(Georgia Trend) Columbus: Seeing the Big Picture (Bishop: 2014, apartments)

[Fountain-of-youth]

Just because things are going great doesn’t mean they can’t get better. With every sector of the community dialed in to the recently adopted Regional Prosperity Initiative, ‘up’ is the only direction Columbus and Muscogee County leaders will consider.

For more than a decade, there has existed a need to define the identity of this city that morphed from a mill town floated on a textile economy to a center for financial data services and advanced manufacturing.

Just a TAD

City Village is located in an area that had the city’s highest crime rate just three years ago, says Tomlinson. Largely populated with homeless encampments, the 30-square-block tract has a housing stock that is nearly all rental property. The city owns about 50 percent of the property, mostly due to failed Community Development Block Grant projects, she says.

“It sits on top of a bluff that looks into Alabama and has exquisite views of our whitewater course; it’s just lovely,” says Tomlinson of the area. “By any other standard, it would normally be developed into mansions; that would be the classic use for that type of property.”


The Uptown TAD doesn’t fit the classic concept of blight because the area features two to three blocks of extreme vibrancy both day and night. But there are many vacant and underutilized properties – many of which need to be demolished – sitting on top of very old infrastructure, Tomlinson says, and that’s where the TAD will prove beneficial.

There’s been a redevelopment plan for the low-lying, flood-prone Liberty District on the books for 25 years, during which time the city spent some $40 million on infrastructure and streetscaping.

Give Me Shelter

Housing is an integral piece of planning in Columbus, chosen last year as one of 71 cities in the country to participate in the Zero: 2016 campaign, a rigorous national change effort designed to help a committed group of communities end chronic and veteran homelessness outright by December 2016. Columbus was highly competitive for the designation in part because of a database of specific info on homeless individuals gathered over the course of 10 years through a United Way of the Chattahoochee Valley program dubbed Home For Good.

Housing offerings are shifting in other areas of the city as well, and preparations are underway in Uptown to welcome the 1,800 plus students that Columbus State University’s (CSU) expansion will bring next spring. Seven acres on the river will soon be under construction, adding another 200 apartments, doubling the existing inventory that has a 90 percent occupancy rate, says Richard Bishop, president of Uptown Columbus.

Innovations in Education

From high school to technical college to university, education offerings in Columbus and Muscogee County continue to increase and improve. A rise in the district’s graduation rates from 67.5 percent in 2012 to 84.6 percent for the 2014-15 school year placed the district about six points above the state rate. In addition, all sub-groups have also improved. “And the best is yet to come,” says David Lewis, superintendent of Muscogee County Schools, where some 32,000 students are enrolled.

Columbus: Seeing the Big Picture - Georgia Trend