Council to vote on safety grants for Short North, downtown

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Columbus City Council voted to award $500,000 to two organizations in hopes of ending violence in the Short North.

Voting will take place one day after a A 21-year-old man was fatally wounded during a fight early Sunday morning in the 900 block of North High Street.

“It’s very frustrating that we have to do something very similar again,” said Columbus Police Chief Mark Denner.

Denner said returning to the area with new violence is deeply troubling.

“It makes you sad, it makes you frustrated. I think people are disappointed here as well,” Danner said.

“Life will be lost, it’s someone’s son, brother, it’s someone’s father. All these things are going through my mind. As a parent and I understand that ad grieves for their family and I grieve for the community because we lost a life,” said Columbus City Councilman and Public Safety Chair Emmanuel Remy.

$500,000 will go to the Short North Alliance and Capital Crossroads Safety Improvement District.

“Work together with your members and they will come up with strategies to promote safety and implement strategies to make the area safer,” Remy said.

The groups received the same funding last year and used it for security initiatives and special duty officers to patrol the area.

“This affects all of us in the city of Columbus. We deserve to have safe streets, safe communities in the neighborhoods we live in. Funding opportunities like this are important to our future and to the sense of safety in the city of Columbus,” Remy said.

While this funding has already been on the agenda, the timing could not be more important with the recent violence in the Short North.

“Just like any other area, when you have a tight-knit community like the Short North, we have to look for strategies to help move people, get them on track,” Remy said.

The Short North: A Complicated History of Art, Development, and Crime