Lima City Engineer Kirk Niemeyer knows the frustration of trying to use Google Maps downtown.
“I’ve noticed a problem in the past, especially when trying to tell people how to find the city building, being 50 Town Square,” Niemeyer said.
Niemeyer, the keeper of the road names in Lima, knows that Google will drop them off roughly in front of the Childers Media Group offices in downtown Lima, or roughly across Main Street from where the city building actually exists.
But if you look up that business on Google, it says it’s located at 57 Public Square, a road that doesn’t actually exist in Lima.
The reasons why can be found in Lima’s history. Anna Selfridge, of the Allen County Museum, noted the area was labeled Public Square in city directories up through 1979, and people of a certain vintage continue to call it that. Then, starting in the 1980 city directory, it became Town Square.
Apparently the center of the city, once designated as a training ground for the Northwestern Ohio Militia when Lima was platted in 1831, changed its name in September 1979 as part of a streetscape project. A month later, city officials celebrated a grand opening for the new area, complete with brick pathways, diagonal parking and the island in the middle of Market and Main streets that you either love or hate today.
So how does Google, an internet company founded in 1998, end up with the wrong addresses on so many locations?
“Our basemap data — things like place names, borders and road networks — comes from a combination of third-party providers, public sources and user contributions,” said Elizabeth Davidoff, communications manager for Google Maps, via email.
While they say you can’t fight city hall, you can fight Google. The company has a link to “Report a Problem” at the bottom right corner of the map on a desktop computer or by using the “Suggest an Edit” on the mobile or search versions of the map.
I spent about a minute Friday asking them to start naming everything downtown Town Square instead of Public Square. We’ll see how quickly they change it, but perhaps a flood of requests will help motivate them. Davidoff said Google’s “users make millions of edits to local data and map data every day.”
It’s mostly an annoyance to those who work with it. Abe Ambroza, the CEO of Veterans Memorial Civic Center at 7 Town Square (or 7 Public Square, if you believe Google), said it wasn’t a large issue, since Google’s directions drop people off next door to the facility.
“That being said, we’ve tried numerous ways of editing or requesting the address to be corrected, which to this point have been successful,” said Ambroza, whose correct address appears all over its website.
The same can be said for Downtown Lima, said Aubree Kaye, its president. Her organization defines town square as along Main Street from Spring Street to High Street.
“We always tell people, especially when we’re working with the Convention and Visitors Bureau, to call ahead as well if you’re coming to a specific location,” she said.
Of course, the businesses in that group wouldn’t mind if you spent some time wandering around downtown, checking out other places too. Perhaps Google is doing us a favor after all.
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