Downtown transition: Newly designated historic district undergoing facelift, tenant shifts

The Pen Point co-owner Holly Burgess has been part of the downtown scene for four decades, since her family took over the half-century-old store she now runs on the 900 block of Broadway, and she’s optimistic about The District’s transition to an era of canvas canopies and historic designation.

Aside from a short-lived “quiet time” immediately after the Columbia Mall opened in 1985, she remembers downtown as always bustling and vivacious.
“We borrow things from each other, help each other. We gossip and socialize,” she said. “We are just like a neighborhood here.”

Customers looking across the street from her store might be somewhat less upbeat, seeing the large red-and-white “For Lease” signs in the storefronts of the former Puckett’s clothing stores, a big empty space in the heart of downtown. Newcomers unfamiliar with the recent removal of the concrete canopies wonder about the scarred facades up and down the main drag.

Burgess tells her customers that downtown is still prosperous and will stay that way for many years to come.

“It’s all an illusion,” she said of downtown vacancies. “They see one big space like the Puckett’s store, and it makes them think downtown has a lot of vacancies, since the Puckett’s store is in such a visible location.”
Burgess said that while the downtown area looks gloomier with missing storefront canopies, that’s also a temporary condition.

“It’s like a facelift,” she said. “At first it doesn’t look good, and that’s the way it is now, but by this spring it’s going to be gorgeous.”
Renovations, both inside and out, have been on the rise this year, with several owners adding living space above and behind stores. The renovation work will be hastened by the National Park Service’s decision last month to add the downtown area, known as the Special Business District, to the National Register of Historic Places.

All of the property owners in the SBD are now eligible for state and federal tax credits of 20 to 25 percent of the cost of rehabilitation, as long as the work follows historic guidelines. Some business owners already have been devising renovation plans, anticipating the designation.

“There are a lot of improvements coming,” said John Ott, who is planning major renovations to the exteriors of Broadway buildings he owns, including the one that housed the Puckett’s men’s store and those housing Elly’s Couture, Kayotea and Merle Norman. His preliminary plans include bringing back the traditional tall-glass storefronts with iron posts and colorful fabric awnings. (Ott is selling the building that housed the Puckett’s women’s store to Glen Strothman, who intends to build apartments above and behind the retail space.)

Historic designation tends to increase property values and rent. Burgess said that although she believes downtown rental prices have always been reasonable, newer businesses may not be able to afford higher rents, which may cause closings.

It takes a particular type of store to make it in downtown, she said. Mostly restaurants and mom-and-pop shops that sell clothing or novelty items are able to stay alive because those are generally the businesses that fill downtown’s niche, she said.

“We are a different type of shop from the ones in the mall,” she said.
Burgess said downtown will always be a high-demand location for setting up shop because of its proximity to the University of Missouri campus and its location at the center of the city; start-up business owners are eager to move in. She said one store that is planning to close, which she declined to name, already has a new tenant lined up.

Carrie Gartner, director of the Columbia Special Business District, said rent currently ranges from about $10 to $20 per square foot for most spaces, while factors such as location and renovations can often affect individual space prices.

Burgess said another factor affecting rent can be the size of the space, since smaller spaces rent better downtown. The length of time that a business has been open also can affect prices, since property owners would favor those with a “proven commodity,” she said.

Tom Schauwecker, the Boone County Assessor for the last 17 years, said that when people do see vacancies in downtown Columbia, it’s usually because buildings and stores are “changing hands.”

He said he doesn’t think most spaces remain available for a very long period of time in The District, but the area is going through one of many “transitional” periods, as the older business owners in the baby boomer generation are beginning to retire and are allowing room for new businesses to take their places.

Gartner said the current vacancy rate downtown is about 5 percent.
There are about 14 vacancies out of the 243 spaces in the area. Gartner said three of them are in lower-level spots that are harder to lease. Many of the spaces, she said, are undergoing internal and external renovations before or after being occupied.

Schauwecker expects to see more chain stores moving in downtown as rents rise, but Burgess and Ott disagree with his prediction.