Columbus’ arts district soon could be the city’s destination for public art.

Columbus is in the middle of a $25.5 million plan to reshape High Street between Downtown and Ohio State University’s campus, widening sidewalks and installing protected parking while eliminating a traffic lane.

The streetscape project promises to drastically change the way people travel on one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares, which runs through its most-popular district, the Short North.

The project also will change the look and feel there, adding public art in a district known for its arches spanning High Street and the galleries that line it.

The Columbus City Council recently approved an $81,000 contract with Designing Local to complete a public-art plan for the High Street corridor between Poplar and 9th avenues. The city plans to earmark about $420,000 for public art in the area.

The Franklin County Convention Facilities Authority is overseeing a streetscape project between Downtown and the southern boundary of the Short North and is working on its own interior and exterior public-art plan between Convention Center Drive and Interstate 670.

When the city’s plan is finished, it should have recommendations on how to integrate art into fixtures such as bike racks, provide space for performance art and point out locations for art installations.

Designing Local was chosen from a pool of five applicants that responded to the city’s request for proposals; only two met the requirements. The Columbus firm intends to work on the plan with Marc Pally, a Los Angeles-based artist, curator and arts administrator who specializes in public art. The report should be finished in November.

“Overall, we need the community to articulate how they want to celebrate arts and culture on High Street in the Short North,” said Betsy Pandora, executive director of the Short North Alliance. “This is something that we view as really important to continuing to foster the overall arts identity of the district.”

Columbus has been trying to get a major public-art initiative off the ground for years. In 2014, then-Mayor Michael B. Coleman issued an executive order to earmark money for public art and create a citywide public-art master plan.

Previous efforts had stalled for lack of interest, said Lori Baudro, project coordinator with the city’s Department of Development. The city did start installing more public art, including deer statues near the Scioto River.

The city started looking at whether it could incorporate public art into a large project. Some government entities have policies requiring that a share of projects must be devoted to public art, but Columbus does not.

“This project in the Short North was kind of almost a no-brainer,” Baudro said.

The streetscape project has been in the works for years. A city traffic study in 2012 determined that High Street, which has two travel lanes plus a parking lane in each direction, could stand to slim down.

City officials said last year that the street eventually will have only one lane in each direction, plus a center turn lane, between Goodale Street and 9th Avenue. It also would have right-turn lanes northbound at 5th Avenue and southbound at King and 7th avenues.

Curb extensions at street corners would protect the parking lane so it couldn’t be used for travel even when it is unoccupied.

The space now used for a travel lane would be repurposed to widen sidewalks to allow restaurants and cafes to offer more outdoor seating. It also would accommodate a growing number of shoppers walking among the district’s shops.

Sidewalks buckling as the roots of street trees grow through their foundations will be leveled. Brick crosswalks, new trees and landscaping and upgraded streetlights and traffic signals are part of the project as well.

The project near the Greater Columbus Convention Center has started, and the rest should be completed in 2018 and 2019.

The convention center is incorporating public art inside and outside the renovated building, said Don Brown, executive director of the convention facilities authority.

An Arnold Schwarzenegger statue is on the convention-center grounds, and another sculpture is planned for outside near the Ohio Center Way entrance later this year. A large, interactive video sculpture is planned for inside the glass atrium at High and Goodale streets. That is to be unveiled this month.

Two other small parks around the convention center also will have public art, Brown said.

“We’ve worked hard at giving visitors a sense of presence here, giving them an idea of what central Ohio is like through its art,” Brown said.

rrouan@dispatch.com

@RickRouan