Mayor Keith Gaskin announced during his Wednesday press conference that he is planning to bury a time capsule at City Hall on Dec. 31.

The city is in its bicentennial year, Gaskin said, and he wants to mark the occasion with a time capsule.

“We will bury it on New Year’s Eve at noon,” he said. “It will be buried here at City Hall in the little garden area at the entry into the old police department.”

The capsule will be closed for 50 years, and Gaskin hopes it will be opened in 2071 for the city’s 250th anniversary, he said.

Members of the public are invited to donate items for inclusion, he said. Size is limited to “about 9-by-12-by-2 inches.”

“We’re suggesting photos, single-page documents, CDs of data, USB drives of data,” he said. “Hopefully there will be a way to open those in 50 years. We’re also asking for other physical items that might give citizens in 50 years an idea what it looked like to be in Columbus in 2021.”

Each item will be recorded and cataloged and the catalog will be included in the capsule, he said.

Residents are encouraged to bring items to City Hall Monday through Wednesday. The deadline is 2 p.m. on Wednesday.

“We are doing it here at City Hall because we won’t have to ask permission from anybody to open it in 50 years,” he said. “It’s less likely for it to go underwater during those 50 years.”

Earlier this year, a time capsule was opened at Leigh Mall. That one was buried on Aug. 22, 1972, a year before the mall opened. The burial was organized by Sears, which was one of the anchor stores there before it closed.

That time capsule was full of water when it was opened, likely from the 1973 flood which flooded the entire city and the brand-new mall.