Background

The State Route 161 (East Dublin-Granville Road) business corridor in the Northland area, from the Worthington city limit on the west to Ponderosa Drive on the east, includes nearly 200 parcels hosting almost 600 businesses.  More than 31,000 vehicles — local residents, commuters and shoppers — travel the corridor each day.¹ 

Click to view a map and aerial images of the State Route 161 Corridor

When the SR-161 thoroughfare was expanded to four lanes by the Ohio Department of Transportation in the 1960s, the project included green spaces in the median and along the service roads that serve local businesses. Properly maintained, these spaces add visual appeal, control stormwater and help integrate the corridor with the established residential communities that surround it.

The City of Columbus cuts the grass along the corridor an average of only four times a mowing season. Beginning in April, and throughout the summer months, additional grass cutting and trimming is required to supplement the City's efforts to keep the corridor attractive and safe for SR-161 businesses and their customers as well as more than 60,000 area residents.²  Weed control, a service not provided by the City, has been found to substantially improve the corridor's appearance and reduce the number of annual cuttings needed to maintain it.

For the past 18 years, the Northland Area Business Association (NABA) and the Northland Community Council (NCC) have worked together under the banner of "Keep 161 Beautiful" to keep the SR-161 corridor attractive and competitive by raising funds from area businesses to supplement the City's grass cutting activities — with varying success.

While community volunteers have maintained trees and planter boxes along the right of way, using a combination of grants and private donations of funds and materials, fundraising efforts have been only marginally successful at defraying the cost for commercial grass cutting. 

In 2006 business and community leaders in the area formed the State Route 161 Task Force to address this and other issues affecting the current and future business climate on the corridor.  The Task Force's mission is to "develop and implement programs that involve and benefit business stakeholders ... along with the residential communities that adjoin the corridor; and that help to preserve and enhance the corridor's appeal to current and future business tenants, property owners and their customers."

¹ Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC), 1995-2004 Average Daily Traffic Volumes, 2003 data.   ² 2000 US Census, ZIP codes 43229 & 43231.