PRINTColumbia turns 100,000
What to expect as college town, USA, reaches a population milestone
John Hook
Rush-hour traffic on Providence Road.
December 11, 2008 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Turning 100,000 is a lot like turning 30. A milestone is reached, but nothing glorious or dramatic marks the occasion. Rather, 100,000 is a time to pause, take stock of the present and plan the future.
Columbia was home to 99,174 people in July 2007, according to the Population Division of the U.S. Census Bureau. If growth trends continued, Columbia has crossed the 100,000 population mark in 2008 though absolute verification will have to wait until 2009 when the census numbers will be crunched for the current year.
on the lack of building regulations in downtown Columbia and how responsible Columbia’s growth is, see Vox’s February story: VoxMagazine.com/stories/2008/02/14/identity-crisis/
Stadium Shoppes.
The city is expanding southward and creating suburbia. This sprawling type of expansion can cause ...
The challenges for this growing city are to create more jobs, more buildings and more entertainment without stamping out small-town charm and diverse businesses or abusing the environment. There’s no shortage of debate and conflict over which of these issues is most important or how to approach them, but that’s part of this town’s appeal.
Many of the questions about Columbia’s growth are manifested in the microcosm of downtown, the center for activity and entertainment. A close look shows the forces at play in the city and hints at the future current planners are creating.
Grow, baby, grow
This town is booming. In 2006, Columbia was the third fastest-growing city in Missouri behind Kansas City and O’Fallon and gained an average of 2,260 people per year from 2002 to 2007. At this rate, Columbia will cross the 150,000 population mark in 2031 and the 200,000 mark in 2053.
College students are included in U.S. Census information. With 23,280 students enrolled on campus in 2000 and 30,200 total enrolled in fall 2008, MU steadily draws more people each year, as do Stephens and Columbia colleges. But new students do not account for all of Columbia’s growth. Graduates who choose to stay, professionals and retirees are also swelling the city’s numbers, according to the Columbia Chamber of Commerce.
The big shop, little shop conundrum
More Columbians means more shoppers, and people here are used to both chain and one-of-a-kind store options. But as more people make this city home, the tension between chain and locally owned stores intensifies.
The city is home to five Starbucks, three Super Walmarts and a Target. Two new Hy-Vees are expected to open in 2009, which will bring Columbia’s total to three. A Dick’s Sporting Goods at The Shoppes at Stadium is also under construction.
Although Hy-Vee is clearly expanding, General Growth Companies, which owns the Columbia Mall, is in dire straits. The Associated Press reported in November that, according to regulatory filings, GGC might declare bankruptcy if it can’t pay back loans due in December. But this isn’t the end of the mall. “We will continue to stay open regardless of the financial situation with GGC,” says Janet Henderson, senior general manager of the Columbia Mall.
Columbia’s downtown is a mixture of local stores and national chains, but some think maintaining diversity is getting harder in this compact environment where many of the city’s unique stores are located.
Renovating downtown buildings might not be the everyone-wins situation it seems. Leigh Lockhart, owner of Main Squeeze Natural Foods Café, says that current moves by developers and the city to revitalize downtown can threaten small businesses when rents are raised. “When someone renovates a building, they have to recuperate that money,” she says, adding that though higher rents are a hardship for locally owned restaurants such as Main Squeeze, chains can often afford them.
John Ott, a Columbia developer whose properties include the Tiger Hotel and the buildings that house Kayotea and Kaldi’s, says that rents on renovated buildings should not be a problem for many businesses, and the expanding downtown rental market will continue to have room for both chain and small stores. “We need a mix of brand-name stores and independents,” Ott says. “If I were an independent store, it would be in my interest to have one or two successful brand-name stores in the location just to drive more people to that area.”
Getting students in the door is a goal of many local businesses. One in three Columbians is a college student. They hold the lives of many Columbia businesses in their wallets. The delicate balance of attracting professionals from the community while tapping the student market is crucial to the survival of every business downtown.
“If you appeal to just college kids, then come summertime you’re going to be up a creek without a paddle,” says Kellye Dubinski, owner of Kayotea. “If you appeal to downtown business people only, you’re missing out on a huge clientele.”
Kayotea works to appeal to many Columbians through a diverse menu, free WiFi and open mic nights. Dubinski says that though Ott, her landlord, does not charge unfairly, the poor economy has decreased consumer spending and brought other costs up. This has made paying rent on the large, renovated space stressful.
Like the owners of other one-of-a-kind Columbia stores, Dubinski worries that landlords see chains as more desirable tenants because they have more financial backing to help withstand recessions. They also might be willing to pay higher rents and are therefore a safer bet as a lessee.
To build or not to build
Columbians have many ideas about what should happen in this city, and plans are constantly being hammered out. The City Council’s frequent division on potential projects reflects the conflict in the hearts of many Columbians: embrace the boom, and build like crazy, hoping that the economy grows dramatically, or studiously manage growth to preserve that beloved small-town charm? Depending on whom you talk to, the Council is either all for renovation and growth in general or would prefer that Columbia retain its smaller profile.
“There’s an attitude in Columbia generally of growth and attracting new business regardless of what it is,” Lockhart says.
Don Stamper, executive director of the Central Missouri Development Council, disagrees. He says Columbia’s City Council isn’t doing all it should to develop build-ready sites. “There are some members of the Council who are anti-growth,” he says. “They see themselves too much as gatekeepers. The Council lacks the enthusiasm for development, but we have the enthusiasm for parks and trails.”
Ott’s touch is becoming increasingly visible through his work on the grand facade of the Tiger Hotel to the pressed tin ceiling in Kaldi’s. “It appears that the Council and the administration are very eager to see improvements take place downtown,” he says. “They’re endorsing more parking and taking on preserving historic buildings, and they’ve been endorsing the idea of more housing downtown.”
Another concern is the tentacles of urban sprawl that radiate from many quickly growing cities, says Tim Teddy, director of Columbia’s Planning and Development Department. Teddy sees a new trend taking shape that could limit sprawl. “I think we’ll get a fair amount of infill development, and that means development where city services already reach,” Teddy says. “There’s also an increased interest in existing buildings.”
More apartments downtown are on the horizon, Ott says, continuing the transformation of underutilized space. The alleys between Cherry Street and Broadway are one example. Although smelly, dark and unwelcoming today, in a few years they might be as jumping as Ninth Street. Ott and his associates have begun to transform Alley A, found between Ninth and Tenth streets, with two apartments, a retail and a rental space.
The city is laying a plan that will encourage infill, the renovation of existing spaces and the use of lots in developed areas through development of a Tax Increment Financing policy. A TIF policy allows the city to issue bonds to help pay for the cost of a renovation or new building. The taxes generated by the new or renovated property are then used to pay off the bonds, according to the Institute for Local Self Reliance. According to Teddy, no TIF districts have been designated in Columbia, but there are two potential projects that could use this funding source, one of which is the parking garage at Tenth and
Locust streets.
Increased infill will have major effects on the economy of downtown Columbia and could be a win for the environment. David Diamond, of the Missouri Department of Conservation, says in an e-mail that Columbia spreading outward would result in more roads, which destroy habitat and affect streams with run-off from their hard surfaces. It will also mean longer utility and sewer lines and more lawns with fertilizer causing pollution to streams. In contrast, becoming a more dense and compact city means fewer new roads and utility lines. Diamond says that use of already urbanized land for new buildings, such as the lot at Providence Road and Nifong Boulevard, the future location of a Hy-Vee, is also a good sign in regard to the environment because new paving and road installation will be minimized greatly. Diamond adds that enforcing environmental laws during building to prevent run-off and conserve trees is also crucial to a healthy environment.
But what’s built is just as important as where it’s built, and right now there are few rules. “There aren’t many regulations right now on what can be built downtown,” Columbia Mayor Darwin Hindman says. “That could be a problem, but we’re looking at what we could do about it, everything from architectural review to a single developer to the possibility of the downtown property owners forming a community development district.”
Because property rights are carefully guarded in Boone County and Missouri, Hindman says that regulation will depend to a large extent on the will of the property owners and the people.
Getting from here to there
With all this building, potential infilling and urban sprawl going on in Columbia, is the city’s public transportation system going to undergo a dramatic expansion such as more buses, taxis or even a rail system? The short-term answer is no.
“The problem is that public transportation has to be subsidized,” Hindman says. “It does not pay for itself. It’s almost impossible to bring public transportation up to what we would like for it to be because we can’t afford it.”
So, while Columbia’s downtown will be renovated and the city continues to grow out, one thing won’t change over the next five years: Columbia will continue to be a car city.
The criminal surprise
Common sense says that as a city gets larger, crime rates uniformly increase, but this isn’t exactly what is happening in Columbia. “Our pattern seems to be that our property crimes are going up and our person crimes are decreasing,” says Captain Zim Schwartze of the Columbia Police Department.
Property crime includes burglary, theft and vandalism. Person crimes are violent crimes like robbery, rape and murder.
In 2004, the Missouri Uniform Crime Reporting Program recorded 429 violent crimes in Columbia. That number grew to 460 in 2006 and spiked to 617 in 2007. But in 2008, violent crime is down, with 315 violent crimes reported through October.
Schwartze credits work by the police and groups throughout the city for bringing Columbia’s violent crime rate down 38 percent so far from the 2007 spike and for keeping violent crime rates from rising steadily in parallel with the population.
Property crimes have risen drastically. Burglaries have increased 52.7 percent, Schwartze says in an e-mail. “I believe that we are going to continue to battle property crime increasing,” she says. Schwartze believes the poor economy has contributed to rising property crimes.
Music mania
In this town, as with most others, more people means more music lovers, more bands and more larger concerts. “Columbia is beginning to be recognized as a place to go for live music of every kind,” Hindman says.
The Blue Fugue, Mojo’s, The Blue Note, Cherry Street Artisan and the Missouri Theatre’s live-music-filled schedules support Hindman’s claim that music is essential to the entertainment landscape.
“We’ve exploded in the last 20 years,” says Tracy Lane of Thumper Productions, the company that organized the Roots ’n Blues ’n BBQ Festival. “I started out promoting concerts at The Blue Note about 20 years ago, and there really were no other concert venues around at that time.”
Lane says that in addition to more venues, Columbia is embracing more kinds of music. Until recently, large venues in Columbia such as the Mizzou Arena were most comfortable with country music, she says, but have begun booking bigger artists such as Elton John and most recently the heavy, industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, which Thumper Productions helped bring to town.
In addition to drawing more diverse musicians, Columbia’s location makes it an ideal incubator for bands. Local musician Wes Wingate predicts that the city’s appeal to musicians will grow. “I’ve been in this town a long time and been in touring bands,” he says. “This was our home base. It’s really convenient for traveling. It’s centralized.”
Music is also key in another Columbia trend: the festival. Since the 2003 debut of the True/False Film Festival, Columbians have proved themselves serious enthusiasts. Roots ’n Blues ’n BBQ exceeded expectations, and Lane says that with strong support from the community and City Council, the festival will return in the future with more sponsors. This year the Citizen Jane Film Festival and the Bluebird Music and Arts Festival debuted. Wingate, one of Bluebird’s organizers, says the Midwest has an original place in the country’s modern musical life that is often overlooked. “Despite what we might have grown up being told, we don’t regurgitate what the coast tells us two years later,” he says.
Columbia’s all grown up
As Columbia reaches a population of 100,000, the struggle for a balance between what is local and what the world offers is on. The city is drawing more businesses, more students and more entertainment than ever before, making it a richer place to work or go to school. But keeping Columbia’s small-town charm while taking advantage of growth requires dedication from citizens and lawmakers.
Diverse shopping options can continue if people work to maintain them. Chain stores are clearly an important part of the retail landscape, but it is also key to realize that one-of-a-kind stores suffer quickly in a weak economy and need the support of landlords and shoppers. In terms of building, a TIF policy and interest in developed sites would be good for the environment. However, constant vigilance is necessary to make sure that Columbia actively invites businesses and builders to utilize urbanized space instead of bulldozing green space outside of downtown. Regulations that prevent eyesore buildings in the city, especially downtown, could be another positive step toward preserving and improving the city’s appeal.
With new stores and buildings, more jobs will be created. In making sure people can get to work at those jobs, even if they don’t have a car, the city falls short. Bike paths and trails are beloved, but they don’t help anyone make it to a job on the other side of town in the winter.
On the bright side, music and the revenue it brings is a boon that keeps on growing and entertaining. Columbia is poised to build on its reputation as a destination for big shows and a home base for bands, therefore culturally enriching the city and sliding some cash into the pockets of the host
venues.
These are just a few of the forces at work in Columbia, but they’re forces that everyone can influence with a vote, a dollar spent or a voice raised. Luckily for the city, Columbians have strong opinions about their town and an enthusiasm for being a part of its growth.
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