COLUMBUS, Ohio — The transformation of the Short North — a 14-block artsy strip here — from scruffy to chic began in the 1980s. And the scrappy neighborhood, which connects downtown Columbus to the sprawling campus of Ohio State University, has defied the recent economic downturn by continuing that evolution with a string of new developments.

Developers just broke ground on the city’s first full-service boutique hotel, the Joseph, at the south end of the Short North. The hotel is part of a $59 million multi-building project. Several residential developments are also under way and city officials have committed public funds to consider ways to improve the infrastructure in the area.

Supporters of the Short North describe it as a place where bohemians, lower-income city dwellers and better-off suburban residents come to mix and to find an eclectic groove that can be found nowhere else in Ohio. “It is now, frankly, the premier arts district in the nation,” said Mayor Michael B. Coleman of Columbus.

But it wasn’t always so. In the 1980s, the Short North, so named by the Columbus police for dispatch calls that fell short of being in the northern part of the city, was the “kind of place where you locked your door and hit the gas pedal,” said John Angelo, executive director of the Short North Alliance, a group of business and property owners.