More shopping envisioned for downtown

By JEFF WILKINSON, jwilkinson@thestate.com

C. Aluka Berry - The State/caberry@thestate.com

Julia Melvin, left, gets help from GOGA employee, Stormy Gaskins as she picks out clothes at GOGA which is in the Vista.

Residential development is on the rise in downtown Columbia, and office space occupancy is at an all-time high. The weak link is shopping.

To boost retail downtown, Columbia City Council is preparing to pay $200,000 for a study to identify what kinds of stores are needed and how to recruit them.

That would be followed by the hiring of a retail coordinator to recruit national retailers, a la King Street in Charleston, and local services, such as dry cleaners and specialty shops. "Columbia's urban core is doing very well in office and residential," said Matt Kennell, the partnership's chief executive officer. "Retail is the weak leg on downtown's three-legged stool."

The yearlong study would be conducted by consulting firm Economics Research Associates of Washington, D.C. The firm recently competed similar studies for Austin, Texas, and St. Louis and now is working in Nashville and Memphis, Tenn.

A main focus of the study will be identifying ways to revitalize Main Street and boost shopping options for visitors to the Vista. The study will balance those needs with other city commercial districts such as Five Points, Devine Street and the Two Notch/Farrow Road area.

Midge McCauley, the firm's principal, will head up the analysis.

Downtown, particularly the Vista, has a great platform to build on, she said in an interview from her Washington, D.C., office -- a solid base of bars and restaurants and a downtown grocery store. And there is a good cluster of art galleries and stores selling decorative arts. Beyond that?

"You don't have enough of any one type of retail downtown, and there are so many categories," she said. "You need more men's and women's apparel. Accessories -- shoes and handbags. A bookstore. Services like dry cleaners and shoe repair."

National retailers such as the Gap and Banana Republic are the mother lode, she said, and might be perfect for Main Street downtown or Lady Street in the Vista. Today, the only national retailer downtown is American Apparel, known for Americanmade T-shirts and youthful, racy ads.

"But it takes hard work" to recruit the national firms, Mc- Cauley said. "They are not pioneers. They are followers. There is a herd mentality. You have to convince them to be pioneers."

One advantage is that the cost of doing business -- particularly leases -- is cheaper downtown than in malls, she said. And there is a certain cachet to shopping in a historically retail area. The problems?

"Those awful facades" on Main Street, McCauley said. "The '60s and '70s were not kind to retail."

Experiments such as false facades, heavy landscaping or pedestrian malls didn't help much, she said. The answer is having a retailer recruiter who knows what he or she is doing.

"Don't bother having us do your plan if you don't have someone to implement it," she said.

McCauley said local development corporations and real estate agents are not experts in attracting national retail because they don't have the connections.

"They just don't do this type of cold-calling to national retailers," she said.

McCauley has made several trips to Columbia already and, if hired by City Council, would start her formal analysis at the end of September.

The $200,000 will come from a variety of city business development funds, said Dana Turner, assistant city manager for commerce and development. The measure is expected to pass council easily.

The City Center Partnership, which advocates and guides growth and business development on and around Main Street, would pay the salary of the retail coordinator hired.

For Frank Lourie, whose family has sold menswear on Main Street since 1948, the help can't come soon enough.

A streetscaping project, between Gervais and Hampton streets, hurt business on that end of Main. As a result, building owners on the other end of Main, between Hampton and Elmwood Avenue, have been loath to begin any redevelopment or renovation in anticipation of another streetscaping project, starting there next year.

After that, Lourie said, Main Street will be ripe for new business. A plan will help, he said.

"Five years from now, we'll be looking at a totally different environment down here than you see today," he said.

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Reach Wilkinson at (803) 771-8495.