Cali Burger, Corner Bakery, Halal Guys, Po Boy Jim. What do they have in common?
They’re restaurants. They’re in the first floor of the apartment buildings that face the Mall in Columbia property. They’re closed.
I’ve seen some interesting online conversations about why they all closed. Probably the most balanced is happening on the ColumbiaMD Reddit. I say “balanced” because there seems to be more of an understanding that it probably isn’t just one simple thing at play here but rather a combination of factors. In so many online discussions people join in to further their particular pet theory and then linger to defend it.
Not a lot of learning goes on.
As for me, my pet theory is that parking has a lot to do with it. Back in 2015 I wrote a tongue in cheek piece about how the introduction of parallel parking in that particular area would be the end of Columbia as we know it.
Dangerous Precedent, November 9, 2015
And again when I encountered some rather creative parking in that same area:
I Told You So, June 29, 2022
There seems to me to be some kind of cognitive disconnect between the planners’ intent: free parking is available in garages in the buildings themselves, and consumers: I want to park directly in front of the business or right across the way in the fringes of Mall parking. Maybe we’d all be smarter if we chose the free parking in the garage but for some reason that feels counterintuitive and we don’t.
And then we get frustrated trying to nab one of the few spaces out front or in taking our lives in our hands trying to cross whatever that ring road is between the Mall parking and the restaurants. It’s just easier to go somewhere else. Yes, yes - - no doubt we’re doing it all wrong. But we are doing it.
Now what?
It reminds me of the concept of “desire paths” that appear in parks and other public places which show quite clearly where people want to go as opposed to where the preordained pathways tell them they should go. “Stupid Columbians,” you may say. “Don’t know how to use a free parking lot.”
People vote with their feet. Or, in this case, cars.
But that is only one of many components at work here. 1) Each individual restaurant has its own unique struggles. 2) Keeping a restaurant afloat through the pandemic years is unusually challenging. 3) Rents in that area may be very high. 4) That small island of apartment buildings may not generate enough foot traffic to keep multiple restaurants in business.
I saw another suggestion which intrigued me. The poster said that those businesses are not ones that people who actually live in those buildings were going to use every day or at least several times a week. I think that’s a good point. Overall most of those first floor retail establishments are too expensive for daily living. Another suggestion made: how about a convenience store/bodega?*
So who are they supposed to serve?
To be fair, it’s also true that this area is part of a larger plan which isn’t yet complete. Right now it’s more like an urban island which has been dropped into suburbia without the means to be successfully interconnected and functional. Perhaps one day it will all make sense.
In the meantime, someone suggested putting in a Cava and I’m all for that.
What do you think?
*Don’t tell anyone, but so far no one has suggested a Really Nice Cheese Shop.
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