Tuesday, December 5 2017

Welcome to Tuesday. It's James.

Our favorite weekend vacation spot is going to be seeing significant investment soon.

Hocking Hills will be building a $5 million lodge style visitor's center, and the rendering looks gorgeous. You can

view the current visitor center here to compare

 the rendering in the article below. Quite an upgrade, and it looks like it'll be a great starting point for Hocking Hills vacation needs. That's something the area could use, as it can feel a little decentralized currently. Construction will start this winter.

Navigator full story: Hocking Hills Is Getting A Massive, Lodge-Style Visitors Center

Tuesday Weather 🌡Rain, windy, temps falling throughout the day but a high of 52. 🌧

Navigator Originals ✏️14 Columbus Skyline Prints Your Home Decor Needs Right NowYou're looking for gifts, and you probably know someone who loves Columbus (maybe it's even you! Likely, given you've chosen to subscribe to this newsletter.) Some of these are seriously great - I love a bunch of them, but I especially enjoyed the one from Alternate Histories as well as The Heart Of It All.One Photographer + Two Adorable Polar Bears = An Award Winning PhotoThe Association of Zoos and Aquariums announced their 2017 AZA Photo Contest winner, and the winning photo was taken right here at our Columbus Zoo. We also had a couple of the runner ups, and if you have any interest in zoo animals or photography (which should cover everyone I imagine) you should check out these award winning photos of a mother and baby polar bear, gazelles, and a red panda.The Annual Festivus At 400 W Rich Is Definitely For The Rest Of Us400 W. Rich hosts some of the best events in Columbus all year long, and Christmas is no exception. They're hosting a Festivus celebration with lots of awesome vendors, and hopefully one beautifully tinsel free Festivus pole.

Around Town 🏘Franklinton will be getting a farm to cable cafe in its new grocery store Jubilee. It'll have a hot bar, baked goods, and pre-made meals, with most ingredients coming from local farms. FEED, and Jubilee, will open in spring of 2018. [614Now]Swenson's, a 75 year old and much loved drive-in chain from Akron, is trying to enter the Columbus market. They are looking at a Dublin location first, and have bought land in Westerville as well. [Dispatch/Malone]Kind of unbelievably, the New York Times writes again about JD Vance and Steve Case's venture capital firm, just a few weeks after the last time. This time it's to reveal who is backing the fund, a litany of famous names that includes Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google (Alphabet) chairman Eric Schmidt, Starbucks chairmen Howard Schultz, members of Wal-Mart's Walton family (nods), the Koch brothers (yes), and many others. The goal is to construct a midwestern eco-system that will function like Silicon Valley.I am unfortunately too cynical for this closing from the article:“In the end, don’t think of ‘the Valley’ as some ZIP codes in California,” he wrote. “It is a state of mind that can be anywhere, for everyone. Increasingly, for all of the rest of us.” [New York Times]Sherrod Brown thinks Mike DeWine and Jon Husted made a deal for DeWine to be a one term governor in exchange for Husted joining his ticket, presumably with Husted running after DeWine steps down. [WOSU]Rob Portman voted for the recent tax bill, and this site shows that major Ohio newspapers (Cleveland Plain-Dealer and Columbus Dispatch) took him to task for it - but they also endorsed him in the last election. It is hard to believe they didn't realize this is the sort of thing he would be doing in Washington when they made those endorsement decisions. [Plunderbund]City Council member Shannon Hardin thinks Columbus can move beyond car centric planning. It's good to hear someone talking about high capacity transit, or transit in general, outside of SMART Columbus and COTA NextGen. [Dispatch/Hardin]

Coming Up 📆🏒 12/5: Blue Jackets vs. New Jersey Devils🎄 12/5: The Hip Hop Nutcracker🎄 12/5: Gingerbread Competition at Franklin Park Conservatory🎭 12/6: Shopkins Live🎅 12/8: SantaCon Columbus 2017🎬 12/8-10: The Disaster Artist Opening Weekend with The Room💈 12/8-10: Festivus 2017🎄 12/8-24: The Nutcracker - BalletMet🍺 12/9: 12 Bars of Xmas Crawl🏒 12/9: Blue Jackets vs. Arizona Coyotes

Picture of the Day 🌲How awesome is this going to look? ❤️ (📷: @OhioStateParks)

Longread 🔬On the enormous amount of wasted American potential, all wasted because of wealth disparity.Millions of children from poor families who excel in math and science rarely live up to their potential—and that hurts everyone.The Atlantic: America’s Lost Einsteins

Something to say? Hit reply - we read it all.- James