Keep Rt. 161 Beautiful

Letter - July 10, 2000

Letter To Businesses Along Rt. 1

Dear Business Owner/Manager,

As of this mailing, we are now officially out of money for the Keep Rt. 161 Beautiful project! If we don’t get some donations soon, the entire effort that we have put into this project this year will have been wasted.

You may have noticed that we contracted with a professional landscaper to start mowing the grass this year along Rt. 161 from I-71 to Ponderosa Drive, once a week ever since May 24th. The landscaping company that is mowing and trimming the grass is doing a very nice job. I have received many responses from the community (both businesses and residents) that Rt. 161 has never looked better! We have even put pressure on the construction company to complete their cabling project on the south side of Rt. 161 between Karl Road and Maple Canyon. They have just recently moved the piles of dirt and planted new grass seed!

To give you some background, the Keep Rt. 161 Beautiful project consists mainly of mowing and trimming the grass along Rt. 161. You might think that it is the responsibility of the city or the state to do this. And you’d be right! However, this is where it gets really frustrating and confusing. Because this is a state route it is under state jurisdiction but it is in the city of Columbus. Therefore, it is the city’s responsibility to mow the grass, with the state reimbursing the city for this service. The state’s reimbursement process is very slow. Because of this fact, the city places the mowing of Rt. 161 on a very low priority basis. It only gets mowed about four times every summer. We, as residents, have complained to the city for years and our pleas have fallen on deaf ears. We have now decided to start a grass roots movement (no pun intended) to get the residents and business community together to beautify Rt. 161!

As with any grass, if you take care of it and cut it enough times it will start to fill in the bare spots, choke out the weeds and look great. That’s what we are trying to do right now! This is where you, as a business owner/manager, come in! WE NEED YOUR HELP! The grass needs to be mowed once a week for the next 15-16 weeks. If every business on Rt. 161 would donate $50.00, we would have enough money to complete the project this year. However, since we can’t count on every business sending us a donation, we will gladly accept any denomination that you would care to send. We use this money strictly to cut the grass; there are no extra expenses that are taken out. The Northland Community Council (NCC) pays for the mailing and photocopying costs through a grant from the Columbus Foundation’s Neighborhood Partnership Program. NCC oversees the spending of these donations and has been in existence for over 35 years and is an extremely reputable organization.

There are already a number of area businesses that have supported this effort. They feel that it is in their best interest to have a nice looking area in which to conduct business. Many area businesses spend a great deal of money on landscaping immediately around their business. We have noticed this because NCC gives out awards of excellence every year for business area landscaping.

The residents are also doing their share. Through a grant from the Columbus Foundation’s Neighborhood Partnership Program, we have spent literally thousands of hours planting trees, renovating the landscaping boxes, weeding and planting new flowers! Now the business community needs to do its share! Please help us make Rt. 161 a fantastic place to live and do business!

Please send a check to: Keep Rt. 161 Beautiful, P.O. Box 297836, Columbus, Ohio 43229.

If you have any questions, you can call me at 478-8469 or visit our website at: www.neighborhoodlink.com/org/keep. There is an area on the site that you can send us feedback to help us understand your concerns.

There will also be a meeting on July 26th at the Outback Steakhouse, 2400 E. Dublin-Granville Road at 7:30 a.m. to discuss the next step of this project. Please try to attend this meeting, we want your input!

Sincerely,



Steve Thompson
President
Northland Community Council

Email us
NCCPresident@aol.com