An award-winning antidote to suburban sprawl and a genre-defining mixed-use destination, Easton Town Center displays a mid-America theme that integrates shopping with entertainment, recreation, office, residential and hospitality components. Easton adapts tenets of New Urbanism design in ways that reflect its setting near the city of Columbus. Designers used storyboards to plan Easton, adapting vernacular themes of Midwestern American towns in the first half of the 20th century to contemporary uses. Recognizable icons like the Fire Station, Library and Drug Store help create the impression that the design has evolved over time. Easton’s centerpiece is an enclosed mall (Easton Station) designed as a traditional Midwestern train station, with a 30-screen cinema, video arcade, and other entertainment tenants. Smaller stores and cafés at street level fill out Easton’s traditional street grid. Office space is above the stores on the second level. Narrow, tree-lined streets and parallel parking sidewalks unite vehicles and pedestrians to complete the quintessential small-town ambience.
Phase Two of Easton Town Center, the Fashion District, is focused around the Strand, a linear, almost Parisian, run of parks, fountain plazas and retail to provide a series of public gathering spaces that evoke a grand shopping avenue. A tree-lined central median with large stately cast-iron lampposts, banner-mounted signage and brick pedestrian walkways facilitate “cross-shopping” and encourage movement and flow.