A new ‘hub’ for small businesses, North Main enjoys downtown’s spillover success

It was a bit of a risk in 2015 for Carolina Imports furniture store to leap from Columbia’s Vista to the Trestle building on North Main Street.

But owner Eva Bradley sensed a movement was coming.

“I thought, this is going to be a hub,” she said. Though “it might take a while.”

Her hopes are taking visible shape these days, as a wave of new, eclectic businesses has started filling in the corridor, making many more people recognize North Main as the city’s up-and-coming hotspot.

And Carolina Imports is on the front end of the North Main movement.

Two and a half years into its new life on North Main, Carolina Imports represents both the change that’s happening here and the change that’s happening in the Vista it left behind.

“This area was poised for redevelopment,” said Chris Barczak, a commercial real estate broker who took a chance on North Main long before Carolina Imports when he bought the Trestle building 10 years ago. “It’s kind of moved a little slower than we were hoping for. ... Then recently it’s really taken off.”

Small, locally owned businesses are moving to and thriving on North Main – see: the Vino Garage wine shop, The War Mouth restaurant, the Indah and Curiosity coffee shops, bakeries, another furniture store, a guitar shop, vegan restaurants, and others. Soon, a Columbia “legend,” as Bradley says, will join them: Cromer’s P-Nuts, which plans to move from Huger Street to North Main, just across from Carolina Imports.

At the same time, the Vista has seen a big wave of high energy, high-end development and higher property values that have started to pressure some small, locally owned presences.

“It kind of prices out the little guys. There’s good and bad to being the hot new area,” Bradley said. “A lot of the other commercial areas in town have priced out the small businesses, and this area (North Main) is just starting to realize its value.”

The spillover of downtown success, combined with the recent revitalization of neighborhoods such as Cottontown and Earlewood north of Elmwood Avenue, have opened doors for the North Main corridor to become a hotspot of its own.

“It’s our turn,” said Sabrina Odom, who founded the North Columbia Business Association a decade ago, anticipating early the commercial rebirth that was to come. “We want it to be the next spot, but a spot of our own – not mimicking Five Points or the Vista. We’re a unique area.”

The 14-year-old Carolina Imports doesn’t sell the kind of furniture that might be found in a mainstream catalog or showroom. Its style is what might be described in trendy terms as “shabby chic” – a bit quirky, a bit purposely unfinished or scuffed – but without the short-lived look and quality of fleeting design trends.

Among aisles of roughly painted dining tables, decorative cabinets and lamps, among shelves of quirky knick-knacks and walls of statement art pieces, there’s room for local artists like Salt Co. and Mary Catherine Kunze to show off and sell their pieces.

Bradley sees North Main’s defining characteristic to be local, eclectic businesses like Carolina Imports. That’s what the surrounding neighborhoods – and their recent wave of young residents – have driven.

“They’re so happy to have somewhere in their neighborhood to shop,” Bradley said. “They want to shop local. ... And they realize if they don’t go and shop in these places, they won’t be here for them.”

This story was originally published September 4, 2017 at 2:08 PM with the headline "A new ‘hub’ for small businesses, North Main enjoys downtown’s spillover success."