THE NEXT NEW COLUMBIA: The look of Columbia’s housing future

What will it look like to live in downtown Columbia in the next few years? For a glimpse, look at what architect and developer Scott Garvin is doing on Gervais Street.

In a set of warehouses from the late 1800s that most recently housed City Market Antiques Mall and Carolina Imports furniture store, Garvin is developing a mixed-use center for eating, drinking, shopping and living that exemplifies the 24-hour downtown life cycle.

Garvin’s development is an example of what appears to be the next trend in downtown housing construction. What it’s not is a free-standing condo or apartment complex. It is, instead, homes woven into the commercial space around them.

Tucked into the back of 711 Gervais, where the Grill Marks upscale burger restaurant will face Gervais, two or three apartments featuring exposed brick and wood will open up to a brick-paved, landscaped alleyway and patio, steps from a coffee and wine shop, a microbrewery and the sit-down casual Newk’s Eatery. Everything should be completed by the end of the year, Garvin said.

“Instead of people that drive down to the Vista that go out to eat or get a drink and leave, the more people you have that live down here that are just walking to their destination, I think the better it’s going to be,” Garvin said. “I have no doubt that somebody will want to live here. It’s just, I know it’s a unique situation.”

Maybe you’ll swing by Publix down the street on your way home from work. You’ll park in a garage a couple blocks away and walk to your apartment, passing a few folks sitting outside the coffee shop next to your place. You could walk down the street and meet some friends for dinner at Liberty Tap Room or Blue Marlin, then maybe invite them back for drinks at your place – it’s not far, after all.

And at the end of your night, you’ll close the blinds and settle into the cozy character of your exposed brick and hardwoods home. And maybe, you’ll still be aware of the energy that’s pulsing just outside your building in the ever-more-vibrant Vista.

“It’s not going to feel private, for sure,” Garvin said. “If that bothers you, then you’re certainly not going to live here.”

Fred Delk, whose Columbia Development Corp. guides and encourages development downtown, is relieved to see what Garvin is doing with the place.

“That building has been the biggest building in the Vista that I’ve been worried about getting demolished and just gone and replaced by something really inappropriate,” Delk said. “It’s tough to redo buildings. There are only a few of those left in the neighborhood.”

This story was originally published March 14, 2015 at 7:19 PM.