Discover our location, our green spaces, our history, and everything else our neighborhood offers and you'll understand why we say we “turn visitors into neighbors and neighbors into friends!” After all, our residents are what makes our neighborhood such a wonderful place to live, work and play.

Our Location

We are situated near the center of the City, with convenient access to freeways and public transit. Even today, throughout our neighborhood we can see reminders of Columbus' earliest public transit. The horse-drawn and electric trolley car system was instrumental in allowing early residents to settle comfortably away from the hustle of the city, yet near to the rural landscape that lay just beyond the City's boundary at Alum Creek.  Our neighborhood starts at Broad Street on the north, extends southward to Main Street and westward to Wilson Avenue.

Running through the heart of the Franklin Park Neighborhood is the Bryden Road Historic District, established by Columbus City Council in 1990 as the 44th listed property on the Columbus Register of Historic Properties. The historic district is subject to the benefits and restrictions of such listing as provided in Columbus City Code and compliance is reviewed by a seven member Historic Resources Commission.

The Franklin Park Civic Association is proud to #CelebrateOurHistory as the oldest organization in the Near East, with formal corporate representation for the Franklin Park neighborhood that is well-documented.

In our earliest days, our organization included boundaries that covered most of the territory that comprises the Near East Side!

On April 15, 1965, the Franklin Park Area Council (our earliest registered corporation) was recorded as a nonprofit corporation in the State of Ohio. The first president was Margaret E. Day (1761 Franklin Park South), with Coleridge O. Jones, Jr., and Napoleon A. Bell (East Town Street) being the other corporation officers. The Trustees were Robert M. Powell (774 Kelton Avenue),  William F. Walton (268 N. West St., Westerville), James Joyner (1703 E. Long Street)  and William Mack (1722 Oak Street).

Our current corporation was founded in 1974 as the Franklin Park Area Improvement Association, and in 1997 was renamed as the Franklin Park Area Association. 

Ted Brown, Secretary of State, certified the formation of the Franklin Park Area Improvement Association as a community improvement corporation in the State of Ohio. The filings were submitted on February 28, 1974 by William H. Stewart (Chairman) and Albert A. Copeland (Statutory Agent), with other trustees being Louise R. Jones, James C. Shivers, and Robert E. Short who met at 1885 Bryden Road to form the corporation.

At the September 25, 2012 meeting of the Association, the General Membership unanimously ratified a change of name to the Franklin Park Civic Association, Inc. Amended articles of incorporation were filed and recorded with the Ohio Secretary of State in April 2013.