After nearly 60 years, a bar near the Ohio State campus in Columbus’s university district will soon have to make way for the second-largest wood-frame building in the country.
The Bier Stube at 1497 N. High St. will close permanently on October 1, the bar announced in a Facebook post on Monday. The last weekend of operation will be the weekend of September 21.
In that context, Harbor Bay Ventures, a Chicago-based company, plans to build a 13-story timber-framed apartment complex, the Dispatch previously reported. This will be Harbor Bay’s second timber-framed project; two years ago, the company opened INTRO in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood, consisting of two timber-framed buildings of nine and 11 stories. Harbor Bay calls INTRO the largest timber-framed building in the country, though not the tallest.
The apartment building planned for the Bier Stube site would be the tallest in a series of new student housing projects going up along North High Street and Lane Avenue near the Ohio State campus. Harbor Bay noted in its proposal that the building would be significantly lower than the new 26-story OSU Wexner Medical Center building and the Morrill and Lincoln towers, which are also located on the Ohio State campus.
Plans for Harbor Bay were approved by the University Area Commission in April after the company agreed to changes to the plan, including a 15-story height reduction.
In addition to the displacement of the Bier Stube, the 14-0 Express supermarket and Yau’s Chinese Bistro will also disappear as part of the project to make room for the apartment buildings.
@ShahidMeighan
