home, but with her clients, too. “Curiosity is my number one driver,” she says. “There’s a sense of curiosity and exploring [in travel] that helps you see how other people live and gives you a much bigger worldview.” Born in Paraguay to Mennonite missionaries, Stauffer stayed in South America until she was 7 years old. Her father, a cow farmer, also worked in a medical clinic in the jungle, helping deliver babies and providing ambulance services. “He was rooted in the community, helping the local natives flourish,” she says. 80
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Luis and Cheryl, with their two daughters, enjoy the comfort and unique perspective that their work has brought them. Artwork, furnishings, rugs and other precious treasures are used throughout their décor.
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Home & Style HOME
Living until the age of 7 in Paraguay as the daughter of Mennonite missionaries, Stauffer takes her charitable work very seriously. She has designed a home for victims of human trafficking in Central Ohio and designed an orphanage in Thailand. Locally, her commercial work can be spotted at the Whisky Lounge as well as Lux 23 apartments. At home, comfortable environs include the family’s outdoor area.
Although the Mennonite lifestyle in which she was immersed as a child was largely devoid of color, the vibrant colors and interesting shapes of the jungle stuck with her. Big, bold patterns, like tribal prints, and rich color combinations make their way into her work designs—and her home. From the main entryway, two vivid chairs command attention in a sitting room, just off the dining room. The room is small, with a large bay window that lets in warm sun rays. Stauffer picked up the chairs for $25 each at an antique store, and had the frames lacquered in a bright blue to complement the fabric’s Schumacher design, which is called Magical Ming Dragon. Locally, Fortner produced the final products. On the window ledge above the chairs, blue-and-white Ming vases in a variety of shapes sit on top of thick, hardback books about plants and design. They complement a white vase filled with fresh hydrangea. “This is one of my favorite rooms in the 82
house, especially in the morning with the sun,” she says. “Nature is our number one inspiration,” she says. “The dirt [in South America] was bright red, and there were tropical trees and flowers. Color can fill us and drive us and help us live vibrantly.” Just like at home, travel destinations, and even the types of hotels people stay in, are a big part of Stauffer’s work with design clients. During initial conversations, she asks where people travel. “Hotels are a getaway, they’re a sanctuary, so what is it about those places that they love that we can help translate into their homes,” she says. Clothing choices, such as colors and patterns, plus “distinct objects” like heirlooms and antiques, also provide guidance. “Using those pieces or things they’ve collected, their children’s things ... it’s more than just filling the room. It adds purpose and belonging,” she adds. A large family room, also packed with items from their travels, leads to the back-
yard, which is where the family does much of its entertaining. Lush shade trees blend with potted plants to fill the space with welcoming freshness. “We live out here in the summertime,” she says. The spacious yard boasts a comfortable outdoor dining area, pool, and cabana room and bar, which pops with baby-blue subway tiles that cover the walls. Though it was largely colorless, Stauffer says she learned a lot from the simplistic Mennonite lifestyle. “I learned that the most important things in life aren’t things, but experiences and relationships,” she says. Stauffer donates a significant amount of design work and money to charitable causes, including building and designing an orphanage in Thailand, and designing a transitional home for victims of human trafficking in Columbus. “Your home tells your story,” she says. “It tells you where you are and where you’re going.” ◆
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Home & Style REAL ESTATE
Top 25
real estate transactions AUG. 1– 31, 2021
2 New Albany Farms Road Offered at $2.59 million
7013 Hanbys Loop Offered at $1.45 million
8463 Preston Road Offered at $850,000
PRICE
ADDRESS
BUYER/SELLER
$3,750,000
5340 Muirfield Ct., Dublin
Edward D. A. & Michelle L. Sommer from James J. & Nicole S. Wisniewski
$2,900,951
250 W. Spring St., Unit 1114, Columbus
Ariel S. & Araya Levy from 245 Parks Edge Place LLC
$1,950,000
3 S. Ealy Crossing, New Albany
Jamie Thomas & Leslie Megan Brown from Ronald & Valerie Anne Robinson
$1,875,000
7131 Deacon Ct., Dublin
Kari B. Dietsch, trustee, from Michele D. Tenhunfeld, trustee
$1,700,000
6889 Chiswick Ct., Columbus
Mihir Ramesh & Ritu Bakhru from Andrew S. & Jennifer C. Neviaser
$1,600,000
297 Stanbery Ave., Bexley
Benjamen Edward & Juli Marie Kern from Neal A. & Linda R. Kayes
$1,600,000
4899 Oldbridge Dr., Upper Arlington
Daren S. Garcia from Stephen D. Brown
$1,545,000
7120 Deacon Ct., Dublin
Eric G. & Mary F. Jensen, trustees, from James E. & Jennifer Lynn Blank
$1,535,000
138 S. Parkview Ave., Bexley
Daniel A. Reinhard from HR Sugar Creek LLC
$1,500,000
4225 Gunston Hall, New Albany
Jessica Goldman & Timothy King from Joshua R. & Lindy Page Silverstein
$1,475,000
660 Woods Hollow Lane, Powell
James G. & Rachael C. Holm from Jeffrey W. Johns, trustee
$1,466,300
2200 Strathshire Hall Lane, Powell
Katherine Amy & Pankaj Tiwari from Genesis ITB LLC
$1,450,000
2620 Abington Rd., Upper Arlington
Jill C. Doody from Hussam A. Fustok & Fatme Bachir
$1,430,000
457 Glyn Tawel Dr., Granville
Theresa Nicole & Zachary Mark Gatton from Christine A. Baker
$1,395,000
1427 Roxbury Rd., Marble Cliff
James V. & Amy B. Wulf, trustees, from Margaret L. & Robert S. Hoag II
$1,375,000
17 N. Stanbery Ave., Bexley
Jonathan & Taylor Riewald from Joy P. & Kumi D. Walker
$1,352,000
3992 Old Poste Rd., Columbus
Old Post Road at 3992 LLC from John E. & Sheryl A. Reitter
$1,322,383
9353 Waterford Dr., Powell
Jonathan E. Kleber & Jaclyn N. Donadio from Dublin Manor LLC
$1,300,000
2118 Woodland Hall Dr., Delaware
John A. & Diana Davidson from Daniel L. McClurg
$1,260,000
2633 Alliston Ct., Upper Arlington
Sydney S. & Scott A. McLafferty from Geoffrey S. & Kristin N. Glaser
$1,250,000
33 N. Ealy Crossing, New Albany
Paul S. & Laura C. Williams from Deborah Sybert
$1,201,000
2401 Fair Ave., Bexley
Angela Sauer & Christopher Harry Pinkerton from Beth H. Jarvis, trustee
$1,200,000
9378 Pine Creek Dr., Powell
Katta Sivakanth & Danielle Dutton from George & Karen Greco
$1,200,000
6976 Hanbys Loop, New Albany
Kimberly Sperwer & Jay D. Holladay from Eric M. & Elizabeth Johnson
$1,190,000
5787 Summerwood Xing, Galena
Angela M. & Michael T. Walker from Neal Francis & Michele Leigh Niklaus
As provided by Columbus Dispatch researcher Julie Fulton. Statistics are gathered from the greater Columbus area, including Franklin and parts of other surrounding counties.
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Dining GUIDE P. 86 | GLOBAL P. 92 | DRINK P. 94 | LET’S EAT P. 96
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SAVOR THE SILK ROAD
Meet the family behind Arezu, a Persian pop-up at Double Happiness.
PHOTO BY TIM JOHNSON
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Dining GUIDE Downtown Granville
Day Trip to Granville
Exciting things are happening in this quaint Licking County village. Here’s a taste. BY ERIN EDWARDS | PHOTOS BY TIM JOHNSON
It’s a sunny September morning, and beautiful light is streaming in through the recently uncovered windows at Hashi, a new Korean/Japanese restaurant on Granville’s main drag. As Hashi’s co-owner Steven Baldwin explains how the restaurant came together, James Anderson of Ray Ray’s Hog Pit fame walks in through the back door, wide-eyed at the building’s transformation. (The space had previously housed Moe’s Original BBQ, which closed amid the pandemic.) Chad Short, the co-owner of Village Coffee Co. next door, figured these two restaurant owners should know each other, so he marched Anderson over to make introductions. That tells you a lot about this Licking County village, the home of Denison University. Baldwin and Anderson represent two of Granville’s “new guard,” as the pitmaster puts it. The two entrepreneurs, both Granville residents, are bringing fresh ideas to 86
the New England-style village, founded in 1805. Hashi opened in late September, almost six months after Anderson, a James Beard Award nominee, unveiled Ray Ray’s Meat + Three, his first sit-down restaurant. The village was so enthusiastic about Anderson’s modern spin on the Southern meat-and-three that the Granville Township Trustees officially proclaimed April 14, 2021, Meat & Three Day. The resolution was aimed at thanking Ray Ray’s for its renovation of the abandoned Creno’s Pizza building, thus creating a handsome new “entrance” into the village—pig statue and all. Other developments—such as a new small-batch coffee roaster, an expansion of Three Tigers Brewing Co., a baking company from the owner of Harvest Pizzeria and a start-up cidery—amount to an exciting time to live in or visit Granville, just a 40-min-
ute drive from Columbus. If you are planning a day trip or a weekend stayover at the Granville Inn or Buxton Inn, here are some places to check out. BREAKFAST Located in the heart of Granville’s main drag, Village Coffee Co. (132 E. Broadway), owned by Chad and Brigette Short, celebrated 20 years in business last year. Village Coffee is the quintessential college town coffee shop—neither a large chain nor a third-wave coffee roaster with Kyoto cold brew towers. In addition to drip coffee and espresso drinks, this simply decorated shop offers a variety of breakfast pastries, bagels, breakfast and lunch sandwiches, soups, saladst and sweets. One of the village’s most iconic signs belongs to Aladdin Diner (122 E. Broadway), the kind of all-American greasy spoon that every small town needs, complete with retro-red seats and a black-and-white checkered floor. Here, you’ll find breakfast standards like pancakes, omelets and egg dishes as well as smashburgers, deli sandwiches and salads for lunch. Looking for a more healthful alternative to diner fare? Jake and Sabrina Warner’s
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Prospect St. Smoothie (134 N. Prospect St.) is a good stop for organic (when possible) fruit smoothies, smoothie bowls and oatmeal.
PHOTO: TOP RIGHT, ERIN EDWARDS
LUNCH One of this year’s most exciting restaurant openings wasn’t in Columbus—it was Ray Ray’s Meat + Three (1256 Columbus Road), a standalone restaurant from barbecue purist James Anderson that somehow elevates Ray Ray’s offerings even further. Open for lunch and dinner Tuesday through Sunday, Anderson’s modern meat-and-three invites you to choose a protein, such as its succulent brisket or jerk chicken, plus three sides ranging from collard greens to mac ’n’ cheese to German potato salad. Other Ray Ray’s favorites like smoky pork ribs are here, but one of the outpost’s biggest draws is its whole hog barbecue, now served daily until they run out. Rob Dougan and his son, Torey, took over Alfie’s Wholesome Food (221 E. Broadway) from the original owner three months before the pandemic hit. Since the health-conscious café is a carryout with patio seating, Dougan says his business hasn’t missed a step. In fact, Alfie’s recently opened a ghost kitchen in Columbus. The main draws here are scratchmade deli salads and sandwiches, such as the Alex (chicken and pesto on baguette) or the V.W. (turkey with brie and fig jam). Don’t miss the rosemary lemonade, either. If you’re visiting Alfie’s on the hour, keep an ear out for the animated clock at the Robbins Hunter Museum next door. A hand-carved statue honoring Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for U.S. President and a Licking County native, makes an appearance each hour.
With a frequently packed patio on Granville’s main drag, The Pub on Broadway (126 E. Broadway) is a casual spot serving standard American bar fare in a charming old building. Go here for cold beer, wings, cheese curds, burgers, sandwiches, meatloaf and fish and chips.
At Bella’s, Fresh is Best
Above, Alfie’s owner Rob Dougan, left, and his son Torey Dougan; below, sausage, beans, coleslaw and Cheddar Cornbread Puddin’; Cuban sandwich; and chopped whole hog with mac ’n’ cheese, greens and German potato salad at Ray Ray’s Meat + Three
You could say Ryan McGuire and Aaron Olbur met over a cup of coffee. McGuire was already an experienced roaster when he met Olbur at Sunrise Coffee Club, an event hosted by McGuire in Granville. “He would show up to Bryn Du Mansion, and he would make everybody a free cup of coffee right before the sunrise,” Olbur says. “I was really inspired by that.” When the pandemic began, Olbur got furloughed from his job in sales with New Balance, and the pair set up a roaster in Olbur’s garage. In April 2020, a new subscriptionbased business was born: Bella’s Beans, named after McGuire’s daughter. As people were stuck in their homes during the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak, they appreciated having freshly roasted beans show up at their door. “We want to make you the [freshest] coffee that you could have. We roast on Sundays, and I will deliver on Sunday afternoon or on Monday morning,” Olbur says. Bella’s Beans is also all about community. “Half of our business is really service-oriented,” he says. “During the pandemic we roasted about 270 samples for all the teachers in Granville. We’ve roasted for all of the firefighters in Granville.” Bella’s Beans delivery is free in Granville, but shipping is also available throughout Ohio. For now, the pair plan to stick to their direct-to-consumer model, but you can find a cup of Bella’s Beans coffee at Three Tigers Brewing Co. during brunch or at Seek-No-Further Cidery during special weekend events. bellasbeans.com
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Dining GUIDE DINNER Granville’s newest restaurant seeks to build a bridge between Korean and Japanese cuisine. Hashi (128 E. Broadway), meaning “bridge” in Japanese, is the work of general contractor and Granville resident Steven Baldwin and his mother, Sukye. Baldwin, who grew up in Gahanna, spent months renovating the former Moe’s Original BBQ space, filling it with white oak and clean lines. The menu features sushi prepared by chef Shabrina Thomas, using fish overnighted from Japan. Korean dishes such as kimchi pancakes, galbi beef and bulgogi round out the menu, all prepared by Bald-
A Familiar Name Launches Granville Bread Co.
win’s aunt (“imo” in Korean), recently a cook at the excellent Min Ga Korean Restaurant in Columbus. The plan is to serve the Korean dishes on push carts. “We’re keeping it pretty traditional,” he says. “They’ll come for the sushi, but they’ll keep coming back for the Korean food.” Hashi’s building is actually a twofer. Above the street-level restaurant, Baldwin is planning a music venue, cocktail bar and Korean street food spot dubbed Hashi Up that will be the only bar in town open until 2 a.m. For fine dining in the village, the stately Granville Inn (314 E. Broadway) is the obvious choice. The Jacobethan Revival-style inn,
open since 1924, is a popular spot for special occasions, so reservations are needed to snag a spot in the inn’s handsome Oak Room or on the patio. The menu features American grill fare such as French onion soup, filet and pan-roasted walleye. At press time, the inn was serving dinner only because of the pandemic. Call ahead to check. Popular among Denison students, Taco Dan’s (119 ½ S. Prospect St.) is an eclectic, laid-back taco shop and bar that feels like you’re hanging out in the owners’ house. The quirky eatery offers a pool table, a small bar and a menu of tacos, nachos, enchiladas and more.
Jjamppong (spicy Korean noodle soup) and seafood bokum at Hashi
Chris Crader is best known for the artisanal pizza chain he founded in Columbus, Harvest Pizzeria, but in the past year he has quietly opened a new wholesale bakery, Granville Bread Co. After living in German Village for 12 years, he and his family moved to Granville five years ago for the schools and the space. “Granville just has such a special and unique charm, and something you can’t find anywhere else in Central Ohio,” Crader says about the village. When the wholesale bakery Lucky Cat succumbed to the pandemic, Crader took over its Granville space. “Since we found out we had been awarded that pizza contract for the [Columbus] zoo, we were in dire need of a commissary space,” Crader says. Initially, he had no intention of opening a bakery, but the chance to offer freshly baked bread at his Harvest locations was too appealing. Crader, who rarely does anything halfway, has also hired some serious talent at his bakery, including head baker Kate Djupe, who most recently did great work at Service Bar. Other than Crader’s Harvest locations, you can find Granville Bread Co.’s offerings at Ross Granville Market and Lynd Fruit Farm. The bakery also makes focaccia pizza crust for Harvest’s new sister concept, Silo in German Village. Crader says he’s always looking for an opportunity to bring Harvest to Granville, but the right location hasn’t surfaced yet. He also hopes to bring a breakfast-lunch-dinner concept to the area, though he’s mum on the details. Stay tuned. 88
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Clockwise from left, The 1812 Lounge at Buxton Inn; a flight of beers from Three Tigers Brewing Co.; Seek-No-Further Cidery
DRINKS Fancy a drink with the ghosts? Founded in 1812 as a tavern and stagecoach stop, the quaint Buxton Inn (313 E. Broadway) is Ohio’s longest continuously running inn and was once a stop on the Underground Railroad. Today, the Buxton proudly touts its haunted hotel status (poltergeist activity is said to be common in room Nos. 7 and 9), and the inn hosts ghost story/history tours through mid-November. Visitors can stop for a drink at Buxton’s handsome main bar known as The 1812 Lounge, which features a wonderful, mirrored chandelier and a large painting titled “Flaming June,” a local artist’s reproduction of the original. The lounge offers happy hour 4–6 p.m. Tuesday through Friday. Or you can head downstairs to The Tavern (call ahead for hours), a more rustic watering hole in the cellar. But you know what they say about going down to the basement. The taproom at Three Tigers Brewing Co. (140 N. Prospect St.) has quickly become one of the village’s most beloved watering holes since opening in 2016, and it’s ready to expand. The brewery and its sister restaurant, Vietnamese-inspired Mai Chau Kitchen, have secured village approval to
Something Sweet At Whit’s Frozen Custard (138 E. Broadway), customers can choose from vanilla, chocolate or a flavor of the week and then load up the toppings. Granville happens to be home to the first location of Whit’s, which now boasts frozen custard shops across 10 states (many of them offering vegan flavors). The popular Granville shop, founded in 2003 by Chuck and Lisa Whitman, will soon move a block east into a roomier space with a paved patio—the yellow house located at 266 E. Broadway that once housed Goumas Confections.
move into a much larger space just across the street—the former Granville Fire Station building. While construction finishes, ask bar manager Brett Fulton to pour you one of Three Tigers’ house brews—such as the Small Axe pale ale or Brother Sam oatmeal stout. A favorite among locals, Snapshots Lounge is a shabby-chic neighborhood bar, eatery and patio that resides in an old house with photo snapshots lining the walls. The
menu is classic American and affordable, with salads, sandwiches, burgers, mac ’n’ cheese and rotating specials. Grab a beer and order Luke’s Sinful Snack, aka potato chip nachos. Live music takes place weekly, and don’t miss Nana’s Naked Cheesecake, a family recipe. You won’t want to overlook the white barn known as Seek-No-Further Cidery (126 E. Elm St.), only the second cidery in Central Ohio (after Mad Moon Hard Cider). At this new addition to the village, owner Trent Beers celebrates Granville’s ties to New England with house-made dry ciders, guest ciders, cocktails and cider slushies. Visitors have multiple seating options at this 1,300-square-foot cidery, including a downstairs bar, an upstairs “lodge” and an inviting patio. ◆ NOVEMBER 2021 COLUMBUS MONTHLY
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Dining SHORT ORDER Jewelry Rice at Arezu
Savor the Silk Road The new pop-up Arezu is serving vegan Persian fare at a revived Double Happiness. BY ERIN EDWARDS
Last decade, Double Happiness (482 S. Front St.) was a one-of-a-kind music venue—a hip combination of Asian kitsch (red lanterns, golden Buddhas, a TV playing B-movies) and Brewery District chic (oodles of exposed brick in a funky, shotgun-style space). The venue’s food was memorable too, with skewered meats from a Japanese pop-up called FreshStreet Yakitori. But in 2017, owner Yalan Papillons shuttered the quirky bar to focus on her reiki practice and raising her child. This year, Double Happiness has returned to booking bands, with a new kitchen concept in tow: Arezu, open Thursday through Saturday. Working the front-of-house at this Persian food pop-up is Amir Salem, a lanky bundle of positive energy. He was a customer at the old 90
Double Happiness, and a chance meeting with Papillons in fall 2020 led to the collaboration. “I think the world right now needs a place where people can come and feel welcome and feel love and feel all that good energy,” Salem recalls her telling him. She also said something that, in hindsight, felt like serendipity: “How cool would it be to have a mom in the kitchen?” So, Salem pitched the idea of opening a Persian food pop-up inside the bar, enlisting his mom, Afagh, as the cook. The mother of four raised her children in a refugee camp after fleeing Iran for Germany at age 34. Afagh and her kids eventually immigrated to the U.S. in 2000. Salem says it took a little persuading to get his mom to adapt her family recipes for a mostly vegan menu. (Cheese and yogurt are used sparingly.) The decision to focus on vegan Persian fare was primarily an environmental one, he says. Start your meal at Arezu (which loosely translates to “desire”) with the wonderful Persian dolmeh ($10)–little purses of seasoned, tomatoey rice stuffed in grape leaves. One must-order entrée is the koobideh kebab ($16), a pair of tender and flavorful kebabs that will fool you into thinking the beef is real and not a vegan substitute—in this case, Impossible Foods ground beef. (The
trick to getting plant-based meat to stick to kebab skewers is to make sure the skewers are very, very cold, Salem says.) The grilled “meat” comes paired with fragrant rice and grilled tomatoes, which are essential. For a taste of a truly ancient Persian dish, order the ghormeh sabzi, a “5,000-year-old recipe” of stewed kidney beans and herbs (such as fenugreek and parsley) that is often considered Iran’s national dish. The dish gets a sour note from dried Persian limes. I recommend pairing the kebabs or the stew with what Arezu calls Jewelry Rice ($4). Typically known as Persian jeweled rice for its colorful toppings, nonvegan versions are often quite buttery, though that’s not the case here. This made-for-Instagram rice platter is decorated with flavor and fragrance in the form of candied orange peels (flown in from Iran), pistachios, barberries, raisins and almonds. If two of you are dining, I recommend ordering the Great Bazaar ($50), designed to give a broad overview of Arezu’s offerings. I also recommend you ask if tea is available, which is usually served with Arezu’s sweet pistachio brittle (aka sohan). The pairing makes for a nice little postscript to the meal. In short: The vegan food served at Arezu is lovely, but it’s the hospitality from Salem and his mother that will have you cheering for their success. ◆
PHOTO: TIM JOHNSON
Arezu 482 S. Front St., Brewery District (inside Double Happiness), 567-333-0265
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COPY & TASTE Dining
Food & Drink News BY ERIN EDWARDS
OPENINGS & ANNOUNCEMENTS In October, Chapman’s Eat Market (739 S. Third St.) was lauded by The New York Times as one of America’s “50 most vibrant and delicious restaurants in 2021.” Chapman’s, which chef BJ Lieberman opened in August 2020, was the only Ohio restaurant to make the list. Oshio Station, a new sushi and bento box spot owned by Daniel Kim, made an October debut at 194 S. High St. The menu includes salads, sushi rolls, udon soup, onigiri, chicken katsudon, bento boxes, ramen cups and more. The Downtown eatery, located at Highpoint on Columbus Commons, is the sister restaurant to Oshio, which is located at 974 W. Fifth Ave. in Grandview.
Above, khao soi from Chapman’s Eat Market in German Village; below, Sweet Carrot’s brisket on a corn cake, pulled pork on mac ’n’ cheese and carrot cake
Village after 23 years, effective immediately. The reason given was an inability to “come to terms with the building owners on a new lease that would ensure our continued success.” The homestyle restaurant McCarthy’s Wildflower Café & Catering (3420 Indianola Ave.), open since 1999, shut down for good Sunday, Sept. 26. In a statement on social media, the owners wrote: “Even with the incredible support of the community, the last few years have been deeply challenging not only financially and logistically, but also emotionally. We are simply exhausted. Thank you to everyone who supported us over the past 22 years, and to our beautiful neighborhood of Clintonville for making us feel so welcomed and loved.”
Union County has a new brewery and taproom. In early October, Walking Distance Brewing Co. opened in a historic building at 222 E. Eighth St. in Uptown Marysville. Zorba’s Diner opened recently in Broadmoor Centre on the East Side. The Albanian-owned eatery, which fills the space left vacant by Block’s Bagels at 3415 E. Broad St., serves diner classics such as omelets, pancakes, burgers and Coney dogs.
PHOTOS: TIM JOHNSON
PHOTO: TIM JOHNSON
A new Vietnamese restaurant called Pho Thanh has filled 4568 Cemetery Road, the former Kabob Shack space in Hilliard. The eatery offers beef pho, a variety of banh mi, rice and noodle dishes, Vietnamese coffee and smoothies. Roots Natural Kitchen, a fast-casual restaurant serving healthful salads and grain bowls, is expected to open the first week of November at 10 E. 15th Ave. in the University Square development at Ohio State.
GN International Grocery opened in October at 859 Windmiller Drive in Pickerington. According to the city of Pickerington, the new store is the largest Nepali-owned grocery in the country. CLOSINGS Columbus saw one of the year’s most shocking closures in mid-September when G. Michael’s Bistro & Bar (595 S. Third St.) announced it had shuttered in German
In mid-October, Angela Petro’s comfort food eatery Sweet Carrot closed its last remaining restaurant, 1417 W. Fifth Ave. in Grandview. “Without a clear end to the challenges of the pandemic and its aftermath, I’ve decided that Sweet Carrot will close for dining and focus solely on catering for now,” Petro wrote on Facebook. To keep up with the latest restaurant/bar openings and closings, visit columbusmonthly.com to subscribe to our food newsletter, Copy & Taste. NOVEMBER 2021 COLUMBUS MONTHLY
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Dining GLOBAL
More to Life Than Momos Want to deepen your experience with Himalayanstyle dishes? Check out these five Central Ohio spots. BY BETHIA WOOLF
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Vegetable thali and bhatmas sadeko at Everest Cuisine
Chinese influence is often evident in Nepalese cooking, and never more so than in the chow mein served at Namaste Indo-Nepali Cuisine (1279 Morse Road). Among the regulars at the no-frills Northland location, many routinely opt for this dish consisting of pan-fried noodles, a protein of your choice, vegetables including cabbage and onion, and cilantro. Nepalese versions of this dish are notable for being less oily and more vegetable-packed than their Chinese chow mein counterparts, and Namaste’s exemplifies this distinction. Noodles are also central to thukpa. Originating in Tibet, the dish can vary significantly from restaurant to restaurant (and region to region) but always consists of noodles in a soup. In Dublin, Momo Ghar’s (2800 Festival Lane) rendition is mild and
comforting, featuring a chicken and vegetable broth redolent of ginger, vegetables including cabbage, carrot, celery, scallion and spinach, and the protein of your choice. Vegetarian thukpa is also offered, and either version vibes like a heartier pho hailing from a cooler climate. If you’d like to try a variety of Nepalese favorites in one go, Everest Cuisine (652 High St.) in Worthington is happy to provide you with its featured Nepalese thali platter. Consisting of rice, two traditional vegetable preparations, papad (crispy seasoned flatbread), achar (spicy pickles), salad, raita (a yogurt condiment), the curry of your choice and a dessert, these platters amount to an impressive overview of large swaths of the cuisine. Curries include vegetable, chicken or goat, and all are proven crowd-pleasers. ◆
PHOTO: JODI MILLER
If it was inevitable that the events of the last couple of years would curb the growth of our restaurant scene, we’re pretty sure that Nepalese restaurateurs didn’t get the message. At least five Nepalese eateries have opened within the last year. Central Ohio has one of the largest communities of Bhutanese-Nepali refugees in the country, numbering around 30,000. Nepalese cuisine was first introduced to Central Ohio in 2013 with the opening of Namaste IndoNepali Cuisine and reached the mainstream in 2016 with the celebrated debut of Momo Ghar and its Guy Fieri-approved momo dumplings. Since then, Nepalese food has flourished, with at least 14 restaurants currently dotting the metropolitan landscape. With them comes a wide variety of menu items that reflect not only the vibrant range of Nepalese foods but also the small country’s location between the culinary heavyweights of India and China. While Momo Ghar’s delectable dumplings deserve every bit of the adoration they’ve received, there’s plenty to explore beyond the momo. You’ll likely feel like an explorer upon arriving at Yeti Express (12565 National Road SW), situated along a desolate stretch of U.S. Route 40 in Pataskala, just east of Reynoldsburg. Though far from any population centers, Yeti Express is ideally situated to capture the steady stream of Bhutanese-Nepali workers commuting to and from the nearby Amazon fulfillment center. The restaurant’s sukuti, cured and then fried beef slices served with onions and peppers, is not only a customer favorite but also pairs deliciously with a good lager. Himalayan Grille (1307 Stoneridge Drive) in Gahanna also boasts a great rendition of another traditional Nepalese beer pairing. Using customary Himalayan grilling techniques, the restaurant turns marinated and seasoned goat into bite-sized chunks of flamekissed umami known as khasi ko sekuwa. COLUMBUS MONTHLY NOVEMBER 2021
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Dining SCOVILLE SCALE
PHOTOS: FROM LEFT, COURTESY JOSH GANDEE; WILL SHILLING; ERIN EDWARDS; NATHAN RAY SEEBECK/USA TODAY NETWORK
HOT
t
What’s hot and what’s not on the Columbus food and drink scene It’s hard to get a dinner reservation at Pelino’s Pasta, but snag a seat at the bar if you can. The plush, emerald-green bar Kudos to Swainway chairs are some of the most Urban Farm for opening comfortable in town. Beechwold Farm Aquavit. This Market, a lovely little Scandinavian spirit, market on Indianola known for its caraway that sells veggies, house and dill notes, is lately plants and Ohiobeing showcased in raised meats. A CSA Eight legs are cocktails at Comune program is also in. Octopus is (pictured), The Bottle available. seeing a surge Shop and others thanks on local menus to Norden Aquavit, an such as Veritas, award-winning small Novella Osteria, In an amazing resurbatch distillery from Goodale Station, gence for an un-sexy Detroit. Skål! Lupo and Speck. 1990s technology, QR code menus look like they might be here to stay.
Hot honey, we love you drizzled on pizza, but you are on the verge of being played out.
The bartender at a German Village establishment who got a drink order wrong and proceeded to pour the cava back into its bottle. Not cool, my guy.
Urban Meyer letting a woman (not Shelley) grind on him at his Short North bar was not a good look. What’s next? A new coffee shop called Urban Grind House?
During a time of incredible strain on restaurants—including high food costs and a hiring crisis— landlord disputes are taking far too many of our favorites, including G. Michael’s Bistro & Bar, which closed in September after 23 years.
NOT
FIVE STAR PROFESSIONAL Who will be named a 2022 award winner?
PHOTO: JODI MILLER
Find out in a special section of the June issue. Tell us about your home professional today — they could win the Five Star award! Go to www.fivestarprofessional.com/ homesurvey or call 651-259-1865.
NOVEMBER 2021 COLUMBUS MONTHLY
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Dining DRINK
Chai Guy For Sandeep Mehta, an entrepreneurial idea also became a way to connect with home. BY NICHOLAS DEKKER
When Sandeep Mehta lost his job at the start of the COVID pandemic, he suddenly discovered himself at home with three small children. Amid the upheaval, he found something he had lost since moving to the United States in 2009: time in the morning to make fresh masala chai, the spicy, sweet tea that’s a staple in Indian culture. As his morning tea routine became established, Mehta began sharing his homemade chai concentrate with friends, family and neighbors. “It just kind of took off,” he says. Before long, he created a business and named it for what he had become: the Indian Chai Guy. Now he sells his concentrate under that name through his website while promoting it on his Instagram feed. Using Assam black tea as his base, Mehta creates batches of 32-ounce jars to order and then arranges curbside pick-up or local delivery. The concentrate comes in both sweetened and unsweetened versions, ready for customers to blend with whatever milk, dairy-free or otherwise, they prefer. For Mehta, making the chai serves as a business but also as a way to remember home. “I met my wife 13 years ago while she was traveling in India,” he says. “I moved to New York City to start a life with her, and five years ago we moved to Columbus to be closer to her family when we decided to have kids. But all of my family is in India, and while we get to visit them, making chai and sharing those rituals and traditions helps me feel connected to them.” Indeed, family is the origin behind Mehta’s chai recipe. Like many comfort foods across the globe—think curries, spaghetti sauces, pies, dumplings—each family has its own version that often spans genera94
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tions. “And, of course, there are varieties by region,” Mehta adds. “I spent many hours and days FaceTiming with my mum and grandma in New Delhi, trying to get the recipe exactly like they make it. This recipe has been passed down through the Mehta family for generations, and it is a special way to stay connected with them during the long pandemic. My wife and I are foster parents in Columbus, so not only do I get to pass on my recipe to my son, but to all of the kids we care for before they reunify with their families.” Mehta didn’t reveal his family’s recipe, but he did share that he uses fresh spices and crushed raw ginger in his version. “My chai is brewed in small batches, as an order is placed,” he says, “so the spice combinations are the freshest, and this allows their full flavor to shine.” Mehta says his tea is also adaptable to different preparations. “Chai in India is always hot, so it wasn’t until I moved here that I had ever even heard of an iced chai,” he says. “But that’s the great part about a concentrate; you can pour it over ice or heat it, and they’re both delicious.” Mehta hopes to someday expand his offerings beyond local pick-up and delivery. “We would love to start selling our concentrate at markets and retailers, or a mobile cart,” he says. “We are currently looking for the right commercial kitchen partnership.”
It’s easy to understand why Mehta would turn to the soothing practice of making chai during the pandemic: It speaks to the comfort of home. “Chai is life in India, it is a big part of our culture,” he says. “When guests, friends, family come to your home, chai is always a part of the greeting. We don’t even ask, we just pour. It is also a part of street culture; on every corner in India is a chaiwallah [chai seller]. Chai is accessible to all. Regardless of how much money you have or the caste your family comes from, we all have chai in common. Everything from neighborly gossip to heated political discussions happens over a cup of chai.” indianchaiguy.com
Where Else to Get Your Chai Fix Many restaurants across Columbus, particularly Indian and Somali eateries, as well as some local coffee shops, create their own chai. Here are a few: Dosa Corner To accompany its vegetarian South Indian menu, Dosa Corner on the Northwest Side brews up a custom recipe for hot chai. Global Gallery This Clintonville coffee shop and gallery crafts its own concentrate from fair-trade and organic black tea seasoned with cardamom, cloves and cinnamon. Hoyo’s Kitchen This Somali fast-casual stall in the North Market serves a popular hot chai that’s rich with cinnamon, cloves, ginger and cardamom. Park Service Coffee The owners of this trailer craft their own recipe for chai using a mix of spices including cinnamon, cardamom, peppercorns, nutmeg and “whole-ass Madagascar vanilla bean.”
PHOTOS: TIM JOHNSON
Ginevra Café This Somali eatery serves a fragrant version of hot chai that pairs beautifully with chicken suqaar or stewed goat.
Sandeep Mehta, the Indian Chai Guy
Zen Cha Tea Salon Both locations of Zen Cha (Bexley and Short North) serve six to eight different chai teas based on their own recipe, from a masala chai to coconut to cinnamon mint. NOVEMBER 2021 COLUMBUS MONTHLY
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let’s eat OUR GUIDE TO THE BEST RESTAURANTS IN COLUMBUS
Editor’s Note: While most Central Ohio restaurants have reopened for dine-in service, others remain carryout only. Our listings include restaurants that are open for dine-in, carryout, delivery or all three. This is not a comprehensive list. Given the fluid nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, please call restaurants to check hours and menu availability. 101 Beer Kitchen Gastropub | 7509 Sawmill Rd., Dublin, 614-210-1010; 397 Stoneridge Ln., Gahanna, 614-934-5501; 817 Polaris Pkwy., Westerville, 614-776-4775. At this expertly executed gastropub (its owners could school others in the art of developing a restaurant), craft brews are paired with made-from-scratch, seasonal dishes. BRLD $$ Addis Restaurant Ethiopian | 3750 Cleveland Ave., North Side, 614-2698680. The injera here is about as good as it gets with traditional Ethiopian dishes like tibs, kitfo and doro wot. LD $$ Alfie’s Wholesome Food Sandwich Shop | 221 E. Broadway, Granville, 740-3211111. This charming eatery in the heart of Granville offers healthful salads and sandwiches like the Happy Tummy salad or the California Veggie sandwich (which can both be prepared vegan). Alfie’s new ghost kitchen delivers in Columbus. LD $ Alqueria Farmhouse Kitchen Contemporary American | 247 King Ave., Campus, 614-824-5579. This rustic yet refined neighborhood restaurant is the work of two veteran chefs. Expect fine cheeses and charcuterie to start, plus entrées like buttermilk fried chicken and walleye with heirloom grits. The bar offers several cocktails and takes care in selecting its craft beers and wines. LD $$$ Ampersand Asian Supper Club Asian | 940 N. High St., Short North, 614-928-3333. Megan Ada’s Ampersand serves ramen, donburi rice bowls and more in the heart of the Short North. This sister restaurant to Westerville’s Asterisk Supper Club also offers craft cocktails and a variety of sakes. LD $$ Amul India Restaurant Indian | 5871 Sawmill Rd., Dublin, 614-734-1600. One of Central Ohio’s most elegantly decorated Indian restaurants serves a full menu of Northern Indian dishes from tikka masala to chicken sabaji, a favorite among Indian patrons. LD $$ Arepazo Latin American | 515 S. High St., Brewery District, 614-914-8878; 93 N. High St., Gahanna, 614-471-7296. Owners Carlos and Carolina Gutierrez serve tapas
and entrées in a chic and casual atmosphere with a focus on Venezuelan and Colombian fare. LD $$
waffles at brunch, chicken adobo and halo-halo, a shaved ice sundae. BRLD $$
Asterisk Supper Club American | 14 N. State St., Westerville, 614-776-4633. Owner Megan Ada offers teatime and suppertime in a bibliophile’s dream atmosphere. Craft cocktails are served at a handsome bar, while the eclectic menu leans on comfort foods like deviled eggs, meatloaf and chicken pot pie. LD $$
Borgata Pizza Café Italian | 1086 N. Fourth St., Italian Village, 614-505-2630; 5701 Parkville St., North Side, 614-891-2345; 2285 W. Dublin-Granville Rd., Northwest Side, 614-396-8758. A neighborhood Italian eatery specializing in New Yorkstyle pizza, scratch-made pastas, calzones and panini. Try the ricotta cavatelli with marinara or spicy stuffed peppers—tender Cubanelle peppers with marinara and gooey mozzarella cheese. LD $$
The Avenue Steak Tavern Steakhouse | 94 N. High St., Dublin, 614-591-9000; 1307 Grandview Ave., Grandview, 614-485-9447. Cameron Mitchell’s homage to the steakhouses of yore. The restaurant’s retro design and clubby atmosphere are teamed with a menu boasting all the classics: oysters Rockefeller, beefsteak tomato salad, creamed spinach, potatoes in all the steakhouse ways and, of course, numerous cuts of beef. BRD $$$$ Bake Me Happy Café & Bakery | 6750 Longshore St., Dublin, 614-6838787; 106 E. Moler St., Merion Village, 614-477-3642. This 100-percent gluten-free coffee shop and retail bakery is an extension of Bake Me Happy’s growing wholesale business. The cheerful café offers coffee from local roasters, nostalgic treats and some savory offerings. BL $ Bamboo Thai Kitchen Thai | 774 Bethel Rd., Northwest Side, 614-326-1950. This bright spot in a drab strip mall offers well-executed Thai staples like som tum (green papaya salad), flavorful green and red curries and pad thai, plus some Vietnamese, Korean and Chinese dishes. LD $$ Bangkok Grocery & Restaurant Thai | 3277 Refugee Rd., East Side, 614-231-8787. A family-owned grocery and eatery specializing in authentic Thai fare for more than 30 years. Go for some of the city’s best pad thai, tom yum soup, nam tok and Thai curries. LD $ Bonifacio Filipino | 1577 King Ave., Fifth by Northwest, 614-9148115. This modern take on Filipino home cooking from owner Krizzia Yanga features traditional brunch and dinner dishes, fast-casual lunches and occasional kamayan-style dinners. Try the fried chicken and ube
Boxwood Biscuit Co. American | 19 W. Russell St., Short North, 614-745-2105. The owners of the Law Bird cocktail bar have teamed up with chef Tyler Minnis to open this fried chicken and biscuits joint near Goodale Park. The menu features biscuits and gravy, breakfast sandwiches, fried chicken sandwiches and more. BL $ Brassica Mediterranean/Middle Eastern | 2212 E. Main St., Bexley, 614-929-9990; 4012 Townsfair Way, Easton, 614532-6865; 680 N. High St., Short North, 614-867-5885; 1442 W. Lane Ave., Upper Arlington, 614-929-9997. From the owners of Northstar Café comes this buildit-yourself eatery with a focus on fresh vegetables and proteins spiked with bold Middle Eastern and Mediterranean spices. LD $$ Brekkie Shack American | 1060 Yard St., Grandview, 614-208-7766. Staying true to its name, this cheerful Grandview Yard spot focuses on breakfast, with scratch-baked goods, savory breakfast sandwiches, pancakes and coffee from Crimson Cup. Beer and cocktails are also available. BBRL $ Brown Bag Deli Deli | 898 Mohawk St., German Village, 614-443-4214. The longtime German Village deli keeps it simple yet tasty with crave-worthy sandwiches like the turkeyand-cranberry-mayo-topped Village Addiction, plus daily soups, salads and seasonal sides on display under the counter. LD $ Buckeye Donuts Bakery | 1998 N. High St., Campus, 614-291-3923. A Campus legend since 1969, Buckeye Donuts is
Let’s Eat comprises Columbus Monthly editors’ picks and is updated monthly based on available space. Send updates to eedwards@columbusmonthly.com. $$$$ $$$ $$ $
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Average entrée $26 and higher Average entrée $16–$25 Average entrée $11–$15 Average entrée under $10
- Valet Available
Outdoor Patio Seating
B Breakfast BR Brunch L Lunch D
Dinner
Critics’ Choice Columbus Classic
NEW! Restaurant has opened within the last few months.
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open 24 hours to satisfy cravings for classic doughnuts and diner-style cuisine at all hours of the day. BLD $ Buckeye Pho Vietnamese | 761 Bethel Rd., Northwest Side, 614-4512828. Venture to this strip mall eatery for high-quality Vietnamese fare with modern décor. LD $ Cap City Fine Diner & Bar American | 6644 Riverside Dr., Dublin, 614-8897865; 1299 Olentangy River Rd., Fifth by Northwest, 614-291-3663; 1301 Stoneridge Dr., Gahanna, 614478-9999. Cameron Mitchell’s popular, stylish diner serves retro fare with an upscale twist. Think American cuisine, like meatloaf, chili dogs, pork chops and homemade pies and desserts. BRLD $$ Chapman’s Eat Market Contemporary American | 739 S. Third St., German Village, 614-444-0917. Chef BJ Lieberman’s debut on the local dining scene fills the original home of Max & Erma’s in German Village. The renovated space is fun and sophisticated, sporting a palette of bold wallpapers with rose pink and green accents. Diners can expect creative and ingredient-driven dishes, fine cocktails and homemade ice cream. D $$$ Cherbourg Bakery Bakery | 541 S. Drexel Ave., Bexley, 614-725-4560. This quaint Bexley bakery offers high-quality sweet treats— cookies, muffins and double-lemon bars—without gluten or nuts. BL $ Ciao Café Coffee & Desserts | 2 N. Sandusky St., Delaware, 740-990-4003. This authentic gelateria in the heart of downtown Delaware serves Italian-style ice creams, espresso drinks and pastries. BLD $ Cleaver Contemporary American | 1099 W. First Ave., Grandview, 614-914-8057. At this neighborhood spot, the owners of The Butcher & Grocer offer a chef-driven menu of meat-centric fare that’s sourced responsibly. A full bar with happy hour specials sweetens the pot. D $$$ Comune Contemporary American | 677 Parsons Ave., Schumacher Place, 614-947-1012. Joe Galati’s restaurant and bar fills a void in Columbus with a plant-based approach to upscale dining. The seasonal menu includes shareable dishes like house-made pita, kimchi crispy rice, tempura cauliflower and sesame ice cream. D $$ Dirty Frank’s Hot Dog Palace American | 248 S. Fourth St., Downtown, 614-8244673. This hip hot dog joint with retro décor and oneof-a-kind wieners that can be topped with condiments such as sauerkraut, baked beans and Fritos. LD $ DK Diner American | 1715 W. Third Ave., Grandview, 614-4885160. The DK stands for doughnut kitchen at this off-the-beaten-path diner with a cozy atmosphere and local flavor. Enjoy breakfast all day. BLD $ Don Pocha Korean BBQ Korean | 4710 Reed Rd., Upper Arlington, 614-459-9292. A fun KBBQ spot where meat, seafood and vegetables are cooked at the table and paired with pickled side dishes (banchan) and dipping sauces. Flavorful Korean soups and stews round out the menu. LD $$ Donna’s Delicious Dozen Doughnuts | 5322 N. Hamilton Rd., Gahanna/New
Albany, 614-245-4859. At Traci Lukemire’s doughnut shop, customers can adorn warm doughnuts with a variety of toppings, drizzles and icings. BL $ Dosa Corner Indian | 1077 Old Henderson Rd., Northwest Side, 614459-5515. This affordable, family-owned South Indian spot specializes in expertly thin, pancake-like dosas, uthappam and vegetarian curries. LD $ Dough Mama Café & Bakery | 3335 N. High St., Clintonville, 614268-3662. The creation of Perrie Wilkof, this hip café showcases Dough Mama’s scratch-made pies, scones and savory eats like soups and biscuit sandwiches. BL $$ Due Amici Italian | 67 E. Gay St., Downtown, 614-224-9373. Exposed brick walls and modern black and white furniture give this Downtown Italian eatery an upscale feel. BRLD $$ Ena’s Caribbean Kitchen Caribbean | 2444 Cleveland Ave., North Linden, 614-262-0988. Founded more than 20 years ago by matriarch Vinell “Ena” Hayles, a native of Jamaica, this Linden area restaurant offers authentic Caribbean fare like jerk chicken, callaloo and goat curry. BRLD $$
Giuseppe’s Ritrovo Italian | 2268 E. Main St., Bexley, 614-235-4300.This unfussy Bexley restaurant is the place to go for classic Italian pasta dishes, such as Gamberi Diavola and Fettucine Calabrese. Italy plays just as big a role behind the bar with a lengthy wine list, a solid amaro selection and outstanding craft cocktails. LD $$ Goodale Station Contemporary American | 77 E. Nationwide Blvd., Downtown, 614-227-9400. Topping Downtown’s Canopy by Hilton hotel is this bar and restaurant led by executive chef Tripp Mauldin. Boasting a handsome rooftop patio, the restaurant’s soaring city views are complemented by a large bar, high-end cocktails and dishes that hint at the chef’s Southern roots. BRD $$$ Hank’s Texas BBQ Barbecue | 2941 N. High St., Clintonville, 614-9726020. Central Texas-style brisket is king at chef Brad “Hank” Harkrider’s casual restaurant, which replaces Old Skool. Other offerings include smoked chicken, pulled pork, ribs and sides such as mac ’n’ cheese and baked beans. LD $$ Harvest Bar + Kitchen American | 940 S. Front St., Brewery District, 614-9477950; 2885 N. High St., Clintonville, 614-947-7133. From the owners of Harvest Pizzeria, these locations offer the same wood-kissed pies plus salads, sandwiches, burgers and more. LD $$
Figlio Wood Fired Pizza Italian | 1369 Grandview Ave., Fifth by Northwest, 614-481-8850; 3712 Riverside Dr., Upper Arlington, 614-459-6575. The vibe is simple and relaxed at both locations of this contemporary neighborhood restaurant with Italian dishes, wood-fired pizzas and a hearty wine list inspired by the travels of owners Peter and Laurie Danis. D $$
Harvest Pizzeria Pizza | 2376 E. Main St., Bexley, 614-824-4081; 45 N. High St., Dublin, 614-726-9919. Some of the best wood-fired pies in Central Ohio are served at this pizzeria owned by Grow Restaurants. LD $$
Final Cut Steak & Seafood Steakhouse | 200 Georgesville Rd., West Side, 614308-4540. A contemporary American steakhouse inside Hollywood Casino featuring USDA prime beef, wagyu beef, Colorado lamb, lobster and an extensive wine list. D $$$$
Heirloom Café Soup & Sandwiches | 1871 N. High St., Campus, 614292-2233. The fresh and seasonal café located inside the Wexner Center for the Arts always seems to have whatever we’re craving—homemade soup, sandwiches, salads, pastries and coffee drinks. BL $
Fox in the Snow Café Coffee & Desserts | 210 Thurman Ave., German Village; 1031 N. Fourth St., Italian Village; 160 W. Main St., New Albany. A bakery and coffee shop offering pastries made in-house daily and coffee from Tandem Coffee Roasters. Be sure not to miss the famous egg sandwich. BL $
High Bank Distillery Co. American | 1051 Goodale Blvd., Grandview, 614-8265347. High Bank’s dining room offers plenty of games, TVs and space for large groups. The cocktail menu puts the distillery’s own offerings to good use, while the food menu offers above-average pub fare such as brunch items, salads, locally sourced beef burgers and Hot Honey Chicken. BRLD $$$
Fukuryu Ramen Japanese | 4540 Bridge Park Ave., Dublin, 614-553-7392; 1600 W. Lane Ave., Upper Arlington, 614-929-5910. Jeff Tsao, whose family owned the Kahiki Supper Club, brings his Melbourne, Australia, ramen shop stateside. It’s quick, modern, bustling and adds a little rock ’n’ roll to traditional Japanese fare. The Signature Tonkotsu and Red Dragon ramens are standouts. LD $$ Gallo’s Kitchen & Bar Cajun & Creole/Italian | 2820 Nottingham Rd., Upper Arlington, 614-754-8176. Expanding on the menu at its sister Tap Room locations, Gallo’s Kitchen is more upscale, serving walleye with Louisiana crawfish sauce, chicken étouffée and Pasta Russo. D $$ Gallo’s Tap Room Pub Grub | 5019 Olentangy River Rd., Northwest Side, 614-457-2394; 240 N. Liberty St., Powell, 614-396-7309. A dark, modern sports bar brimming with top-notch beers and an updated pub grub menu featuring burgers, wings and pizza. LD $
Himalayan Grille Nepalese/Tibetan | 1307 Stoneridge Dr., Gahanna, 614-472-0211. A friendly spot serving Himalayan fare, like bhatmas sadeko, momos and vegetarian or meat thalis. Also serves familiar Indian fare like dal makhani, tandoori dishes and curries. LD $ Hot Chicken Takeover Southern | 4203 N. High St., Clintonville, 614-754-1151; 4198 Worth Ave., Easton, 614-532-7435; 59 Spruce St., Short North, 614-800-4538; 435 Polaris Parkway, Westerville, 614-954-0008. Head fryer/owner Joe DeLoss jumped on the Nashville hot chicken trend and hasn’t looked back. HCT does an excellent impression of Prince’s, the Nashville original—the fried chicken is juicy, super spicy (unless you ask them to hold the heat) and sits on a bed of white bread. LD $$ Hoyo’s Kitchen Somali | 59 Spruce St., Short North, 614-745-3943. At their fast-casual eatery inside North Market, own-
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ers Abdilahi and Mohamed Hassan serve authentic Somali cuisine with recipes by their mother, Hayat Dalmar. Choose a rice bowl, wrap or salad and top with flavorful proteins such as chicken suqaar or hilib ari (braised goat meat), plus lentils and veggies. Don’t skip the chai. LD $$ Jiu Thai Asian Café Chinese | 787 Bethel Rd., Northwest Side, 614-7325939. Located in the Olentangy Plaza shopping center, this restaurant specializes in flavorful, authentic cuisine from northern China. Go for the tofu skewers, lamb dumplings and handmade noodles in generous portions at low prices. LD $ Jonys Sushi Japanese | 195 Thurman Ave., German Village, 614706-4979. The owners of South Village Grille opened this takeout sushi shop right next door. The colorful shop offers appetizers, nigiri, sashimi, classic sushi rolls and a variety of interesting specialty rolls. LD $$$ Katalina’s Soup & Sandwiches | 3481 N. High St., Clintonville, 614-689-8896; 1105 Pennsylvania Ave., Harrison West, 614-294-2233. Expect an eclectic menu of Latinleaning items at this café known for its chalkboard walls, scratch-made salads and sandwiches and killer patio in the warmer months. BLD $$ Katzinger’s Delicatessen Deli | 7160 Muirfield Dr., Dublin, 614-389-8444; 475 S. Third St., German Village, 614-228-3354. A 35-year veteran in German Village, Katzinger’s is a traditional East Coast-style deli, with 60-plus sandwiches, potato latkes, pickle barrels, specialty foods and cheeses. The Dublin location opened in 2019. BLD $$ The Keep Kitchen & Liquor Bar Contemporary American | 50 W. Broad St., Mezzanine Level, LeVeque Tower, Downtown, 614-745-0322. The Keep strives for LeVeque Tower luxury without being overly fussy. Chef Courtney Nielsen emphasizes regional ingredients on her American bistro menu. The adjacent bar is darkly lit with an emphasis on craft cocktails. BBRD $$$ Kitchen Social American | 6767 Longshore St., Dublin; 8954 Lyra Dr., Polaris, 614-505-8492. A stylish, independently owned restaurant serving classic American grill fare alongside plates inspired by global cuisines. Start with the fanfavorite cheddar and scallion biscuits to go with any of the signature cocktails or a glass from the extensive wine list. The menu includes entrée salads, pizzas, tacos, seafood, steaks and more. BRLD $$$ Kittie’s Cakes Café & Bakery | 2424 E. Main St., Bexley, 614-929-5000; 495 S. Third St., German Village, 614-754-8828. Kittie’s intimate café next to Gramercy Books offers scratchmade scones, cinnamon rolls and cupcakes from its sister bakery, plus breakfast sandwiches, espresso drinks, wine and spirits. Meanwhile, the German Village bakery focuses on Kittie’s signature baked goods and drip coffee from Portland’s Stumptown. BL $ La Super Torta Mexican | 721 Georgesville Rd., West Side, 614-9289079. A strip-mall find that specializes in outstanding (and sizable) tortas. The no-frills eatery also serves tacos, gorditas and other authentic Mexican eats. BLD $ La Tavola Italian | 1664 W. First Ave., Grandview, 614-914-5455.
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Chef Rick Lopez owns this popular Old World Italian restaurant in Grandview. Dotted with green and yellow accents, the setting is open and welcoming. The food is simple and rustic Italian, with pizzas, housemade breads and pastas. D $$$
to the handmade dumplings that co-owner Phuntso Lama and her crew make by the hundreds, weekly. No trip is complete without the best-seller, jhol momo. The new location in Dublin offers an expanded menu and private dining rooms. LD $
Lalibela Ethiopian | 1111 S. Hamilton Rd., Whitehall, 614-2355355. One of the best places for Ethiopian food in the city is Lalibela, a strip-mall restaurant that’s modest on the outside and welcoming on the inside. Request to be seated at a mesob, a colorful woven communal table, and start off with some Ethiopian beer or honey wine. LD $$
Northstar Café American | 4241 N. High St., Clintonville, 614-7842233; 4015 Townsfair Way, Easton, 614-532-5444; 951 N. High St., Short North, 614-298-9999; 109 S. State St., Westerville, 614-394-8992. Northstar’s imaginative menu has a healthful emphasis on organic ingredients served in a casual, order-at-the-counter café setting. At peak times, it’s common to see diners lined up for the beet-laden veggie burger, pizzas, salads, rice-andveggie bowls and oversized cookies. BBRLD $$
Lan Viet Market Vietnamese | 6750 Longshore St., Dublin, 614-683-8783; 59 Spruce St., Short North, 614-227-4203. The Le family runs this counter-order spot in both North Market locations, offering tried-and true Vietnamese fare such as pho and banh mi plus a variety of rice and noodle bowls. LD $$ Lincoln Social Rooftop Small Plates | 9th Floor, 705 N. High St., Short North, 614-300-9494. Cameron Mitchell Restaurants’ first-ever rooftop lounge offers impressive views of the whole city from atop the Lincoln Building. Cocktails and socializing are the focus here, with a complementing menu of beach-y small plates and snacks. D $$ Lindey’s American | 169 E. Beck St., German Village, 614-228-4343. A Columbus institution, this upscale German Village restaurant with Upper East Side New York flair is a diner favorite, no doubt due to its classic and consistently good fine-dining fare and lush patio. BRLD $$$ The Market Italian Village Mediterranean | 1022 Summit St., Italian Village, 614745-2147. What used to be a shady carryout is now a hip destination for experiential dining (including a new chef’s counter). BRD $$ Martha’s Fusion Kitchen Mexican | 3331 Maize Rd., North Linden, 614-914-8833. This hidden gem gleans praise for its delicious birria tacos, but don’t miss the pozole, enchiladas and other authentic Mexican dishes. Gyros and subs add “fusion” to the mix. LD $$ Min Ga Korean Restaurant Korean | 800 Bethel Rd., Northwest Side, 614-457-7331. This friendly strip-mall spot serves Korean specialities like kimchi, bibimbap, bulgogi and gopchang. LD $$ Mitchell’s Ocean Club Seafood | 4002 Easton Station, Easton, 614-416-2582. With wood-paneled décor, live piano music and martinis shaken tableside, the Ocean Club evokes the Rat Pack era. On the menu, expect high-end seafood like yellowfin tuna, teriyaki salmon and jumbo lump crab cakes. D $$$$ Modern Southern Table Southern | 1086 N. Fourth St., Italian Village, 614-5052637. Budd Dairy visitors can order fried chicken, catfish and low country shrimp and grits at this food hall eatery from owner Daisy Lewis. LD $$ Momo Ghar Nepalese/Tibetan | 2800 Festival Ln., Dublin, 614-7492901; 59 Spruce St., Short North, 614-495-6666. Since 2016, Momo Ghar has gained a loyal following thanks
Nosh on High American |149 S. High St., Downtown, 614-929-3373. Located across from Columbus Commons, this handsome, light-filled lunch and dinner spot serves creative “American-style tapas” and entrées ranging from salmon to pork belly. Wine dinners take place monthly. LD $$$ Old Mohawk Restaurant Pub Grub | 819 Mohawk St., German Village, 614444-7204. This German Village favorite housed in a historic building is rumored to have ties to Prohibition. On the menu is standard American bar fare, including the famed turtle soup. LD $ Paulie Gee’s Short North Pizza | 1195 N. High St., Short North, 614-808-0112. A Brooklyn-based pizzeria with Neapolitan-style pies and craft beer. Offers traditional and eclectic pizza toppings with names like the Hog Pit Brisket, the Greenpointer and the Ricotta Be Kiddin’ Me. D $$$ The Pearl Contemporary American | 88 N. High St., Dublin, 614-695-6255; 641 N. High St., Short North, 614-2270151. Gastropub meets oyster bar at this Cameron Mitchell restaurant with a throwback vibe, craft beer and barrel-aged cocktails. BRLD $$$ NEW! Pelino’s Pasta Italian | 245 King Ave., Campus, 614-849-6966. Coowners Vinny and Christina Pelino serve classic, scratch-made Italian fare using local, organic and imported Italian ingredients, with pasta made fresh from 100 percent semolina flour. Choose from a three- or four-course prix fixe menu. D $$$$ Portia’s Diner Diner/Vegan | 3269 N. High St., Clintonville, 614-9727130. This cozy diner from owner Portia Yiamouyiannis specializes in tasty, plant-based comfort food. Try out the flavorful breakfast burrito or the customer favorite Yumburger, a gluten- and soy-free veggie burger served on a gluten-free bun with classic burger toppings. BLD $$ Preston’s: A Burger Joint Burgers | 59 Spruce St., Short North, 614-400-1675. Chef Matthew Heaggans of Muse Hospitality is serving some of the best burgers (and pudding) in the city at this North Market spot. Don’t overlook the fried chicken and biscuits from Preston’s sibling brand, Honey’s. LD $ Ranchero Kitchen Latin American | 984 Morse Rd., North Side, 614-
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985-0083. Previously located in Saraga International Grocery, this Salvadoran eatery specializes in pupusas, thick tortillas stuffed with savory fillings. LD $ Ray Ray’s Hog Pit Barbecue | 424 W. Town St., Franklinton, 614-404-9742; 2619 High St., Old North, 614-753-1191; 41 Depot St., Powell, 614-441-1065; 5755 Maxtown Rd., Westerville, 614-329-6654. Since launching Ray Ray’s food truck at Ace of Cups, owner James Anderson has built a thriving barbecue business and snagged a James Beard nomination. Expect excellent barbecue fare, with ribs, pulled pork and beef brisket sandwiches, plus sides. LD $ Ray Ray’s Meat + Three Barbecue | 1256 Columbus Rd., Granville, 740-920-9103. Barbecue purist James Anderson has opened his first sit-down restaurant: a chef-driven riff on a Southern meat-and-three. Ray Ray’s beloved brisket, jerk chicken and ribs are all here, with the addition of new sides and desserts. The big kicker: This location serves Anderson Farms whole-hog barbecue daily. LD $$ The Refectory Restaurant & Wine Shop French | 1092 Bethel Rd., Northwest Side, 614451-9774. Columbus’ iconic French restaurant might put more effort into a single plate than an ordinary restaurant does into an entire menu. Inside this church-turned-fine-dining spot, expect impeccable service and a world-class wine cellar to pair with your meal. D $$$$ Scali Ristorante Italian | 1903 State Route 256, Reynoldsburg, 614-7597764. This strip mall gem opened by Frank and Judy Scali in 1993 pulls off sophisticated Italian-American fare with the genuine warmth of a neighborhood insti-
tution. The veal Parmesan and classic lasagna give red sauce a good name. D $$$ Schmidt’s Restaurant & Sausage Haus German | 240 E. Kossuth St., German Village, 614-444-6808. Hoist a stein of beer and treat your stomach to some hearty German food and culture at this longstanding restaurant popular with out-oftowners and locals alike. Bring a friend to help you enjoy huge portions of sausage, Wiener schnitzel, Bavarian cabbage rolls and cream puffs. LD $$ Sí Señor Peruvian Sandwiches & More Latin American | 1456 W. Fifth Ave., Fifth by Northwest, 614-369-1500. This Peruvian-style, order-at-thecounter sandwich shop adds Latin style to familiar American lunchtime staples. Go for the Chicharrón Peruano (fried pork shoulder sandwich), cilantro pasta salad and tres leches cake. BLD $ Skillet American | 410 E. Whittier St., Schumacher Pl., 614443-2266. Chef Kevin Caskey has developed a huge following for his creative comfort food, served out of a cozy, no-reservations Schumacher Place space. The menu changes nearly daily to reflect whatever local ingredients the chef can source. BBRL $$ Starliner Diner Diner | 4121 Main St., Hilliard, 614-529-1198. After 21 years in its Cemetery Road location, Starliner moved into a former post office in Old Hilliard. This funky diner serves giant helpings of zesty, Latin-leaning comfort food at breakfast, lunch and dinner. BLD $ Veritas Contemporary American | 11 W. Gay St., Down-
town, 614-745-3864. Chef Josh Dalton’s modern, tastingmenu-style restaurant celebrates the art and science of cooking while offering one of the finest dining experiences in town. Located in the Citizens Building at Gay and High streets, Veritas prides itself on excellent service and exhilarating cocktail and wine lists. D $$$$ Villa Nova Ristorante Italian | 5545 N. High St., Worthington, 614-8465777. A family-owned Italian eatery that’s a local favorite for its red-sauce Italian cuisine (manicotti, lasagna and ravioli), no-frills pizza and ice-cold beer. LD $$ Wario’s Beef and Pork American | 111 W. Nationwide Blvd., Arena District, 614-914-8338. This no-frills, East Coast-style sandwich shop from chef Stephan Madias saves the fireworks for the food. Go for the Philadelphia-inspired roasted pork and broccoli rabe or chicken cutlet sandwiches. Don’t skip the spuds. LD $$ Watershed Kitchen & Bar Contemporary American | 1145 Chesapeake Ave., Ste. D, Fifth by Northwest, 614-357-1936. Watershed complements its distillery with a handsome and proudly Midwestern restaurant and bar. The bar’s seasonal cocktail menu is always entertaining and top-shelf, while executive chef Jack Moore’s menu emphasizes quality product and shareable plates. D $$$ Wolf’s Ridge Brewing Contemporary American | 215 N. Fourth St., Downtown, 614-429-3936. French- and Californiacuisine-inspired Wolf’s Ridge is a truly delightful reflection of how we enjoy fine dining today—a happy marriage of high-end small plates, pints of housecrafted beer and craft cocktails. BRLD $$$
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Almost Famous The triumphs and tragedies of Dawn Powell, Central Ohio’s forgotten literary genius
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ILLUSTRATION: BETSY BECKER
By Peter Tonguette
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Given this environment, that Powell continued to write at all is miraculous, and it would be nice to say that all of her honest effort ultimately paid dividends. But there was no big break in the offing. “What is it like to get up in the morning and sit down on your fifth or sixth or seventh novel, and realize that all the ones before were underappreciated and undersold?” Kassie Rose asks, sensibly. Following Joseph’s involuntary retirement in 1957, when he hit age 67, severe financial straits compelled Dawn and her husband to leave their apartment (which was, inconveniently, converted to a co-op around the same time); hotel rooms would suffice until prospects improved thanks to a rich friend. Joseph died in 1962. A final novel, “The Golden Spur,” was a succès d’estime. In the end, it was not the loss of a parent or the reign of a horrid stepmother or the long journey from Mount Gilead to Greenwich Village or the frustration of literary neglect or even that strange tumor that finished off Dawn Powell: Colon cancer took her life on Nov. 14, 1965. She was 68. “Dawn, like most people, did not think she was going to die until it became exceedingly obvious,” Page says. She had slapped together a will, ill-advisedly designating as her executor a young friend named Jacqueline Miller Rice. In a sign of things to come, Rice did not claim Powell’s remains when her body, left to science, was ready for burial; instead, Powell would spend eternity in that mass grave on Hart Island. Possibly even worse: Rice permitted several of Powell’s novels to fall out of copyright; overtures to make film adaptations went unanswered. CHRISTOPHER PURDY HAS some ideas about how to kick-start the great Dawn Powell renaissance, at least within Central Ohio. “I would love for there to be a two- to three-day symposium on her work, maybe at Ohio State or the Ohioana Library,” Purdy says. “You could also involve the [Ohio State] Theatre Department and do scenes from a couple of her plays. … You could do readings. Her work is not really pedantic or scholarly.” 100
Maybe the revival will take place even more modestly than that—with adventurous readers doing as they have done for years: reading one Powell novel, then another, then another. They tell their friends, who tell their friends, forming a daisy chain of Powell enthusiasts. This summer, Gramercy Books set up a table spotlighting Powell’s work. It’s a start. Then again, maybe we need to think bigger. Page is blunt. “It will take a film,” he says, pointing to the renewed interest in the famously down-on-his-luck author Richard Yates: 16 years after Yates’ death, a movie adaptation of his great novel “Revolutionary Road,” with “Titanic” stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, made his work a hot commodity. But it’s not a new idea to bring Powell’s caustic, cutting vision to the screen. In the early 1990s, actress Anjelica Huston—the Academy Award-winning daughter of director-actor-writer John Huston—was given a copy of “Angels on Toast.” “I thought it was delicious,” Huston says. “Then, after that, I read ‘A Time to Be Born,’ ‘Turn, Magic Wheel,’ all of the New York novels to begin with, and then the Ohio novels. … I just feasted on Dawn Powell for about a year.” When you’re Anjelica Huston and you discover a new favorite writer, what do you do? You try to make a movie. Determined to direct “A Time to Be Born,” which she judged particularly cinematic, Huston first approached Carrie Fisher to write a screenplay. It could have been the perfect pairing: two wily, wise wits from different eras. But, when Huston went to meet with her, Fisher said she wanted to hand the project off to another writer. “So that kind of fell by the wayside,” Huston says. Then there was the time when Huston, having written her own adaptation of “A Time to Be Born,” got the project in front of the manager of Julia Roberts; the actress was a fan of the novel. “[Roberts’ manager] took a meeting with me, in which she sat behind this big oak desk in an office in New York and threw a ball to her Weimaraner puppy and gave me a discourse on how a script for Julia should be written,” Huston says. “I left the office so disheartened I almost gave up on the project right there.” As a last stab, Huston, soon to start shooting Wes Anderson’s “The Royal Tenenbaums,” decided she would slip a copy to her co-star, Gwyneth Paltrow. “I thought, ‘Well, you know, she’d be a good Clare Boothe Luce— Amanda Keeler,’” Huston says. “We did the movie. I never got a reply from her. It was an exercise in lovely young actresses not responding at all, on any level.”
Of course, that was more than 20 years ago. These days, readers and critics and even movie studio bosses are more attuned than they’ve ever been to the ways in which women writers’ voices have been silenced or overlooked. Maybe, finally, Powell will be given a fresh look. “People are thinking about women writers a little bit more intensely and critically in the last decade, but especially since a lot of revelations have come out about the publishing industry and how male it is, and the canon is just completely white and male,” says The New Yorker’s Syme. But if there are any hot young filmmakers out there contemplating the movie, television adaptation or streaming series that will launch the Powell renaissance, please check first with her biggest fan in Hollywood. “If anyone dares to do it without me,” Anjelica Huston says, “they’ll have hell to pay.” AFTER EIGHT MONTHS of reading Powell, reading about Powell and talking about Powell, I decide to visit the place from whence she came. On a pleasant day in early August, I take a day trip to Mount Gilead (pop. 3,700). The Powell historical marker, the only visible acknowledgment of the greatest writer ever to emerge from Morrow County, is tucked beside the public library building. It’s obscured by library signage and slightly overgrown foliage. To passersby who take the time to read it, the marker offers the bare facts (and not much more) of Powell’s life. Elsewhere, the village displays the emblems of modern, commercialized society. Yet, at least to my citified eyes, Mount Gilead appears more tethered to its past than similar places I’ve visited in rural Ohio. Maybe it’s the Victory Shaft Monument that stands at the center of Main Street—a solemn stone obelisk, built in 1919 in recognition of Morrow County’s enthusiastic war savings stamp efforts during World War I. Apart from that historical marker, though, there’s not too much evidence that a great American writer passed through here. The Powell family’s house on West North Street was knocked down (another house sprang up in its place), but her subsequent residence on Cherry Street still exists. Looking at the modest, two-story green house with a generous front porch, I can almost imagine the girl who once inhabited those walls, soaking in the drama around her even as she longed to flee—to Shelby, to Painesville, to New York City. The war dead may loom over Mount Gilead, but the village’s ghostliest presence is surely that of Dawn Powell. ◆
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BY ANDREW KING
Field of Schemes Long before the rest of the world heard about Bishop Sycamore, Ben Ferree was speaking out about the controversial school. Why was he ignored?
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PHOTO: TIM JOHNSON
The term “whistleblower” carries with it a certain weight. It evokes thoughts of Edward Snowden, Mark Felt and Daniel Ellsberg—insiders who took great risks to leak important information to the public. These people are rarely rewarded or revered for their courage and are often subject to ridicule, hatred and, in some cases, legal and societal repercussions. Ben Ferree says he doesn’t quite fit that definition, though it’s not entirely off-base, either. Indeed, he’s a skeptic, a truthteller and an unrelenting tipster who got me interested in a story that snowballed into one of the biggest sports scandals in Columbus. But Ferree didn’t uncover wrongdoing that occurred behind closed doors. The things he revealed were in plain sight, easy for people to see—as long as they were willing to open their eyes. You wouldn’t know it to look at his resume or his social media following, but Ferree is a central figure in one of the most intriguing and discussed sports stories of 2021—the rise and fall of Bishop Sycamore. The saga began in 2018, when Ferree learned about a school called Christians of Faith Academy. At the time, Ferree was the assistant director of officiating and sport management at the Ohio High School Athletic Association, the governing body for Ohio’s high school sports. The position was one of the lowest on the organizational totem pole—largely paperwork, routine phone calls and doublechecking. But Ferree managed to carve out a role he found interesting: a jack-of-alltrades investigator. COF Academy was new to Columbus, but soon the high school’s football team began to appear on the schedules of some of Ohio’s most visible programs. Ferree began looking into the school after another OHSAA official struggled to verify its enrollment, a key factor in calculating points earned for eligibility in the association’s playoffs. (A team gets more points for victories over larger schools.) That first conversation led to three years of work, investigation and frustration for Ferree. COF Academy made its way to major programs around Ohio and beyond, leaving behind an impressive legal trail as Roy Johnson, COF coach and self-described “face” of the program, and his business partner Jay Richardson—a WSYX/ABC 6 analyst and former Ohio State and NFL football player—were sued by banks, had vehicles repossessed and outran a number of unpaid debts. No more than about 50 players were ever around at a given time, and the school never had a building or even a functional website. Students reportedly never went to class, and parents began to pull players from the program. COF officials told everyone they were backed by the local chapter of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which later disowned the project entirely. Ben Ferree stands near the Stelzer Road site where Bishop Sycamore leaders said they planned to build a school.
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Nobody was. It was COVID!” He feels the media coverage around the story is unfair and exaggerated. The kids are going to school for the most part, he says. And the ones who aren’t are post-graduates in the program; they don’t have to go to school. This phone conversation occurs after reports emerged that Bishop Sycamore had fired Johnson. When asked if the reports are true, Johnson responds that he “pleads the Fifth.” After about six minutes, Johnson says he has to run. “Let me call you right back,” he says. I haven’t heard from him since. By now, Ferree is used to people ignoring him. When he first started investigating COF Academy in 2018, he compiled all the information he could—legal cases, evidence showing players were older than reported, the lack of classrooms or even a building—and started calling athletic directors. Despite all the information, almost no one changed their course. In its first year, COF managed to schedule Ohio powerhouses like Huber Heights Wayne, Cleveland St. Ignatius and Lakewood St. Edward, along with major programs outside of Ohio like North Allegheny and IMG Academy, a game that was later canceled. Ferree says only one athletic director took any action based on his information: Willie McGee from St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron. McGee thanked him and eventually canceled the game. (Reached for this article, McGee said he wasn’t interested in talking about anything related to Bishop Sycamore and didn’t remember the conversation with Ferree.) In his stints as a sports reporter, Ferree wrote stories with the potential for impact but struggled to break into the mainstream. He covered Ohio State sports for a local blog, Columbus Wired, and broke the exclusive story of a basketball player who was suspended for drug use. No other outlet ever specified why he was suspended; no other outlet ever referenced Ferree’s story. While covering the Columbus Crew for ProSoccerUSA, a defunct offshoot of the Orlando Sentinel, he told the story of a Crew player who played a game while concussed, having never been checked by team doctors. No changes were
made to MLS concussion policy and no other outlets followed up on the story. “I always thought, ‘Man, I just don’t know what news is. My radar for what is newsworthy and what is not must just be broken,’” he says. But it wasn’t just reporters and editors who weren’t listening to him. He found plenty of ways to have his word unheeded. The highest-profile example of Ferree’s futile warnings came in early 2018, when a bench-clearing fight broke out at a high school basketball game between Dayton Dunbar and Thurgood Marshall High School. Naturally, Ferree was tasked with investigating. OHSAA ruled that video showed several Dunbar players leaving the bench during the altercation and those players needed to serve suspensions. The school, however, declined to suspend the players. When OHSAA removed Dunbar from the association’s annual basketball tournament because of its failure to suspend those players, Dunbar sued the OHSAA in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court, claiming the players in question were not involved. The case went to trial, where Ferree got his chance to showcase his blunt disposition. “They put me up on the stand and accused me of doing a shoddy investigation,” he says. “One of the things they asked me was why I didn’t call the student’s mother to ask if her son was involved in the fight. I said, ‘Why would I waste my time? They would lie to me. People up here are lying to me right now. The head coach, principal and [athletic director] are all lying right now.’ The lawyer said, ‘So you’re going to say that under oath?’ I just said, ‘Yes.’” Judge Michael Krumholtz disagreed, reinstating the school for the tournament. Days later, however, Ferree was vindicated when video and photos surfaced that proved he was correct. Dayton Public Schools officials made public apologies and fired Dunbar coach Chuck Taylor, while athletic director Mark Baker and principal Crystal Phillips were placed on administrative leave with pay. Why be so brash? Why would he put himself on the line for a squabble over high school basketball? For Ferree, the more appropriate question is, “Why not?” “I really don’t care for the politics of high school sports,” he says. In the days before the nationally televised game against IMG, Ferree says he attempted to warn ESPN but could only reach voicemail boxes, which he assumes no one checked. Then, as the Bishop Sycamore drama unfolded before him on national television, he appreciated “announcers calling out their
lies” and was somewhat surprised to see the topic explode on social media. He had spent three years trying to tell people what was happening, but “Twitter did more in three hours than I did in three years.” It was bittersweet. Ferree wasn’t left feeling self-congratulatory or smug. If anything, Ferree says, Bishop Sycamore’s comeuppance was depressing. It reminded him of how little power he had. OHSAA is a private nonprofit; it doesn’t have any real enforcement power, and it can’t compel people to give information or subpoena a witness. To him, it’s just another layer of red tape. “For a long time, I thought people just didn’t believe me,” says Ferree, who left OHSAA in April of this year. “Now, I think they did believe me; they just didn’t care. I did all the work; I did a good investigation, I got the right results, and I can prove it. But it doesn’t change anything. So what’s the point of knowing? If nothing is going to change, what does it matter?” It’s tough to prove, but maybe it does matter. Beau Rugg, OHSAA’s director of officiating and sport management and Ferree’s former boss, says the organization now requires Ohio schools to play teams recognized by their state’s governing bodies, which should help remove the incentive for playing teams that aren’t real schools. As Bishop Sycamore’s story plays out, even Ferree allows himself a little hope that it will be a cautionary tale for others as schools cancel their games with Bishop Sycamore, now a national laughingstock. At the very least, Ferree is no longer the only person talking about COF Academy or Bishop Sycamore. In the days following the ESPN game, he found himself amid a true 15 minutes of fame. He was interviewed by a host of national and local news sources and earned a shout-out from Columbus Dispatch columnist Michael Arace. “Now, everybody’s listening to Ben Ferree,” Arace’s column began. Ferree has spent hours being interviewed on camera and is now signed on to participate in a Bishop Sycamore documentary project. For one triumphant (or annoying one, depending on your point of view) moment, the ghost of group chats past returned to my phone. “Bishop Sycamore had a game on ESPN!” Ferree messaged me and the others. As the news unfolded in the national media, our friend Guthrie got texts from other folks asking if he had seen the story. It had all come full circle. Ferree’s ramblings had finally found their audience. “I’m happy some people might start looking out for the kids, and I’m happy for Ben that someone finally wants to listen to him,” Guthrie says. “The joke is on them, though, because he’ll surely never shut up about it now.” ◆ NOVEMBER 2021 COLUMBUS MONTHLY
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Wouldn’t you like to be looking at your home? Ask your Realtor to market your home in the Executive Homes section of Columbus Monthly Magazine! East of I-71 call Telana Veil at (614) 469-6106 or e-mail at tveil@dispatch.com West of I-71 call Amy Vidrick at (614) 461-5153 or e-mail at avidrick@dispatch.com
SORRELL AND COMPANY
KELLER WILLIAMS CONSULTANTS
K W C P
Martha Corbett (614) 395-6551 martha@ sorrellandco.com
Alli Close (614) 726-9070 thecloseconnection. com
Ke (6 of co
STUNNING THREE STORY TUDOR IN GRANDVIEW HEIGHTS - situated on over .31 acre. Located on a dreamy, tree lined cul-de-sac. Built in the 1920’s this grand home has been completely renovated w/ large open kitchen, massive family room, with old charm intact. 4 bds, 3.5 baths, 2nd flr laundry rm. Huge Master bedrm w/ luxurious master bth. Enjoy entertaining on your private patio, covered side porch & built-in fire pit. Updated mechanicals & windows. Just a few mins to downtown. $1,199,000
NESTLED AT THE END OF A CUL DE SAC - and overlooking the 14th fairway of Jacks tournament course is this 10,000 SF home. Designed for maximum golf course views and entertaining! Enjoy the updated 1st fl. owner wing complete with dual closets, exercise space and office! Walkout lower level also has a stunning walk-in wine cellar!
CUTLER REAL ESTATE
COLDWELL BANKER REALTY
K W C P
Amy Conley (614) 595-4344 amy@conley andpartners.com
Mike Carruthers (614) 620-2640 www.mike carruthers.com
Ke (6 of co
2 W ROYAL FOREST BLVD - Beautiful blending of old & new. Many recent updates in this French Country homeincluding renovated kitchen & new appliances, new hardwood floors, new side-load driveway. Sits on half acre lot with screened porch. 4BD 3.5BA $659,000
258 N Parkview Avenue - Stately Stone Bexley 2 Story w/ PorteCochere – 4 to 5 Bedrooms – 3 ½ Baths – 4,793 Sq Ft – Large Foyer w/ Open Stairway – Living Room w/ Gas Log Fireplace – Family Room/ Den w/ French Doors – Additional, Larger Family Room– Kitchen w/ Granite Counters Open to Breakfast Area – 3 Car Detached Garage with Large Studio/Office Above – .528 Acre Lot – A+ Location!
FAULKNER REALTY GROUP
FAULKNER REALTY GROUP
JP Faulkner (614) 419-5757 JP@faulkner realty.com
JP Faulkner (614) 419-5757 JP@faulkner realty.com
TRULY AMAZING LOCATION - This Asian Adirondack perched high above Granville borrows from the arts & crafts movement & Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian style. Stunning vaulted living room & open kitchen/dining concept. The walkout lower-level features an oversize family room w/wood-burning fireplace, study alcove, 2 bdrms, bath, & storage. Lush landscape, Asian style waterfall, stone fire pit & staircase leading to downtown Granville.
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THE JACKSON ON HIGH - Dramatic, elegant, luxurious, classic & iconic. These are the words that have been used to describe The Jackson on High’ as quoted from the Short North Alliance. This unit was custom designed w/shared living in mind. Enter on the 4th floor to find a huge kitchen w/dining room, living room, balcony, guest suite & pantry. Wind down the spiral staircase to find a large great room, wet bar, half bath, a second balcony, laundry room & huge primary suite w/4-piece bath & walk-in closet.
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ome?
Wouldn’t you like to be looking at your home?
utive
Ask your Realtor to market your home in the Executive Homes section of Columbus Monthly Magazine! East of I-71 call Telana Veil at (614) 469-6106 or e-mail at tveil@dispatch.com West of I-71 call Amy Vidrick at (614) 461-5153 or e-mail at avidrick@dispatch.com
KELLER WILLIAMS CAPITAL PARTNERS
E 30 OAD N B 55 R CA ITH IVER W R LD Y SO TANG N LE
O
Kemp Group (614) 450-0082 office@relocate columbus.com
KELLER WILLIAMS CAPITAL PARTNERS
5530 OLENTANGY RIVER ROAD - Beautiful sprawling ranch with many updates and improvements located on almost 3 acre lot. Well maintained with mostly gleaming hdwd flooring. Living Room w/fireplace, lg eat-in kitchen w/SS appls and white cabinetry. Owners suite in addition to 2 additional bdrms. 3 Full baths and half bath. Enjoy watching the seasons unfold from the 4 season room. Amazing views from the patio or wrap around deck. Huge backyard for entertaining. Detached 2 car garage. Tenants Rights, 24 hr notice to show. $650,000
KELLER WILLIAMS CAPITAL PARTNERS
NEW ALBANY REALTY
Kemp Group (614) 450-0082 office@relocate columbus.com
Jane Kessler Lennox (614) 939-8938 janel@new albanyrealty.com
2040 STRATHSHIRE HALL LANE, POWELL - Exceptional home located in Loch Lomond has never been offered for sale before. Built by Dianne Builders, the gracious lines of the home and extraordinary grounds make for an enchanting private escape from the ordinary. Incredible workmanship, intricate cherry molding and woodwork on 1st & 2nd floors. Dramatic ceiling heights, den with custom built-ins, Great Room with grand 2 sty stone fireplace, one of 4 in the home. Lg entertaining spaces flow into chef’s kitchen. Massive owner suite, and add’l 3 BR & 2 full baths upstairs. Fin. bsmt offers endless opportunities w/ rec area, huge bar, indoor sports facility, full bath & sauna. The private backyard oasis offers mature landscaping, pool & pool house. $1,450,000
m/
CUTLER REAL ESTATE
y ad g? be re ket! n i r ll Se w to g ma no prin s ll u e s Ca or th f
5548 RIVERSIDE DRIVE - You’ve driven along the Scioto and seen this gated circular driveway & the rolling front yard full of mature trees overlooking the water. The interior of this home is just as impressive as the view. Classic architecture meets modern living w/a spacious & bright open floor plan full of hardwood floors, stone, moldings, & walls of windows. The great room is the heart of the home w/soaring ceilings & two stories of natural light. 3.22 acres of natural beauty await to run & play on. $1,145,000
n & a
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4525 ACKERLY FARM ROAD, NEW ALBANY - Amazing move in ready home walking distance to Market Street. Beautiful 1st flr owner’s suite w/3 additional BRs up w/rough-in for a bonus room/BR on the 2nd flr. Screened in porch w/fireplace. Huge fin. LL w/full bath & 5th BR. Oversized 3-car garage w/ room for storage. Fabulous kitchen w/huge island & built-in bench seating in casual dining area. This house is built for today’s lifestyle in mind. $1,350,000.
RE/MAX PREMIER CHOICE Kevin Sullivan (614) 419-2026 kevins@ columbus.rr.com
Neil Mathias (614) 580-1662 neil@themathiasteam.com
e
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Kemp Group (614) 450-0082 office@relocate columbus.com
5500 OLENTANGY RIVER ROAD - Beautiful custom mid century ranch perfectly tucked away on almost 2 acres. Updated and decorated to perfection with many architectural features. Outstanding entertaining kitchen, formal DR, and informal spaces. Owner suite is a complete wing w/ fireplace, updated spa like bath with 2 person shower & walk in closet. W/0 basement w/ exercise rm, add’l Family Rm, fireplace & wine cellar. Potential for 5 BRs. Views to die for from every window! Backyard is your own little slice of paradise with patios, seating vingettes, and to top it off, a pool to relax and be one with nature. If you are looking for a family compound opportunity, this is it. Property next door is also for sale (see 5503 Olentangy RR). $1,195,000
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E 00 OAD N B 55 R CA ITH IVER W R LD Y SO TANG N LE
AMAZING HOME IN TARTAN FIELDS - with beautiful views of the 4th Green & Fairway. 6BD, 5 Full BA, 2 Half BA, massive Owners Closet, 2 Story Office/Den, huge Florida Room and Walk out Lower-Level custom Home Theater and Wine Cellar that holds 800 bottles. $2,550,000
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City Quotient Sources: columbusalive.com; “Columbus Business and Industry Scrapbook,” Volume 1, Columbus Metropolitan Library; 1978 City of Columbus Annual Report; Judith B. Williams, historic preservation consultant; Open Air School National Register of Historic Places nomination form
Downtown’s Midcentury Modern Holdout I love the retro Beacon Building sign Downtown. Can you tell me about the building’s history? Columbus keeps losing examples of its midcentury modern architecture, but this one is still with us. The Columbus architectural firm Benham, Richards and Armstrong designed the building for the Beacon Mutual Indemnity Co., one of the many insurance firms Columbus has been known for over the years. Located at the northeast corner of West Gay and North Front streets, the sixstory building began construction in 1955 and was completed two years later. Its design was aggressively modern but had some very traditional materials, such as Indiana limestone for the south and west walls and red granite on a windowless corner block extending well above the roof. Its massive red “Beacon Building” neon sign on a corrugated teal backdrop made it hard to miss, as did the plain punched windows with an aluminum grid overlay. Three large aluminum ribs once ran from bottom to top on the west side near the building’s southwest corner, but most of these were removed for safety reasons in 2014. 104
The city of Columbus bought the Beacon in 1978 and housed several city agencies there before moving them to a new Front Street building in 2018. News reports said the Beacon Building would be sold to a private developer, but county records show that as of now it’s still owned by the city. The Open Air Building in Old North Columbus has been renovated, and businesses like Emmett’s Café and Understory, a sister brand of Wolf’s Ridge Brewing, are about to move in. What’s the story behind the building and its name? The former Neil Avenue Elementary School at 2571 Neil Ave. replaced a 1913 frame building built as an “open air” school, part of the city school system. The open air movement evolved from late 19th century efforts to control tuberculosis, which was rampant at the time. The idea was that atrisk children (but not those already sick) could fend off the disease if provided with abundant fresh air, outdoor play and nutritious food. The North Columbus location proved ideal because it also removed children from the
BY JEFF DARBEE
“distressing noise” of the central city where most of them lived. The U-shaped 1928 Open Air School was built as part of a $10 million program that gave the city 16 new elementary, junior high and high schools. It was dedicated in 1929 and designed by architect Howard Dwight Smith, best remembered as the designer of Ohio Stadium. Its structure is reinforced concrete, with brick and terra cotta on the exterior, and it reflects the Italian Renaissance Revival style popular at the time. As tuberculosis waned in the 1940s thanks to antibiotics, the building became a regular neighborhood school, though it also served numerous children with physical disabilities. It closed in 1975, was used as office space and then sat empty. Fortunately, it has been redone—in a certified historic rehabilitation that respected its architectural character—as a location for various commercial enterprises. Jeff Darbee is a preservationist, historian and author in Columbus. Send your questions to cityquotient@ columbusmonthly.com, and the answer might appear in a future column.
ILLUSTRATION: BRETT AFFRUNTI
A distinctive building and neon sign remain a beacon in Columbus.
COLUMBUS MONTHLY NOVEMBER 2021
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