"Good Neighbors"

Joyce Hughes: This is my house. This is my neighborhood Weinland Park. This represents rich history, my parents moved into this house when I was six months old. It was a community. People cared. There were families. Then, in the seventies people began to move away, other people came in and we started having gangs. There was violence. People weren't safe, they could not walk the streets like they had and they area became destitute. Around the year 2000, we began to establish civic associations in the community. And as we brought in people to talk to us, the neighborhood was suspicious. However, my neighbors have come to realize that the Ohio State University really is our friend. They're providing opportunities, training, education, support. Some of the projects that we have worked on with our partners would be the Schoenbaum Family Center, the Weinland Park School, the policing center which is going to house the pride center. And, of course, we have the South Campus Gateway. We are going to be working with our developers in the building of the new homes on the old Columbus Coated Fabrics site, participating in renovation of existing homes. I see a lot of life in my community now. Now that there is hope, the people in my neighborhood are rallying around that very hope. People who are here seem to like being here and I want them to keep on liking to be here.

 

When Campus Partners was formed more than a decade ago, the neighborhoods just off campus were in dire straits.

Joyce Hughes had seen the Weinland Park neighborhood of the University District decline from the safe, friendly place where she grew up in the 1940s and 1950s to a community characterized by crime and disinvestment.

"My parents moved into this house when I was six months old. It was a community. People cared," says Hughes, president of the Weinland Park Community Civic Association.

That devolved in the 1970s, she says. People didn't feel safe walking around; families--and businesses--fled. "The area became destitute," she says.

Beginning in 2000, civic organizations and community agencies joined forces with Campus Partners, a non-profit affiliate of Ohio State, in a long-term effort to turn the neighborhood back into the safe and friendly place it once had been.

"Now that there is hope, the people in my neighborhood are rallying around that very hope," Hughes says. "People who are here seem to like being here. And I want them to keep on liking that."

“Now that there is hope, the people in my neighborhood are rallying around that very hope.”
—Joyce Hughes, president of the Weinland Park Community Civic Association

When Ohio State created Campus Partners, the university handed down a heavy charge: to work with the city, community agencies, civic groups, and residents to improve the quality of life in the neighborhoods of the University District.

Since then, Ohio State and Campus Partners have had a slue of successes in the area, including:

• creation of the Schoenbaum Family Center, the nation's first university-sponsored early childhood development laboratory in a neighborhood of need.
• the opening of a Neighborhood Policing Center that serves the University District and Weinland Park. The $4.6 million safety facility will house city and university police, Community Crime Patrol, and a Neighborhood Pride Center.
• development of South Campus Gateway, the $154 million shopping, dining, and entertainment complex on High Street adjacent to campus. Gateway includes Ohio State offices and apartments for graduate students.
• a plan that led to rehabbing and improving management of 1,300 government-subsidized housing units.
• participation with the city on a plan to clean up and redevelop a 20-acre "brownfield" site as market-rate housing.

This teamwork between Ohio State, Campus Partners, and the City of Columbus has attracted more than $500 million in investment in current and future development on High Street and in the University District.

Ohio State has earned national attention for its engagement with the neighborhoods of the University District, particularly Weinland Park. Ohio State was recently recognized as a regional recipient of the 2008 Outreach Scholarship W.K. Kellogg Foundation Engagement Award and one of five finalists for the national 2008 C. Peter Magrath University Community Engagement Award.

These awards recognize four-year public universities that have redesigned their learning, discovery and engagement functions to become sympathetically and productively involved with their communities. As a regional award recipient 2007, Ohio State was cited for its comprehensive and collaborative approach to urban revitalization.

Ohio State also was a regional Kellogg award recipient in 2007, the first year of the competition. Ohio State was recognized in 2007 for its innovative partnerships in early childhood, elementary and secondary education.

"The Ohio State University really is our friend," Hughes says. "I see a lot of life in my community now."