Columbus - New Albany and Central Ohio Real Estate & Community

Columbus one of America’s ‘most playful cities’

September 8th, 2011 The Raines Group Posted in Central Ohio News, Central Ohio Real Estate, Columbus Comments Off

If you live in the Columbus area you undoubtedly have been to one of the enumerable parks and playgrounds that dot our fair city’s landscape.

KaBOOM!, a national non-profit dedicated to building and renovating playgrounds, and the USA Weekend magazine that reaches 49.5 million readers in 800 newspapers recently drew up the list of their 2011 playful cities and communities. Of 151 cities recognized there were 5 given top honors and Columbus had the honor of being one of those 5.

Columbus shares the “playful city distinction” with cities from corner to corner of the continental U.S.: Auburn, Wash., Hartford, Conn., San Francisco, Calif. and Orlando, Fla.

Whetstone Park of Roses

With 46 walking/ biking paths, 228 parks, 18 public pools, 3 major dog parks, 8 nature preserves, a 16 acre skate park, and 4 floral gardens including the Whetstone Park of Roses featuring over 11,000 total roses and the Topiary Garden Park (a living recreation of Georges Seuaat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of LaGrande Jatte). Columbus is well deserving of this honor.

Columbus is clearly a great place to work and play, Here are a few fantastic examples of programs and activities going on in the play department right now.

An ongoing glassblowing workshop at Franklin Park Conservatory.

Various camp opportunities for youth.

Sellect Fridays, Rhythm on the River at Bicentennial Park.

September 18th, Annual Community Open House FREE day At COSI!

For those wanting to know more about individual parks check out the Columbus Parks and Recreation site.

To find a park near you check out this link to the Parks and Recreation interactive map page!

If you are looking to buy or sell a property in New Albany, Gahanna, Blacklick, Westerville, or another Central Ohio community, please contact The Raines Group. We offer professional real estate advice and are happy to help you achieve your real estate goals. Please contact us today via our online contact form or by calling The Raines Group at 614-418-7417.

Expanding local culture in New Albany

September 4th, 2011 The Raines Group Posted in Columbus, New Albany, New Albany Community, Westerville Comments Off

Two businesses, one new and one established, are moving to Main Street in New Albany.

Their plan is to provide patrons with a different kind of dining experience, one that is completely local. All of the food on your plate made with fresh, local ingredients, and all art created by local artists.

Hayley Gallery of New Albany is moving from Second Street to 270 Main St. and will adjoin a new restaurant called ella, which stands for “eat local, love art,” at 266 Main St.

Hayley Savage, owner of Hayley Gallery, has a stake in both businesses. She is partnering with Amy Schottenstein on ella and they have chosen New Albany High School graduate Travis Hyde as the restaurant’s executive chef.

Hyde said when he learned about ella, he felt “like a kid in a candy store.”

“This is something New Albany has needed for a long time,” he said. “We’re going to do great things out here.”

Hyde said the plan is to have a place that is not pretentious and would appeal to parents who want to eat out with their children, as well as parents who want to celebrate their anniversary without the children.

“We want to use as much locally sourced produce as I can get on the menu,” he said.

“As the seasons change, the menu will change, with the produce and spices,” he said.

An example of an appetizer at ella is an almond-crusted mozzarella cheese topped with sage pesto and prosciutto, with the cheese made in-house at the restaurant. The menu will have salads, including one with fresh beets, candied walnuts, apple and fennel.

Desserts will be made on site, as well, and accented by Jeni’s Ice Cream. Hyde said he is planning a caramel apple bread pudding and a chocolate cheesecake with a pretzel coating and banana compote.

Savage said ella is expected to open sometime in November.

“We are hoping and planning to be open before Thanksgiving,” she said.

“I think it’s going to be amazing,” Hyde said. “There’s no concept like it.”

Savage said the gallery will be open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays and noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays until the restaurant opens.

“Once the restaurant opens, we plan on having hours to mimic, as much as we can, the hours of the restaurant,” she said. “We want people to come into the gallery when they are waiting on a table.”

The partners and several community members are excited about the possibilities when the gallery and restaurant open.

“The 9,000 employees who work in New Albany each day want additional restaurant options and often leave the city to get them,” said New Albany Mayor Nancy Ferguson. “Ella will change that with its close proximity to the New Albany business park and its fresh, local food options. It is just what our employees and residents have been asking for.”

FREE Real-Estate Apps: a new way at looking for a house

September 1st, 2011 The Raines Group Posted in Central Ohio Real Estate, Columbus, New Albany Comments Off

When looking to buy a home, you can find some of the best tools for the search in the palm of your hand, now that the number of real-estate applications for smartphones has exploded.

Here are some of the free ones that might come in handy. You can download them from Apple’s iTunes Store, the Android Market and BlackBerry’s App World store.

Trulia

For the iPhone or Android, this app offers insights into neighborhoods. When searching by location, users can find reviews by locals of area restaurants and schools. To gauge a neighborhood’s purchase activity, Trulia’s heat maps shows the concentration of sales in a community.

iHandy Level

This app, one of the most downloaded level apps in the iTunes and Android stores, allows you to measure the slopes and angles of a home. Fire up the app, put the phone wide-angle on the surface you are inspecting, and let it calibrate the angle of the floor and kitchen counters and the verticality of walls and windows.

Compass Free

This app, for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry, can be of real value to prospective homebuyers who practice feng shui. Most phones have compasses loaded in, but there are many apps with the Chinese feng shui compass, which is used to analyze energy in a room.

Zillow Mortgage Marketplace

The app, available for iPhone and Android, allows you to figure out what your mortgage payment would be with real-time updates of average 30-year fixed interest rates.

Complete Foreclosures

This new app, for iPhone and Android, lets users search RealtyTrac’s 1.5 million foreclosure listings by city or ZIP code. The results are displayed on a map or in list form with details about each home such as price, number of bedrooms and baths and square footage. Pictures are typically available, and the app gives an estimated market value. Users can pay 99 cents for more details about a home.

Need help selling your home, try energy efficiency

August 30th, 2011 The Raines Group Posted in Central Ohio Real Estate, Columbus Comments Off

Its hard to wrap one’s head around all of the energy efficient technologies flooding the market today.

In a study covering existing and new houses sold between May of last year and April 30 of this year, the Earth Advantage Institute, a nonprofit group based in Portland, Ore., found that existing houses with sustainable energy certifications sold for 30 percent more.

So apparently there is incentive in the whole saving the planet thing beyond just saving the planet.

But that’s not all!

Throw in a study conducted two years ago by the same institute in Seattle and Portland identified what may be another plus: Homes marketed with energy-efficiency certifications appear to sell faster on average than those without. The study attempted to come up with rough comparability in appraisal terms between certified and noncertified properties, and found that in Portland, certified homes spent 18 days less time on the market after listing than noncertified counterparts. In both Portland and Seattle, researchers documented price premiums — 9.6 percent in Seattle, 4.2 percent in Portland — in a statistical analysis with a 95 percent confidence level.

Meanwhile, a recent study on houses in San Diego and Sacramento, Calif., published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, took a more direct look, at solar cells.

They found that, on average, solar panel installations cost owners in a sample of homes in the $500,000 range $35,967. But with federal and state subsidies, the net average cost came down to $20,892. This net expenditure, in turn, yielded an increase in appraised value by $20,194 — a 97 percent recovery on the investment.

Though less than 100 percent, a 97 percent recovery rate is much higher than most home improvements in the most recent “Cost vs. Value” study conducted by Remodeling magazine — well above major kitchen and bathroom renovations.

HER Real Living in the news with listing of the area’s oldest home

August 28th, 2011 The Raines Group Posted in Central Ohio Real Estate, Columbus, New Albany, Westerville 2 Comments »

Gideon Hart Homestead, Westerville, Built in 1820

Those interested in history, or just fascinated by some of the beauty that comes with historical woodwork would be pleased to hear that HER Real Living’s latest listings include one of the oldest homes in the area. So old that when it was built Jefferson was president, slavery was law, and The Civil War was still far in the future.

Gothic Revival Home, New Albany, built in 1825

Listed on the National Historic Site as the oldest home in Westerville. Beautifully restored and updated. The Gideon Hart home includes the original 5 Inch plank Ash hardwood floors and Lush landscaping with enormous old trees. The Gideon Hart Home and HER’s listing of the Gothic revival home in New Albany were recently featured in an article in The Columbus Dispatch about the more than 20 homes for sale in Central Ohio built before 1840.

The Gothic Revival New Albany home started as a one-room schoolhouse erected around 1825. The home was expanded, probably in the middle of the 19th century, in a Gothic revival style.

The interest in these homes that draws press like The Dispatch as well as potential buyers lies in their history and the authenticity that comes with it. HER Real Living’s Marylin Vutech -“It does have all the beautiful upgrades you would see in a new build, but the spaces are still those you’d find in an old house, such as no walk-in closets. These aren’t generic spaces like you’d find in a new four-bedroom, 21/2-bath home.”

Central Ohio Guide to the Locavore Movement

August 18th, 2011 The Raines Group Posted in Central Ohio News, Central Ohio Real Estate, Columbus Comments Off

Around central Ohio signs of the popularity of the local-food movement are popping up everywhere.

The word locavore — one who tries to eat locally produced food — was added to the New Oxford American Dictionary in 2007. The use of locally sourced food was named one of the hot trends at restaurants for 2011, according to the National Restaurant Association. And the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported a 17 percent increase in farmers markets from 2010 to this year.

Major grocery chains — including Giant Eagle, Kroger and Meijer — proudly stock their produce sections these days with fruits and vegetables grown close to home.

With the increasing access to local food, consumers need ideas for selecting, storing and cooking the fare.

“People want to eat well, but they need direction on how to use it,” said Lynne Genter, founder of the Clintonville Farmers’ Market.

Michael Jones — executive director of Local Matters, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making locally grown food available to everyone — agrees.

“The No. 1 barrier we see with more people participating in the local-food movement,” he said, “ is lack of cooking skills, from what times of the year they should expect to find things to actually what to do with it.”

It is difficult to move to preparing food when you have been on a pre-packaged food diet for a long time.

To start you could check out a book like The Locavore’s Kitchen: A Cook’s Guide to Seasonal Eating and Preserving by Ohio native Marilou K. Suszko.

There are several other resources in Central Ohio where you can learn more about eating local. To name a few:

Here are some extra tips on buying and eating local.

If not LOCALLY PRODUCED, then Organic. This is one of the most readily available alternatives in the market and making this choice protects the environment and your body from harsh chemicals and hormones.
Choose Snowville Creamery for dairy. Supporting local farms helps to keep food processing decisions out of the hands of corporate conglomeration. Not to mention the taste is out-of-this-world better!
Basics like coffee and bread make buying local difficult. Try a local coffee shop or bakery to keep your food dollar close to home.
Purchase foods famous for the region they are grown in and support the agriculture that produces your favorite non-local foods such as Brie cheese from Brie, France or parmesan cheese from Parma, Italy.
Hit the farmers’ market before the supermarket. Plan your meal around local ingredients you find at the market.
Feed the freezer. Can’t cook every night? Worried about your fresh produce going bad? It’s easy. Make lasagna with local tomatoes or a soup packed with fresh veggies and freeze it! You can also make personal size meals for a brown bag lunch.

Visiting the Columbus Zoo, the Best Zoo in the Country

August 16th, 2011 The Raines Group Posted in Central Ohio News, Central Ohio Real Estate, Columbus, Powell Comments Off

The fact that Columbus has the best zoo in the country should come as no surprise to anyone who has seen Jack Hanna on Letterman. The zoo has been open since 1927 but it’s reputation elevated considerably under Hanna’s guidance, making it what is considered today to be the aspiration of any traditional zoo. Along with over 7,000 animals, the Columbus Zoo has more recently expanded to include a water park, amusement park and golf resort.

The zoo features great exhibits, packed full of information about the animals and their habitats. They have an abundance of different animals. They also feature REALLY cool bronze statues at the “key” animal exhibits, many life sized, for you or your children to pose with for pictures. What a unique idea!

If you are thinking about a trip here’s some tips:

Plan to spend more than 1 day here. There is a LOT of ground to cover for the animal exhibits. If you plan to take part in the waterpark or the amusement area, plan for at least 3 days. They will be worth it.

This zoo lets you bring your own food if you like. DO IT… even if it’s only a sandwich from somewhere else. The food prices are high inside the park, and you’ll be happy you thought to bring drinks or food of your own.

Get there EARLY. The zookeepers bring out animals to pet during the first hour or two the zoo is open.

Buy your tickets for whatever you want to do (zoo, waterpark, rides) at the front gate early in the day. You can buy tickets at the doors for each (waterpark, rides), but the lines are super long near the attractions themselves.

The food court, although it’s at the back of the zoo, is what you should plan to eat if you decide to eat there. Good food (with a kiddie station all it’s own featuring mac&cheese, chicken nuggets, etc.)!! and free drink refills. Smartest choice hands down.

A few videos from inside the park:

Short North Gallery Hop: An Experience

August 9th, 2011 The Raines Group Posted in central ohio events, Central Ohio News, Central Ohio Real Estate, Columbus Comments Off

The Short North is the cultural mecca of Columbus. With eclectic shops and eccentric sights, like a bicycle bar, this week I literally saw a bicycle bar. That’s right, people facing each other drinking on a center bar and peddling with one person in front and 1 in back guiding somehow. This is the Gallery Hop. If you’re planning a trip to the strip here are a few tips.

Parking, because of the number of people this free event draws parking can be a bit of a pain. If you are willing to walk a bit it thins out just past Northstar restaurant. You can find spots on the side streets and start at Roy G Biv gallery and Flower Child.
If you are planning on getting Jeni’s ice cream (this week’s top spot on Yahoo’s Best Ice Cream in the Country) and you don’t like gigantic lines I highly suggest getting an early start to your evening as the lines build around the block in the after dinner hours.
Many of the galleries have openings on the nights of the art walk, lots of schmoozing, great for people watching.

Galleries

Many of the galleries are situated in the area of High adjacent to Goodale Park.

Kathy Ruttenberg "Role Reversal", at the Sherrie Gallery

The galleries’ artists range from local to national, with everything from sculpture, to glass, to jewelry, to realist painting, to contemporary abstractions.

Art Consulting & Gallery

Kathryn Gallery

PM Gallery

Sherrie Gallery

Shops

A few of the new hot spots in the Short North

Tigertree known for their great clothes and knickknacks and they’re expanding their store.

On Paper they are serious about paper, you can find very interesting stuff for homemade cards etc.

Posh Pets Boutique the name says it all, check it out if you have a pet you love.

Jinny designer women’s clothing

Roche Bobois amazing contemporary furniture

Collier West awesome boutique

Milk Bar Boutique very very cool clothing

Restaurants

In the Short North you can get anything from a coney dog at Phillips Coney Island to sushi at Haiku. Whatever your taste buds are calling for they are bound to be satisfied. Below is a link to a map of all of the restaurants in the Short North, take your pick!

Phillip's Coney Island puts on a show

View Larger Map

Hey Columbus! Pelotonia in Two Weeks

August 4th, 2011 The Raines Group Posted in central ohio events, Central Ohio News, Columbus, New Albany Comments Off

In a little more than two weeks, Pelotonia, the annual Columbus cycling event will return bringing thousands biking to raise money to find a cure for cancer.

Pelotonia, going into its 11th year is a grassroots bike ride that raises money for cancer research at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – James Cancer Hospital and Solve Research Institute.

Last year, Pelotonia raised $7.8 million for research at the James Solve Cancer Center. Some of that money raised is right now being used to prevent oral cancer.

This year Pelotonia is getting a boost from Victoria’s Secret. An event featuring the Supermodels of Victoria’s Secret in New York City raised $100,000.

Pelotonia 2010

Limited Brands, parent company of Victoria’s Secret, is a lead sponsor of Pelotonia. Every dollar raised at Supermodel Cycle will be matched by the Limited Brands Foundation which will bring the total donation to more than $200,000.

One hundred percent of the money raised for Pelotonia goes to The James, which is one of the nation’s leading cancer research facilities.
Pelotonia’s mission is to fund life-saving cancer research. Pelotonia is a three-day experience that includes a weekend of cycling, entertainment and volunteerism. Thanks to its generous sponsors, Huntington Bank, Limited Brands Foundation, Richard and Peggy Santulli, American Electric Power Foundation and Nationwide Insurance, Pelotonia is able to direct 100 percent of every dollar raised to cancer research at The James Solve Cancer Center.

What is Bluemile?

August 2nd, 2011 The Raines Group Posted in Central Ohio News, Central Ohio Real Estate, Columbus, New Albany, New Albany Community Comments Off

Ever since moving their headquarters to New Albany about a year ago there have been more and more news items popping up about the tech company Bluemile . One such news item that just popped up is a joint venture with BlueBridge out of Cleveland to link the 2 cloud computing hubs and create the most secure regional data service center in the country.

So why is Bluemile so important exactly? I mean I know they deal in fiber optic cloud computing, but what in the world does that really mean?

Here a are a few things that it means…

Using light to carry information, fiber optic data speeds are so much faster they will usher in a new kind of internet.
New Albany businesses will have access to the fastest connection on the planet.
This puts New Albany in an elite class of technologically forward leaning communities.
This positions New Albany and the surrounding area nicely to be a hotbed of implementing future technologies.

This video will show you a glimpse at just how important light is becoming, and some of the applications of communication technologies of the near future.

The local community will have a big player in connecting it to this important future utility. One that will drive industry and have a huge stake in shaping our lives.