It's not just the job ... it's the lifestyle

Downtown Columbia has a lot to offer the budding young researcher -- a college vibe, beautiful rivers, a growing number of decent restaurants, affordable housing and a healthy supply of bars and clubs.

OK, and it's an hour and a half from the mountains or the beach.

But it needs more, boosters say, to attract Mr. Big Researcher Dude and his brilliant MIT-educated associates when they're looking for a place to hunker down and win the Nobel Prize for nanotechnology.

The university is in a cutthroat competition for those researchers, and lifestyle is a huge part of the game.

Downtown is improving, but boosters know it's no San Francisco, or Boston or Austin.

Cola 29201 is still hot as blue blazes in the summer. It's slap ugly in sections. It's woefully lacking in high-end retail and small specialty shops. It needs a more engaging music scene.

This humble burg has a excitement gap. Its hip quotient needs a multiplier.

That's where the Vista comes in. That's why it's the back half of "Innovista," the name for USC's research campus.

While everyone acknowledges the Vista is a work in progress, it presents an opportunity not many cities have.

In theory, this will be Columbia's competitive advantage: Most research campuses, like the N.C. Research Triangle, are suburban and separate from their sponsor campuses and host cities. They are isolated office buildings surrounded by a sea of parking lots.

But USC's research campus will be "as much a part of city as it is a part of the university," says Harris Pastides, USC's vice president for research.

Researchers will live, work and play in the same compact area. A laboratory upstairs, coffee shop downstairs and condo around the corner. The favorite restaurant will be down the block and the weekend watering hole, a short walk away.

The research end of USC's new campus is the Innovation District. The other, lifestyle component is the Waterfront District.

Together, the two districts comprise a 30-block chunk of downtown anchored by USC's 200-year-old Horseshoe to the east and, to the west, a sprawling $77 million, 74-acre park.

The park will be built on the bank of the Congaree River, stretching from Gervais Street south to Granby Village. Condos and apartment buildings -- most with ground-floor retail -- will ring the park and stretch back to Assembly Street. Walking will be the way people get around.

Once completed, according to USC's planners, Sasaki Associates, Columbia should have a vibrant, upscale downtown attractive to the vaunted "creative class."

"It will make all the difference in the ability to hire the best and brightest," said attorney Bill Boyd, chairman of the committee charged with making the Waterfront District happen.

But there are challenges beyond the theory.

THE PARK

Start with $77 million for the park, which Boyd calls "the jewel in the crown."

Boyd and his 21-member committee of regional leaders have been meeting with the area's congressional delegation.

The goal is to get the federal government to pick up the tab for the park through Water Resources Development Act grants managed by the Army Corps of Engineers, or other sources.

Federal grants have paid for a portion of the waterfront parks in cites such as Charleston, Cincinnati and Wheeling, W.Va.

And "there are parks where the feds have paid 100 percent," such as in Indianapolis, said Lee Bussell, with the Chernoff Newman public relations firm and a waterfront committee member. MARSHALING

LANDOWNERS

The second challenge is getting private developers to conform to Sasaki's vision.

About 65 percent of the land in the district belongs to someone other than USC or its riverfront partner, the Guignard family.

The stick will be a zoning overlay to be adopted at some point by the city. The carrot would be that if the plan is followed, in theory, everyone's property values, and profits, would rise.

"The message is: Your property will be worth more together than individually," said Mike Dawson, executive director of the River Alliance, which helps guide development along the city's rivers and is the body applying for the federal park grants.

"If you opt in," Dawson said, "the benefit will be greater."

TIME

The final challenge is time. Right now, Columbia is selling a vision leaders hope researchers will buy. And by their own admission, Boyd's team is challenged with putting meat on the plan's bones.

The first attraction will be USC's baseball stadium going in at Blossom Street and the river.

But boosters say it still could take a decade for the district to build out.

"It's a matter of how quickly we can accelerate the process," Bussell said.