It would be cool if this thread got active, Columbia is one of the hottest spots in Missouri at the moment and the town is densifying its downtown area like crazy. I'll go through town sometime next week when I am back and take some update pictures of some important projects around the area.
The density is increasing downtown . . . but the urban utility is not improving at the same rate. A lot of that density
(not all, but much) is poorly constructed four story stick apartments that don't interact with the street in any meaningful way and aren't likely to last more than a quarter century. They're already something of a nuisance. Loud, drunken students yelling profanities from third floor balconies have become a regular feature downtown. Keep in mind, the university just tore the balconies off all its dorms on account of students throwing things from them. (In at least one famous incident a burning couch.) Why lookie! The murder loops are back in the drunken citadel!
Yeah, it's hot. It's a bubble created by a dry Greektown and an expanding student body that just quit expanding thanks in large part to skyrocketing tuition. Columbia is at present in the midst of an apartment bubble. You won't want to be there when it bursts.
On the other hand, it's nice to see the plan fixing the damage the city just did to the east end of Broadway in Front of First Baptist (popularly the Donald Duck Church) and Stephens. It's a real shame all the art in the study is so terribly derivative. It's one thing to provide precedent for new structures in a historic district. It's a much sadder thing to feel compelled to do so to justify your uninspiring statuary and signage in a modern area. Also, can someone please kill this stupid "District" thing now? No one has ever called it that outside of a city council meeting or a Chamber of Commerce flyer. It's just . . . misleading. And confusing to boot. Who thought this stuff up? The same group that did the giant keyhole that blocks the door to the new City Hall? There's a remarkably apt piece of waymarking for you: "the Council is through the giant lock. Make sure you have a key before entry. Get them at the Camber of Commerce on the other side of 'The District.'" . . . (And if you don't know what that is, you don't need a key.)
I wanted to see more density in downtown Columbia for twenty years. Maybe one of these days someone will actually build something you can buy, but for now, it's high dollar rentals only. (And just for the record, I helped to build some of it before I moved out. It's not all bad. We did our level best. But it's very clearly not all good either. Mixed bag at best. Very few locals are entirely happy about it, maybe none. And quite a few feel entirely ignored.)
In other news, Shakespeare's Pizza reopened in their original location over the weekend. It is now on the ground level of a 6 or 7 story mixed use building.
I've been impressed with downtown Columbia over the last couple years. But Providence, oy! Good to see they're addressing western edge/Providence. Coming in to downtown that way from I-70 is totally different and a 'less than experience than coming up Broadway from 63. Hopefully, they can pull some development toward that end, maybe more mixed office/retail.
It looks impressive. On the surface it appears as though there's a lot more density. In reality, a lot of it has simply moved off campus. There are a great many large buildings, but there's actually not really any more retail downtown now than there was twenty years ago. It's more expensive, more fancy, it caters more to a tourist crowd . . . but few of the buildings incorporate retail and those that do mostly replaced about an equal square footage of retail with retail on the first floor. In reality, what it's mostly done is push low income neighborhoods further and further away from the urban core, such as it is, so that students that lived on campus or in Greektown can live off campus where they're allowed to drink. It looks pretty, but it's skin deep. And there are a lot of problems that go with the pretty. It really boggles the mind how few of the new buildings actually have first floor retail. And those that do have it only because of community pushback. It's nice to see buildings replacing surface parking. I do like that. But I'm less sold on cheaply built, high priced student apartments replacing marginally affordable housing. It's a different town than it was twenty odd years ago. Some of it is better . . . but not remotely all.
I have to disagree with you about there not being more retail. Twenty years ago, the only street that really had much on it was 9th street. Broadway had some stores, but businesses weren't exactly high on the list to visit. Shakespeare's Pizza, St. Louis Bread Co., the Heidelberg, and Tiger Barber Shop were the main places to venture off campus to go downtown unless it was on a weekend night. Now, there are all sorts of places to visit. The loft building on 9th has a Walmart Express (that would have been convenient back then) as well as several other businesses. Rally House and Alpine Shop are also new since then. One of the best things they ever did was tearing down those old ugly concert canopies over the sidewalks on Broadway. The Doubletree downtown is also a huge upgrade. I'm always impressed by how busy the sidewalks are now compared to back then. I have enjoyed seeing downtown Columbia become a much more inviting and much busier place. It's still growing, too, so it should continue to become more dense.
I get the feeling you didn't venture downtown much, but there was quite a lot there.
The Alpine Shop replaced a very convenient theatre. There was a small grocery on Locust and several restaurants at the corner of Hitt and Locust, including two Greek places across the street from one another. There was retail on 10th, then as now. There was a Gliks art supply right on the corner of 9th and Broadway. A large fabric store further down Broadway on the north side of the street. There was everything in the Strollway Center, which is now the . . . well . . . the building with Kaldi's in it. There was Columbia Books on 8th. Best of the West. Cool Stuff, Aardvarx, the Cheshire Cat. There were several jewlery stores on ninth, another pair on Broadway, and more on Walnut. There was a ton and a half of retail in downtown Columbia. I can't name it all off the top of my head, but there's really quite a lot you didn't list. There was an import shop that later moved to the mall. There was a copy shop that later moved to Brady Commons and I think now the library. There were tons of small restaurants, then as now. There was a laundramat on Hitt and another on Elm. There were two dry cleaners within a few blocks of one another. There was a tiny little Chinese restaurant in what became the Shakespeare's parking lot on the north side of the building. Maybe it wasn't all your cup of tea, but it was quirky, fun, and convenient. Some of it is still there. Some has moved. A lot has disappeared to be replaced by trendier stuff. But I'd guess the overall square footage inside the central business district dedicated to retail hasn't increased by much more than maybe ten percent in that time. The apartments, on the other hand . . .
I suppose it's nice that there's a Walmart. But there has always been adequate discount retail within an easy walk of campus, assuming you didn't mind crossing Providence. (I never had a problem with it.) And who wants to shop in Kroenkeville anyway? I surely don't. Yes, there's a little more retail, but not much. It's nothing like the retail explosion on East Broadway or on Grindstone. Or even the more modest one on West Broadway past Stadium. Mostly what downtown has is more student apartments. And as the students have grown richer and moved closer to downtown it has displaced services that served locals. I assure you. Most are still there. Just . . . further out now.
And yes, the Broadway is lovely. As is the Roof. I'm glad you like it. I helped build it in my own small way. But it really goes to prove my point. A modest hotel has been replaced with one only slightly larger . . . but much more expensive. A comfortable and pleasant Thai restaurant has been replaced with a fancy restaurant I never bothered with and a bar I went to once for a free beer and to show my parents the view. I wish them luck. The owner seems like a decent enough fellow. But it's not really more. It's just more expensive. And the very last thing Columbia really needed was another bar. There's enough of them in that neighborhood that it was already a nuisance and it's only getting worse. Density is one thing. Density of loud drunks is another altogether.
For the record, I don't mean to sound entirely negative. There are some good projects and I'd wanted to see more density in Columbia almost from the day I moved in in 1992. So some of it is very welcome. Some of it is sensible. The new building going up on 8th should be more or less okay. The structure that went up in the parking lot next to the J slums, the one with the Walmart, is nice and adds retail. The Broadway is solid. The apartment building wedged to the Broadway's garage is a neat little building. The one that replaced the parking lot at 10th and Broadway is attractive and will add retail. The one that replaced the Columbia Billiards building (where the Rome was) is decent, even if it doesn't really add any retail. But there's a fair bit of negative with the positive. For each of those buildings there are two or three four story stick structures with no retail at all: four or so at Walnut and College, another two or three on Hitt. Several on Locust. And more going up in other neighborhoods as we speak. Those add much less, maybe nothing in the long run, as they are, by reputation, poorly built and unlikely to last terribly long. They do add nuisance noise, harassment, drunk and disorderly . . . that kind of thing. They move the students away from supervision, such as it was. Side effect of a dry campus and a dry Greektown. Unintended consequences and all that. There is some good. There is some bad. There is some merely different. In the net, it's probably positive. But there's enough bad that anyone local has plenty to complain about. Real, honest complaints. It really has raised rents. I promise. Quite a lot. Precipitously. There's a reason I bought a house here rather than there. And it's done a lot less to help the real economy. Construction jobs are temporary. The retail really hasn't gone up any faster than the population (and much less so downtown.) Job growth has been modest and wage growth has been virtually absent, what with the largest employer in the region freezing pay. But expenses have gone up. In net the place is less affordable now than it was twenty years ago. Still not terrible, but . . . pricier. Trendy. There is a cost to being trendy. Locals get displaced. Just about every time. It helps some people. But it hurts others. It's not necessarily a win win. Development isn't a magic pill. And not all development is created equal.
But the actual retail numbers should be out there. That should be solvable. We ought to be able to get the downtown population now and twenty years ago, the retail (non-office) square footage, and quite possibly even income ranges and maybe even rents. The first two shouldn't be so difficult, anyway.
I grew up in the Columbia area (in an adjacent county in Mid-Missouri), so I've seen Columbia change immensely in my lifetime. In the mid 90s (when I moved there to go to Mizzou), the population of Columbia was around 70,000. It's now over 120,000 (now the 4th largest city in Missouri). That's a huge change, and I love seeing it grow.
I want to see the skyline continue to grow downtown. I would love to see the entire area between Mizzou and Columbia College become one large dense mixed use area. As the population continues to grow, I believe downtown Columbia will continue to get bigger and better. I know some people want Columbia to be a small town like it was over 50 years ago, but that has long passed. It's a big enough city to be livable for all different people. This is just my opinion. I know everyone doesn't agree. I don't get to make those decisions, though, but I can dream.
I mostly want I-70 to be widened to at least 3 lanes each direction from Wentzville to and through Columbia. That's at the top of my wish list, at least. Traffic capacity far outgrew what we have now many years ago.
I moved there in 1992. Even with sixty thousand odd people then it was already the fourth largest city in the state. I only just moved out this spring, and I'm not completely out. I still go down every couple of weeks and follow things fairly closely. So we've seen some of the same growth. I've no wish to see it move backwards. I'd love to see a healthy, mixed use neighborhood downtown; one where residents can buy an apartment, not just rent one. One with more and better retail focused on locals and not just tourists or wealthy students. I lived there for a quarter century; for virtually all of my adult life, actually; virtually all of my working life. It's exciting to see it turn into a small city, but I'd like it to be better. How many people over forty actually live downtown? I bet I know an improbably large percentage of them personally I certainly know more than a few that have had to move out. That does not speak of a healthy mixed use neighborhood. It speaks of dorms. Downtown is becoming a mess of misplaced dorms. There are more people downtown now, but how many of them actually stay there year round? As many as before? More? Fewer? The place still dries up something terrible in the summer. (Though honestly, I always found that more than a little refreshing. I came to think of it as reclaiming downtown, since I was a downtown creature for so very long. Frankly, if you've frequented a locally owned coffee shop in Columbia in the last twenty years we've met. I about guarantee it. You would probably recognize me. I'm the fellow in the black fedora. And I was the fellow in the black fedora twenty years ago before it became so cool.) But anyway . . . I think we have the same goal, we're just focusing on different details. We both want a healthy, dense, vibrant, mixed use neighborhood. I'll try to get numbers on retail square footage in the CBD then and now. That alone will tell an interesting story.
^I don't drink coffee, so I doubt I would have run into you, but I guess it is possible. I did stop by Columbia earlier this evening on the way back from the state fair in Sedalia. It looks like students are arriving back in town for the semester. It was way busier than when I was there a couple weeks ago.
Always is when the students get back. When last I took classes I seem to recall the semester starting around the beginning of September but the greeks always started things a few weeks earlier anyway. And even the freshemen arrive a good week and a half or two early, so it'll doubtless be a madhouse very shortly. By the weekend, probably. So much for the quiet days of summer. And here I was thinking I might still get a quiet evening downtown when I'm there later this week. Ah well. There will be other summers.
It's really great to see that both of Missouri's college towns are booming. Springfield is also experiencing a large amount of grown in it's downtown core. Although I think Columbia has hit a sort of wall for the moment, I hear of a lot of people moving from there to down here, MSU is literally at over capacity with their student attendance. Not to make it a competition though, because when something good is happening in Springfield or Columbia, it's good for our state.
There are definitely some good projects and bad projects. The New Shakespeare's building in particular is a huge improvement to what was originally there, with an additional 3-4 retail bays added not including the restaurant. In my opinion, the inevitable bursting of the apartment bubble, while may be bad at the time, will actually benefit downtown in the long run. In fact I don't see for purchase apartments ever coming to downtown until the rental bubble bursts and property owners decide selling condos would be more profitable than renting. Overall, I don't believe that increasing quality building stock downtown is ever a bad thing. The city just needs to require better things.
Well, last I checked the University was dying for graduate housing; even before the University Village debacle. (Graduate housing just didn't generate the kind of revenue fancy undergraduate dorms and new surgical towers did.) And I can't imagine all the fancy apartments have all that much to offer the average graduate student, as most of the grad students I know still hew more closely to the "poor starving college student" model than their undergrad counterparts these days. But . . . that doesn't look like something that would appeal to the frugal. Mm. Who knows.
I realize this thread says 2016 development, but maybe we could re-title it for just Columbia developments. Saw this in the PD today, UM and Siemens are partnering up for a large healthcare research facility in Columbia. https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/edu ... op-story-2
I realize this thread says 2016 development, but maybe we could re-title it for just Columbia developments. Saw this in the PD today, UM and Siemens are partnering up for a large healthcare research facility in Columbia. https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/edu ... op-story-2
Some photos of new buildings in Columbia from Tuesday and Yesterday.
Rise on 9th
The District Flats
Broadway Hotel and some other new building on Broadway
State Historical Society
Mizzou Hospital Research Building
There was also a proposal for a new AC Hotel by Marriott in "The District" at Hitt and Cherry Streets. The project was approved but no word since late January on the status. I assume it's paused due to corona.
