COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Columbus is in the initial stages of mapping out the future of the Eastland community along the city’s Hamilton Road corridor, six months after the east side neighborhood’s former anchor shopping center shuttered for good. 

At its Monday night meeting, Columbus City Council approved nearly $850,000 to enter into a contract with architect MKSK for the initial phase of community planning in Eastland — a consultation process that will take at least 18 months, said Carla Williams-Scott, director of the Columbus Department of Development. 

MKSK beat out 12 other vendors for the contract. 

In creating land use plans for other neighborhoods, such as South Linden in 2018 and the Hilltop in 2019, Williams-Scott said the city has sought out “extensive community engagement” and will do so again over the next year. 

The framework process will likely also draw on a 2007 revitalization plan created for the corridor itself, Mid-East Area Commission Chair Quay Barnes told the council on Monday.

That plan — created when the then-recently renovated Eastland Mall was still deemed a “destination” — aimed to “provide a framework for the Hamilton Road Corridor/Eastland Area to become a new center of vitality,” according to the final project. 

Barnes was joined at the meeting by other East Side commission chairs, who form the Greater East Side Coalition.

“Our desires for this area have not changed, nor has our dedication and commitment to the Eastland area,” Barnes told members of the council Monday. “We’re excited, we’re ready, let’s go.”

Councilmember and “lifelong east-sider” Lourdes Barroso de Padilla said the eventual planning policies were a long time coming. The council will pass more funding for this project in the future, she said. 

Eastland Mall’s owners said its doors would close for good in the last days of 2022. In a December interview with NBC4, Barnes recalled memories of the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus events at the 54-year-old mall. But as nearby Easton Town Center attracted consumers, it drew them away from Eastland Mall. 

“The condition of the mall, and the inside and outside of the mall, it was not healthy, it was not safe,” Barnes said then. 

Months before its closure, in June 2022, Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein labeled the property a public nuisance. Shortly after, the city hit its owners with thousands in fines. It followed more than a year of outstanding health and safety code violations — from sinkholes and broken down cars in the concrete lot surrounding the mall to untenable conditions inside.