Backgrounder: Jack Lucks

Like most developers of his time, Jack Lucks started as a typical strip shopping center developer, creating what James Howard Kuntsler in his book Home from Nowhere calls "award-winning suburban schlock."

By the mid-1990s Jack Lucks had decided to do something different. He knew, as Kunstler notes, that "the suburban fantasy had run its course." Lucks felt carefully designed mixed use development was both what people wanted and what would work financially. With this vision in mind he created the successful and human-scaled Victorian Gate project on the north end of Columbus. 

Contrary to the common development fashion of the day, Lucks designed the project to fit into the neighborhood rather than stick out like a sore thumb. In the words of Kuntsler: "he respected the traditional pattern of the site…[and] he followed the instructions of history."

Metropolitan Partners owns significant portions of the acreage to the west of South Main Street off Weaver Road as well as the 5.1 acres at the intersection of River Road and South Main Street that the company is currently asking the village to annex. Thus, the development of the current 5.1 acres will continue to be of significant interest because it could set the standard for subsequent anticipated development at the south end of the village. 

Sources include James Howard Kuntsler’s book Home from Nowhere - Remaking our everyday world for the 21st century, which details an approach to build and rebuild communities that provide quality of life for their residents rather than continue 20th-century suburban sprawl.