New Columbia liquor store on Rosewood OK’d after being rejected last year
Plans for a new liquor store on Rosewood Drive have been OKed after a Columbia board rejected a nearly identical plan last year.
Columbia’s Board of Zoning Appeals Thursday approved a request from Amandeep Singh to add a liquor store inside his existing Sunset Point convenience store at the corner of Pickens Street and Rosewood Drive.
Convenience store owners were previously denied permission from the city for that project, after neighborhood representatives spoke against the project at a January 2025 meeting.
Larry Marchant, an attorney representing Singh before the zoning board, said the liquor store plans would not negatively affect the area, particularly because the store will go into an existing storefront already attached to the convenience store and won’t require any new construction.
This time, zoning board members agreed and approved the liquor store plans.
The gas station property is owned by Sahil of Columbia, LLC, which also owns a vacant piece of property immediately next door to the convenience store, where plans are underway for new student apartments.
Marchant said his client operates and manages the convenience store but is not the landowner and is not involved in the student apartment plans.
Hollywood-Rose Hill neighborhood association member William Lynn Shirley raised concerns about the student housing plans at the Thursday meeting, saying students would have fast access to alcohol.
Marchant stressed that Singh is strict about checking and scanning IDs to prevent under-age patrons from buying any alcohol.
Shirley said his and other neighbors’ concerns are also more broad than one project, saying over the years he has felt the balance shifting in the community away from long-term residents and families.
“Those of us that are single-family, rather long-term owners are concerned that this is another step on a slippery slope,” he said, adding that he doesn’t think a liquor store will benefit the neighborhood.
Zoning board members weighed the neighborhood concerns, but ultimately ruled that new liquor store wouldn’t be detrimental to the area, and that it would not create a problematic concentration of liquor stores in the area.
There are two long-standing liquor stores on Rosewood Drive within 1.5 miles of the newly-approved store. Those include Jimmie & Sons at 347 S. Harden St., and Rosewood Liquor and Wine at 2910 Rosewood Dr.
The zoning board also recently approved two new liquor stores on Whaley Street, with 1.5 miles of the new Rosewood store. In both of those cases, the new stores were approved to go into existing storefronts already connected to the convenience stores.
Marchant raised those situations as another reason Singh’s application should be approved.
