December 23, 2009

Bill Coats grew up in west central Columbia and remembers, in the early 1960s, an old corner store at the junction of Sexton Road and McBaine Avenue. He didn’t shop there often because his parents thought it was safer for the kids to walk from their home on the south side of Worley Street to another market a few blocks south to avoid crossing the busy street.
Although those stores are long gone, Coats, now 58, has his own community market at McBaine and Sexton. Unitee Market was his chance to run his first business and fill the neighborhood’s need for a store within reasonable walking distance.

Fifty years ago, every neighborhood was dotted with small mom-and-pop grocery stores that provided friendly, personalized service. Expanding expressways, plentiful gasoline, the ever-burgeoning presence of automobiles, suburban flight and other factors turned consumers toward large centralized stores. So neighborhood grocery stores have gone the way of local tailors. More than 100,000 small retailers have closed

INSTRUCTIONS: Test your People-You-Should-Know IQ. Match the quotes with the photos. A. My favorite artist is Bob Dylan. I am also the first person in my family to attend college. I won my first election to the House of Representatives by 67 votes out of more than 13,000 cast. B. I am a sixth-generation Columbia-born

At their winter retreat, City Council members expressed support for City Manager Bill Watkins’ plan to buy a 214-acre tract along the Route B industrial corridor to develop as Columbia’s third “shovel-ready” industrial site. The property is on the northeastern corner of Route B and Waco Road between Kraft Foods and the city landfill. Watkins