Columbus has become a nearly recession-proof hub of Ohio. Ohio State University, state and local government, insurance and retail are the central spokes of the city's economy, which at a glance looks remarkable.

"In a service economy Columbus was destined to do better, much better than places with smokestack industry," says David Stebenne, a professor of history and law at Ohio State. Columbus has a set of built-in advantages, including a countercyclical set of employers — insurance, government and the university. "Even in bad times insurance is insurance," he says.

As the first hurricane-force storm sits just off from the Atlantic Ocean’s shores, the American Northeast Summer draws to a close. During its rapid course, I took some hours to look back on the ICF Summit in June, celebrate its highlights and to consider what it means as our movement goes forward into the next Awards cycle, with its conclusion this time on the big stage of New York.

In a prior life, Joe DeLoss worked as a banking analyst, but today, his day job couldn't be more different. DeLoss owns the wildly popular Hot Chicken Takeover in Columbus, Ohio, serving up Nashville Hot Chicken, a spicy style of fried chicken.

But it's not the leap from banking to fast food that makes his story so interesting. It's the fact that his two-year-old restaurant is staffed by a nearly 50-person workforce that has largely experienced incarceration. Some employees have criminal arrest records, while others have served time for everything from misdemeanors to felonies. DeLoss admits they might be overlooked by other employers, but he's a firm believer in second chances. Make no mistake, though; it's no charity.

Rev1 Ventures backs startups beginning at proof-of-concept.

Rev1 Ventures this morning announced that it has raised $22 million for a new fund focused on seed-stage startups in Columbus, Ohio. Among the investors are local institutions like Ohio State University, Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co., Cardinal Health (CAH -0.40%), Worthington Industries (WOR -0.92%) and The Columbus Foundation.

COLUMBUS, Ohio
In 2014, Atlantic Magazine dubbed Franklinton "the most downtrodden neighborhood in Columbus."

New developments including artist space and specialty bars and restaurants are attracting people to a neighborhood people once forgot about.

Access Ventures' David Taliaferro saw how Kiva loan programs had helped grow Louisville's small businesses from the ground-up. So, the company went shopping to add another city to its repertoire.

Taliaferro, a Kiva Fellow and director of microfinance with Access Ventures, said the firm wanted to implement and support a Kiva program in a city with a growing business environment, something comparable to Louisville. About a year later, the firm will expand its Kiva footprint to Columbus, Ohio.

(TNS) -- Columbus, Ohio, is the top city in its class in its ability to attract and grow tech talent, according to an annual research report.

The report “Scoring Tech Talent,” from Los Angeles-based commercial real-estate company CBRE, ranked Columbus as the top small market among U.S. and Canadian cities and No. 23 overall.

Self-driving electric shuttles and high-speed WiFi stations may soon grace the the streets of Columbus, Ohio as part of a futuristic makeover planned for the city.

Columbus was named the winner of the US Department of Transportation's Smart City Challenge Thursday, and will get $50 million in funding to carry out a plan to weave technology throughout the city.

Columbus is a city of sharp contrasts. The capital of the state of Ohio, it has the highest metropolitan concentration of Fortune 1000 companies in America and is the home of the research school Ohio State University (OSU) and Battelle, the world’s biggest private research institute. But the city also has a large, low-income population stranded by the decline of low-skilled factory employment and is ranked 46th out of the 50 largest US cities for upward mobility. As a result, average per-capita income trails America’s and its employers struggle to find qualified staff while unemployment and low-wage jobs afflict too many citizens.

Municipal Broadband Attracts Competitors

Columbus is attacking these challenges on multiple fronts and through collaboration among government, education, business and institutions. It is also leading a regional approach to economic development with surrounding communities including former Top7 Dublin. The collaboration plays out in broadband, where the partners have interconnected their fiber networks supporting schools and universities, hospitals, research institutes and government facilities. This continuing investment in advanced broadband has helped attract multiple competing commercial providers as well as enabling a unified traffic management system and mobile solutions for the city workforce including first responders.

Educators meanwhile are collaborating to improve the chance that low-income students can afford higher education and also succeed at it. The Central Ohio Compact unites K-12, community college and undergraduate institutions to guide low-income students into higher education. Preferred Pathway is one program that guarantees community college graduates a university placement, which lets them turn their 2-year degree into a 4-year degree at a fraction of the normal cost. City government supports this effort with programs including Capital Kids, which provides after-school digital literacy programs for K-12 students, and APPS, which works to give at-risk youth positive alternatives to being on the street, including computer labs funded by Microsoft.

From Brain Drain to Brain Gain

Another partnership, TechColumbus, offers startup acceleration, business mentoring, seed funding and capital attraction. Its First Customer program helps young companies generate their first revenue from established companies in the region.

The East Franklinton neighborhood was once the heart of a vibrant African-American cultural scene and Mayor Coleman has made its revitalization a personal crusade. A community-based planning effort has created a vision for building residential, retail and creative space as well as a business incubator, and private investment has already converted an abandoned warehouse into a performance and studio space supplemented by an art gallery, coffee shop and farmer’s market. Grant funding is going into the development of a makerspace and community workshop.

My Columbus

Go to the App Store on the iPhone or Android and search for MyColumbus.  Download­ing this app (rated 3.5 out of 5 by users as of June 2012) will put the City of Columbus, Ohio, USA into the palm of your hand. 

MyColumbus started out as a student project at Ohio State University.  Students worked with the IT department of the city to identify open-data databases that could provide the most up-to-date information on city services, location of facilities and schedules of public events.  They then built an app to access the data and turn it into easy-to-understand information.  The city’s IT department was so impressed with the result that, with the students’ permission, it hired a software company to expand the app and put a professional gloss on it. 

The resulting MyColumbus provides MyNeighborhood (location-based mapping and information about community resources, refuse collection and health inspections), GetActive (links to events, bike and trail guides and healthy lifestyle tips), GreenSpot (with information on sustainability) and 311 (where residents can log service and infor­mation requests).  Service requests submitted via MyColumbus are resolved 3.3 times faster, on average, than telephone requests.  Why?  Because users can submit photos and GPS coordinates with their service requests, which helps maintenance workers show up with the right tools and materials to get the job done.    

MyColumbus is so effective because of the rich data that Columbus’s IT department makes available to it.  The city’s geographical information system (GIS) has hundreds of layers and supports applications including One-Stop-Shop Zoning, Utility Dashboard, Capital Improvements Plan­ning, Fire Hydrants Inspection/Maintenance, and that all-important function in snowy southern Ohio, Snow Removal.  The data derived from databases, sensors and GPS flows through to operations managers, planners, businesses and citizens in a never-ending stream. 

This range of programs and applications enabled Columbus to succeed beyond its dreams.  From 2000 to 2017, Columbus added almost 400,000 people to its population and nearly 164,000 new jobs to the region. The region has attracted data centers, a new Intel semiconductor plant and the largest solar manufacturing facility in central Ohio. The city is home to one of the Midwest’s largest venture capital funds and a workforce in which 36 percent have a higher education degree.  With rust firmly in its past, Columbus is now working hard to manage the challenges that come with economic success.

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Want to know more about Columbus?
Columbus was featured in the Intelligent Community Forum book Brain Gain.

Population: 907,970

Website: www.columbus.gov

Intelligent Community of the Year 2015

Smart21 2013 | 2014 | 2015

Top7 2013 | 2014 | 2015