June 23, 2022

6:30-9:00 pm

The Athletic Club of Columbus

 

6:30 - 7:15 pm | Cocktails and Hors d'oeuvres

7:15 - 8:00 pm | Dinner

8:00 - 9:00 pm | Keith Myers' Story moderated by Chris Hermann, Principal, MKSK

 

 

Vice President, Planning, Architecture and Real Estate

The Ohio State University

 

 

Keith Myers is an acclaimed urban planner and landscape architect who is retiring on June 30 as vice president of planning, architecture and real estate from the Ohio State University following a 30-year career in private practice. He was chair of Urban Land Institute (ULI) Columbus in 2019-2021, where he is credited with helping to create the vision for RAPID 5, a movement to connect people of central Ohio with nature and each other across five major waterways and adjacent parks and trails. As a governance committee member at ULI, Myers has been involved in collaboration with the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC) to predict central Ohio will attract one million new residents by 2050. As an outgrowth of that work, Myers helped ULI and MORPC to recognize an urgency to enliven the five major north-south waterways distributed evenly across Franklin County in imaginative ways to use the rivers and creeks and surrounding parks and trials to connect central Ohioans to nature and each other to the benefit of all.

 

Among Myers’ signature accomplishments are the restoration of Mirror Lake at OSU to its more natural state, the design of the Scioto Mile and Scioto Greenways in Downtown Columbus, and master planning of the Nationwide Arena District. His leadership at Ohio State also includes the development of its Innovation District and University Square at the intersection of 15th Avenue and High Street in Columbus.

 

Myers received a bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture from OSU and has served its Knowlton School of Architecture as an adjunct faculty member. He founded the landscape architecture and urban planning firm MKSK in 1984 and helped grow it into the largest such firm in the Midwest.

 

Myers is a fellow in the American Society of Landscape Architects. His community leadership has included work on the Neighborhood Design Center and the Brewery District Commission. In addition, he served as a planning consultant to New Albany for more than two decades as it grew from a sleepy rural village to a national model for a health-focused suburban lifestyle.

 

Following his planned retirement, Myers will return in September to serve on OSU’s Design Review Board.