A decade ago, OU, city had high hopes for controversial avenue

Between a proposal for a nightclub featuring nude dancers, and plans to tear down a century-old building and replace it with student apartments, Stimson Avenue has lately been the focus of some heated disputes over what its neighborhood character should be.

And that's not even considering a controversial plan from several years ago to build a senior citizens living facility along Stimson next to the Hocking River.

These days, the central debate is over whether proposed changes of use at two sites will degrade Stimson's status as a family-friendly zone of local small business.

A decade ago, however, Ohio University and the city of Athens had more ambitious plans for the street. These plans were part of a larger project to upgrade both the campus and community area around the Mill Street student-rental neighborhood, and to turn Stimson into a "community service district," with a nearby "arts district" centered on a planned OU "arts quad."

The project, which covered the area bordered by Stimson, College Street, East Union Street and the Hocking River, was also to have been coordinated with a significant makeover of OU's dormitory system on New South Green a long-needed project that OU is now preparing once again to tackle and find funding for.

The earlier plan envisioned turning Stimson into a showcase thoroughfare that would serve as the university's main "front door" for visitors to campus a role that's now played by Richland Avenue.

None of this came to fruition at the time, despite being in the works for some four years. During that period, OU hired the Columbus firm NBBJ to study prospects for a makeover of what was then being called the "east campus river corridor."

The plan was subjected to much public scrutiny and input. By early 2003, however, an OU official acknowledged that it was essentially dead in the water, due to the state budget slump that had hit around that time, leaving OU and the city without sufficient funds to follow through on the project.

Today, parts of the plan are still alive, according to one OU official. What has dropped out, said Harry Wyatt, associate vice president for facilities, are the notions of OU's actively intervening to improve off-campus housing in the Mill-Stimson neighborhood, and of turning Stimson into the university's "front door."

"We're (still) very definitely concerned about the quality of our borders," Wyatt said Friday. However, he said, OU has largely abandoned earlier hopes of acquiring Mill-Stimson student rental properties and replacing or rehabbing them.

The parts of the old plan that OU remains interested in, he said, are developing an "arts quad" in the area of McCracken and Seigfred halls, and of course, replacing the aging residence halls of the New South Green.

"Both of those issues and desires exist today," Wyatt said, and both notions were incorporated into OU's 2006 housing "master plan." The original plan included a performing arts center to be built on the site of the former OU football stadium off Stewart and Mill streets.

What was dropped from the 2006 master plan, Wyatt said, was the old plan's third main plank turning Stimson into a classy new "front door" for OU. "That is actually the piece that today has become less important," Wyatt acknowledged.

In 1998, Tom Hodson was appointed by OU to serve as an assistant to the OU president for special projects, in charge of neighborhood enhancement; his mission was to head up a task force to look at off-campus housing and neighborhood issues in Athens. The task force included local citizens, OU students, and Athens city officials.

Hodson, a longtime local attorney and former judge, has also in his time served as an OU trustee and director of OU's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. He is now director and general manager of the WOUB Center for Public Media.

In late 1999, the task force announced that it had hired NBBJ to help plan for revitalizing the Mill Street area. The city of Athens, along with OU, was involved in the project, and Hodson kept City Council apprised of his group's progress.

A preliminary draft of the Mill-Stimson plan was presented to the OU Board of Trustees in the summer of 2000.

According to The Athens NEWS' coverage at the time, the plan recommended developing Stimson into "an interesting mix of uses," including office and retail businesses; services such as laundry/dry cleaning, clothing stores, groceries and gas stations; leisure-type shops such as bookstores, coffee houses, ice cream shops and restaurants; and second-story apartments above the retail sites.

It also suggested applying a "consistent streetscape treatment" along the length of Stimson, including "entry portals" to the Mill Street neighborhood at Palmer and Elliot streets.

The completed plan was unveiled for public input in 2002. It included a bold wish-list of changes to remake the neighborhood, which included building a housing development where the Landmark store then stood (behind Bob's IGA grocery).

That goal, at least, has since been realized, though by a private developer; Bob's has been torn down and replaced by the Palmer Place student apartment complex.

Other recommendations included building a connector road linking dead-end streets such as Oak and Hocking; encouraging development along Stimson; attracting more families into the neighborhood to live; and offering financial incentives for property owners to make improvements.

Some initial efforts were made to move ahead with, and find funding for, the plan. By early 2003, however, Wyatt's predecessor, John Kotowski, admitted in a talk to Athens Rotary that it was in limbo due to a state budget crisis.

"That's been put on hold," Kotowski was quoted as saying in an Athens NEWS story. "It's not important enough to devote money to in these kinds of economic times."

Wyatt confirmed that the failure to secure funding either from the state capital budget, or some other source, was probably a major reason why the plan ended up in the dustbin. A big part of the plan, he said, apparently involved acquiring student rental properties to rehab, which "would have been very expensive."