Let’s hope the latest city skyline addition is no white elephant

Church steeples were the first of many man-made objects to rise above Columbia’s tree line.
The latest of mankind’s doings to scrape the skyline is the oddly layered, skeletal shape of the city’s most ambitious parking structure.
Work began more than a year ago south of the Post Office on Walnut Street when a European tower crane rose above what used to be a street-level parking lot. (The tower is topped with a Hughey and Philips FAA-approved aviation code beacon, standard equipment on any structure 200 feet high or more.)
The gray behemoth is startling in its bare nakedness as concrete slabs slowly reduce sunshine and overall illumination in the surrounding areas of commerce. Eventually, there will be seven stories of parking and a ground floor with office and retail space, making it one of the tallest structures downtown.
For visually inclined historians, studying city skylines is fascinating. Like measuring tree rings, additions to the city’s vertical profile are indicative of its economic growth. Subtractions due to accidental fires and intentional demolitions can also indicate declines in the community’s economic health when the space remains undeveloped.
For Columbia, the first substantial piercing of the sky came when Jesse Hall was topped off in 1895. The MU administration building was a sensation of height at the time; a caption on contemporary post cards suggested the sleek dome was never really out of sight anywhere hereabouts.
After 1900, the skyline was punctuated by the present Boone County Courthouse, Columbia High School (now Jefferson Jr. High), the Guitar Building, several multi-story hotels, a water tower adjacent to the old Herald Building, various power plant smoke stacks and, in 1925, KFRU’s two 165-foot self-supporting towers on the Stephens College campus.
Work began the following year on MU’s Memorial Tower. The centerpiece of the proposed student union challenged Jesse Hall for height but sat all by itself until 1952, when the north wing of the student union was completed. The south wing was finished 11 years later.
Other notable sky-piercing additions include the Ellis Fischel State Cancer Hospital on Business Loop 70, Oak Towers on Garth Avenue, the eight-story Manor House on Hitt Street and the water tower on Walnut Street. The tallest building, at 15 stories, is Paquin Tower between MU and Stephens, and downtown’s tallest object is still the 160-foot tower formerly used by the now-defunct radio station KFMZ. Since then, the center-city profile has been joined by several new bank buildings and additions, county government offices and court facilities and the rather grand City Hall addition.
In a case of what was not to be, the late Mahlon Aldridge Jr. — my old boss at KFRU — used to regale the office some 40 years ago with his yarns about the Columbia Tribune’s proposed publishing complex where the somewhat scaled down newspaper building stands today. “Boss,” as we all called him, snidely described the Waters family “monument to debt” as being at least eight or nine stories high and topped off by a restaurant. Perhaps lapsing into exaggeration, Aldridge might have said the restaurant would revolve and complete a 360-degree circuit every hour.  

During the years, there have been subtractions to the skyline as well, with floors eliminated or structures reduced to rubble. The old Dorn-Cloney Laundry Building on South Eighth Street, for example, is now just a parking lot.
The postcard (above) shows the view from the southeast corner of Broadway and Hitt streets. On the right side is the Elvira Building (now the Menser Building). The Stephens Endowment Building at the northeast corner of 10th and Broadway was torn down after a fire of suspicious origin gutted it in 1983. Across 10th Street on the northwest corner, the former multi-level Parsons Building has just a single story. Further east and out of view, the VanMatre law office occupies the once substantially taller Columbia Theatre, which was reduced in height after a fire many years ago.
As for the parking structure under construction on the northwestern edge of downtown, the city should be applauded for having the foresight to anticipate future parking needs as the central business district is re-invented as the locus of government, banking, dining, entertainment and other reasons to visit. The existing parking garage on Walnut Street, between City Hall and the courthouse, is limited to its present height and capacity both by its design and the adoption of more stringent building codes. It the future, undoubtedly, that garage will be torn down.
What should have gone in there all along was a civic plaza — a park if you will — replete with trees and shrubbery that provide a much-needed oasis of green downtown. Building a parking garage underground as bigger cities have done would have been ideal, but Columbia is years away from being in that league.
The new parking structure will have nine rental spaces allocated for the ground floor, and REDI plans to use some of that space for its offices.
The city wanted to bring in a private developer to finish the interior construction on the 13,000-square-foot ground floor and sublease the space for commercial tenants. However, no one bid on the city’s proposal.
We can’t say we weren’t warned about the building plans because there was plenty of discussion and coverage in the media. So abstain from saying we were being “libraried” on this one by city officials.
The project should be assessed when it is completed, after the tower crane and its winking red beacon are gone and the first paying customers are welcomed to its concrete innards.
Get used to it because it won’t go away. But let’s hope it will be adopted and used and not sit there like some enormous white elephant.