Its owner, General Growth Properties, has come up with a plan to spend almost $5 billion over the next 30 years to add more than 5 million square feet of office and retail space in addition to 5,500 homes.
"This plan has the potential to create $6.3 billion of annual impact in Howard County at full build out and 30,000 net new jobs. That's impact," said Richard Story of the Economic Development Authority.
The developer is counting upon the Howard County Council to make the zoning changes necessary to change the very face of the downtown area, but critics say this makeover shouldn’t be a rush job.
Alan Klein of the Coalition for Columbia’s Downtown says the county should allow homebuilding in stages to insure the developer, which is bankruptcy protection, doesn’t take flight before it makes good on its other promises.
"Residential is what makes the money. Residential is what they can sell,” said Klein, “If we give them the residential density up front, the pressure is going to be inexorable overtime, 'We wanted to give this. We wanted to do that, but the bankruptcy makes in difficult."
Proponents say if the people come, the business will follow.
"Having a total of 5,6,7-thousand units downtown will not be out of the ordinary and will spur other economic activity that might be required to fill the offices or to provide the retail that we need," said local businessman, Michael W. Davis.
While Columbia represents decades of success, some suggest it needs to address the one thing that’s missing to insure that continues.
"To me, the big hole in Columbia... the failure of Columbia is the failure to plan a downtown," said plan proponent Lin Eagan.
Critics say the developer’s plan is short on details, and does not address what impact building thousands of homes would have on traffic or other services like police and fire protection.
