Building Our City | Assembly Street wish list

Project would beautify corridor and eliminate railroad crossings

By JEFF WILKINSON - jwilkinson@thestate.com

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Mayor Bob Coble will ask City Council today to OK a task force that will start planning a major overhaul of Assembly Street.

At an estimated $100 million to relocate railroad tracks and streetscape, it would be the largest, most expensive project in Columbia’s history.

Coble said he is appointing the group to identify funds because County Council decided not to hold a referendum on a sales tax proposal that would have — if approved — provided some money to do the work.

Map: Assembly Street train track improvements

- The State from S.C. DOT data

FOUR GOALS

LINK LADY, MAIN

Main and Lady streets are downtown’s best spots for retail growth, according to a recent study. But getting from Lady in the Vista to Main means crossing multiple lanes of traffic on Assembly Street, one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares. The crossing needs to be safer and less daunting.

ELIMINATE RR CROSSINGS

Assembly south of Blossom Street is crisscrossed with railroad tracks that cut off the State Fairgrounds and stadium areas from the city core. Cost projections to eliminate five crossings by consolidating tracks on a single overpass run up to $50 million. Federal money would have to be found, as it was in the 1980s, when tracks were eliminated on Gervais Street in the Vista.

CONNECT USC CAMPUS

Students must cross Assembly if walking from the Horseshoe and other older areas of campus to the Colonial Center, Koger Center or the music and journalism schools. There’s a bridge and tunnel, but neither is well-used. The problem will get worse as Innovista, USC’s research campus, grows west of Assembly.

BEAUTIFY DOWNTOWN

Downtown has made huge strides with streetscaping on Main, Gervais, Lincoln and Lady streets. But Assembly, which, it can be argued, is downtown’s main artery, still has a bit of the uglies. Streetscaping would make the city’s core more inviting to guests, tourists and potential business owners — not to mention the hundreds of thousands of people who trek down Assembly to football games and the State Fair.

“Assembly is the gateway to Columbia,” the mayor said. “In light of the fact there is no referendum, we need to go ahead and start planning” how to raise funds.

Assembly Street is downtown’s main thoroughfare. But with up to eight lanes of traffic at some major intersections, it is the equivalent of a freeway running through the center of the city.

The street also divides districts both physically and psychologically — the Vista from Main Street, and USC’s old campus from its new Innovista research campus.

The goal is to eliminate the railroad tracks that clog the street, bury the utility lines that clutter it and make it less daunting for pedestrians to cross.

“Bridging that street is important for future development in the Vista and Main Street,” said Fred Delk, executive director of the Columbia Development Corp., which guides investment in the Vista. “But connecting those areas is important for the future of all of downtown. We have to do it.”

A conservative estimate puts the price tag for the 25-block stretch from Elmwood Avenue to Rosewood Drive at $100 million.

That’s $2 million per block for streetscaping and utility work, and $50 million to relocate three sets of railroad tracks and eliminate five crossings.

That’s more than 2½ times what the city spent to overhaul Five Points.

Coble is expected to name former state highway commissioner John Hardee to chair the group. Hardee said the group will work with the state’s congressional delegation and the General Assembly to try to identify federal and state grants to do the work.

“I don’t think there is a project that can be done that will affect so many people,” Hardee said.

The Assembly Street Task Force would include members from the neighborhoods of Olympia, Rosewood, Rose Hill, Main Street, the Vista, Cottontown and Elmwood Park, the mayor said.

It also would have representatives from USC, the Columbia Development Corporation, the Vista Guild, City Center Partnership, the Columbia Blowfish, the State Fair and the Greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce, he said.

Assembly is considered the main obstacle to pedestrian traffic between the Vista and Main Street — considered downtown’s two main retail areas.

A Washington, D.C.-based consultant who compiled a recent retail study called the street a “psychological barrier” that needs to be bridged for Columbia to have a healthy city core.

And USC officials have stated that some improvements to Assembly are needed to draw together its old and new campuses.

But the main project will be railroad relocation. It would consolidate the CSX and Norfolk Southern tracks on the elevated berm that crosses over Rosewood Drive and Whaley Street. The two lines would share an overpass on Assembly street at Whaley Street.

A similar project in the 1980s opened up Gervais Street and gave birth to the Vista. Relocating the tracks around Assembly would remove a huge hindrance to motorists and emergency workers alike.

“People are blocked every day getting from one part of the city to another,” Coble said.

But the mayor stressed this will be a long-term, all-encompassing plan, perhaps taking more than a decade.

Two other streetscaping projects — Harden Street in front of Benedict College and Allen University, and Main Street north of Elmwood — are next in line.

An abbreviated project is under way on North Main, and planning has begun for a small streetscaping project on Harden in front of the Drew Wellness Center.

Also, the city and USC are attempting to raise $80 million for a regional riverfront park to be the centerpiece of Innovista.

Councilman Kirkman Finlay said it is premature to start the Assembly Street planning with so many other projects on deck.

“We’ve got so many things in the queue that adding more confuses the process,” he said.

Coble said it was important to start planning now because it will be such a long process. And Assembly Street would have to wait its turn until Harden and North Main are completed.

“I would not be in favor of spending any money (on major streetscaping of Assembly) until those projects are finished,” the mayor said, “or unless another source of money can be found.”

Reach Wilkinson at (803) 771-8495.

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