From Slabs of Concrete to Urban Riches. How Columbia's 17 Parking Garages and Empty Lots Can Transform The Urban Core

Fun fact: did you know that Columbia has 17 parking garages alone in its downtown urban core? Even worse, there are several stretches of blocks in the city where you can find THREE parking garages right next to each other. The blocks of Sumter and Marion Streets have three garages in between Gervais and Lady Street. On Richland and Assembly Streets there are three parking garages. Alongside Sumter Street by Washington and Hampton there are three parking garages that basically takes up three full blocks, with a fourth one on Taylor and Sumter Street.

The City of Columbia owns at least 6 of these parking garages in the urban core that are dedicated to public use, while the remaining parking garages are mainly used for students at student housing developments (such as the HUB Parking Garage) or for private sector employees working at one of our 9 main skyscrapers downtown with the ability to still be used by the general public. In addition, there are a wide mix of publicly owned and privately owned parking lots and spaces throughout the city that are taking up hundreds of acres throughout the urban core.

While parking garages were seen as a hefty asset for cities, generating a steady source of income, that viewpoint is now an afterthought. About $8 million annually was made on parking revenue in 2018. Unfortunately, this money does not go back into our local economy to develop new amenities. Instead, the money is broken up into the following ways:

1. $500K to the City's General Fund which helps to pay for payroll and employees.
2. $4.5 Million to the Parking Services Department.
3. $2 Million to maintenance of our parking structures.
4. A small portion to update and upgrade signage through the Public Works/General Services agency

While other cities are using their parking revenue to help fund public works projects such as stadiums, with the potential for parking revenue to help pay for public park renovations and beautification efforts, Columbia's parking revenue is not going back into our community to help our city grow for the future. This should change however as the city looks to modernize the urban core through burying power lines, updating sidewalks, and renovating our public spaces.

In today's downtown, across all cities in America, not only are parking garages seen as a waste of aesthetics, but are also seen now as a waste of land for potential development. Gone were the days where cities had outlandish parking to resident ratios. Some examples include Seattle having 5 spaces per resident, Des Moines having 20 spaces per resident, and Houston having a whopping 30 spaces per resident. In fact, one website called Parking Reform Network, in collaboration with OpenParkingMap, keeps score on the amount of land in central cities that dedicate space to parking. Most of the cities, in 2023, still have extraordinarily low scores, most notably Detroit, MI. (attached here is link to the website). The cover photo is in fact from OpenParkingMap highlighting the lots, garages, and space we solely dedicate to parking; if you look at our map a vast majority of the urban core (Main St, Vista, etc.) is dedicated to just parking.

Most cities now realize that the days of having multiple cars per household are a thing of the past and that cities are now being transformed into live, work, and play centers where having a car is pointless when you can walk, bike, or take public transport to anywhere you go and save up to $10,000 annually. All across the nation we are now seeing cities start to reform their policy when it comes to parking (in essence they are eliminating the minimum parking requirement for projects located in the urban core, which has drastically decreased construction costs for developers) and are starting to reuse their garages for something bigger and better. While it is difficult to accomplish, especially for parking garages as they were not designed for conversion in mind, it is most certainly doable.

In Wichita, KS a developer turned a run down 500 space garage that was almost always empty into a 44 unit apartment project, a historic first that has not been seen anywhere else in the nation. Parking lots that can only house about 100 cars at a time and are empty and dilapidated are being transformed into multistory mid rise projects that now are home to up to 500 residents. Garages are being turned into E-Commerce Centers and vertical farms for local produce in America and France, catalyzing the rapidly growing farm to fork movement taking over the culinary scene.

If other cities in America and around the world are transforming their policy and renovating their public structures and lots, why can't we here in the growing city of Columbia, SC and be a leading and driving force in urban planning?

In the past decade, Columbia has tried to get their parking garages renovated and built into something new, however these plans which occurred in 2014 and 2019 have not materialized into anything. In fact, the city has actually added several garages near the Vista over the past couple of years without incorporating any mixed use opportunity. This however, should change as the city continues to grow and innovate to a new future.

Analytics is powerful, and the city should utilize this tool to help drive decisions in its urban planning. One of the things I learned through my internships is keeping track of and calculating efficiency, which can easily be incorporated into city planning by analyzing the percentage of parking spaces occupied on average throughout the many parking garages and lots spread throughout the city. Spaces that are performing poorly (let's say less than 60% occupancy in a weekday) should be torn down and have something built on top of it. For example, if one of the three parking garages on the corners of Lady and Assembly are not filling up, the city should look to repurpose the space into something new. As land becomes more scarce, development opportunities become limited. To fix this, the city should sell its surplus land that is found in the form of garages and lots to developers that are willing to put in the time and effort to usher in a new era for downtown.

This doesn't necessarily mean that a new development with no parking should be built, rather a new development full of hotel space, residential space, retail space, and office space with some parking (an example would be the Synovus Building on Main St.) should be built instead as the city transitions into a future where the urban core is a public transit, pedestrian, and bike friendly community where people can live, work, and play while still having access to their car for vacations, leisure, or work trips. As more and more residential units and hotel rooms are added close to company offices nearby, this will decrease the need for parking garages throughout the city as the urban core repopulates itself with residents that they lost several decades ago to suburbanization, eliminating the needs for commutes and spaces to park.

If the numbers do not work out thanks to rising construction costs and interest rates nationwide, then dedicating the space into an innovative farm, museum, or creative space, similar to the aforementioned examples above would help transform the Main St. area into something new and creative that cannot be found anywhere else in the surrounding area. At the absolute minimum, these slabs of concrete should be turned into something creative and beautiful while they await the transition to urban revitalization. This would give the opportunity to our many talented local artists to tell a story and bring life to a city that is sorely missing public art.

The year is 2023. Gone are the days of households owning several cars and people needing hundreds of thousands of parking spaces in urban cores, killing any momentum of cities adding development projects that can instantly change the city for the better. Columbia is home to 17 parking garages spread throughout the urban core, including several within a block of each other. This isn't 1980. To help galvanize the momentum the city has carried over the past decade, new revenue policy and utilization of land must be considered. Not only will the city be able to find funding for new projects, but also see these slabs of concrete be turned into something bright, innovative, and transformative as the city continues its journey to become the city it hopes and dreams to be.