Guest Column: Maintaining a vibrant central commercial district

In an earlier article I discussed the neighborhood considerations for abandoning the idea of upgrading the east-side Highway WW to an arterial road. I suggested an organizing principle of placing elementary schools, parks and other neighborhood facilities in the interior of the neighborhood protected from through traffic carried on arterial roads.

This avoids the wholly illogical practice of locating elementary schools adjacent to major arterials. This practice is intended apparently to provide quick vehicular access. But the result is that all access is slowed by the need to mount crossing guards, to post slower speeds in school zones and to motivate more parents to drive their children to school because of unsafe traffic conditions.

Efforts to reduce childhood obesity are undermined by more children being bused or driven to schools too distant or too cut off by major traffic arteries to make walking practicable or safe. The increased traffic generated by the built-in need to drive more children to school serves inevitably to fatten school busing contracts and makes yet another contribution to Columbia’s carbon footprint and global warming.

There are other reasons for downgrading the status of Highway WW. Improving it as an arterial west of Rolling Hills Road will dump additional traffic into the East Broadway corridor, an already congested part of the city. The vibrant but comparatively stable downtown district “with its eating, drinking and entertainment establishments and specialty shops” should be increasingly a place of pedestrian amenity, rather than a conduit for traffic headed for a growing west-side commercial complex. This lack of refinement in development policy is reflected in the recent study to expand the capacity of West Broadway to carry increased traffic loads.

An obvious need to provide supplementary access from the developing residential areas on the east side of the city to the west-side commercial complex and to the north side of the newly developing Lemone Industrial Park is overlooked by the failure to consider extending Stadium Boulevard eastward to Highway WW. Such an extension would also provide access from the eastern sections of Highway WW to the commercial complexes at the Stadium/ Highway 63 and the Broadway/ Highway 63 interchanges.

A study should be made to determine whether a reasonable alignment, with a minimum displacement of homes, can be found in a Stadium Boulevard extension to Highway WW, possibly in a parkway along the southern fork of Grindstone Creek. Such a facility, along with the street and bridge improvements planned for the Lemone Industrial Park, could be financed with a tax incremental district based on the tax increments accruing in the industrial park and the proposed commercial districts at the Stadium/Highway 63 intersection.

An alternative should be considered to the proposed extension of Stadium to Richland Road in favor of preserving a viable organization of neighborhoods and of diverting unwanted through-traffic from the downtown district. The connection of Stadium Boulevard to I-70 can still be made via an eastward extension of Stadium to Highway WW combined with a north/south arterial provided at Rolling Hills Road.

It is the essence of sound planning to both create walkable neighborhoods and maintain a walkable central commercial district. Locating elementary schools on the interior of neighborhoods and major arterials on the edges of future elementary school attendance areas preserves the tranquility of the neighborhood. Likewise, diverting through traffic around the central commercial district to avoid congestion maintains a vibrant walkable retail district. Not much can be done about highways and schools already in place, but we can avoid compounding the problem with a closer coordination of new schools and new and upgraded roadways.