The idea of having the City of Columbia assume proprietorship of certain streets presently under the aegis of the Missouri Highway and Transportation Department came up recently in a discussion about building downtown “gateways” at four principal entrances to the central business district.

Aside from Interstate 70 and U.S. Highway 63, Columbia should own and maintain the lesser numbered and lettered highways now controlled by MoDOT . Ideally under this plan, MoDOT would cede ownership and maintenance of the state’s lettered and numbered roads — Providence Road for example — to the city. MoDOT would then pay the city an annual sum identical to what it spends for its own forces and equipment to maintain the roads it presently controls.

Obviously, it’s a bookkeeping exercise fraught with plenty of delicate issues to go around.

This might be the city’s solution to the ongoing conundrum over Providence Road and its Grasslands neighbors. Because MoDOT owns the ball, the bat and the glove in this little stickball game of highway planning and construction, the state agency can flout what the city wants the road to look like while it struts down the road joyfully chanting, “My way!” Perhaps the flustered city’s next question should be: “How much do you want for Providence Road?”

Who’s in control?

Highway ownership gets us back to a recent discussion by the Downtown Community Improvement District to build the four gateways; MoDOT comes into the picture at two of them: Providence Road and College Avenue. Gateway proponents say design flexibility would be enhanced if the city assumed control of designated portions of those two streets now owned by MoDOT. Money to build the four gateways would come from an existing half-cent sales tax, so anyone who spends money downtown really has a stake in this.

Many of us roll just our eyes every time something like this comes up. It reminds us of once lauded projects — the downtown canopy 45 years ago or the troublesome Downtown Loop a few years later — that have thankfully evaporated. Whatever they end up looking like, Columbia’s gateways are certain to be the butt of ridicule, jokes and satire for years to come.

Downtown Columbia appears to be thriving rather well now but there are a bunch of picayune things that should be taken care of first. Ah, but if the custodians of downtown Columbia insist on building four gateways, let them go for it with alacrity! Let’s replicate Denver’s Mizpah Gate that greeted visitors to the Mile High City as they emerged from Union Station. Columbia should build the four gateways.

Supersize them with an elevator so visitors can ascend to the top to gaze across Collegetown, U.S.A., just as visitors to the City of Light can observe Paris from the heights of the Arc de Triomphe.