When Sandy and I first moved to Columbus last May we chose to live in Dublin due to its convience to our respective places of work, nice setting, affordable living, and general “niceness.” We toyed with the idea of living downtown. It appealed to both us but we did not think it made sense at the time.
Dublin is textbook suburbia but it was the logical choice and it was “nice.” Sometimes there is more to it than just logic though and so, against the advice of many, we’ll make the leap inside 270 this spring and truly experience life in Columbus…
It’s not that Dublin is bad. It’s actually a really nice place to live. But that’s just it, it’s nice… and that’s about it. My first taste of urban life came while in college in Atlanta and since then I’ve gravitated towards more urban style living (I even tried to do it in Augusta). The more we thought about it and the more we talked about our options for the future, the more it seemed like we should actually experience life in the heart of Columbus and not just nag about it from the sidelines.
Downtown living is not without its sacrifices. The two biggest ones will be a significant increase in my commute to work and a significant decrease in our living space unless we want to increase out budget for rent (we don’t). For us though, the benefits outweigh the negatives. Besides, why not take the risk? We’re both young, in a new city, this might be the best time in our lives to take that risk.
Downtown Columbus is a little bit of a misnomer. When I say downtown, I’m actually refering to downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods/districts. Think Urban has a great section about all the various downtown areas. Our search consisted primarily of the Shorth North, GermanVillage/Brewery District, and Downtown.
We liked all these areas with German Village offering a little more residential feeling, Downtown offering the truist urban experience, and the Shorth North being an art/cultural center with a vibrant nightlife. We looked at a lot of places over a relatively short period of time and found places in each neighborhood that we liked.
This past weekend we agreed to a place in the Short North. It is actually the smallest of all the places we’ve looked at but the location is fantastic and it met the rest of our criteria. I’ll be focusing a lot on our living situation over the next few months as we plan, move, and adjust to our new location. It will certainly be a challenge, but I think it will be a fun challenge.
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