 "Photo: Courtesy of Sasaki Inc.")
 "Photo: Mary Austin / The Daily Gamecock")
The Innovista plan to remake the downtown waterfront and create a mixed-use neighborhood to attract high-tech knowledge-based businesses and high-paying jobs has completed the public hearing stage of the rezoning process.
Currently, the area is zoned for light industrial, warehouse and other commercial uses.
The new zoning ordinance would allow for continued integration of a public and private high-tech research area - a "live, work, play and learn" zone with a mixture of new retail shops, residences, restaurants, bars and green recreation space, according to the Innovista Master Plan.
Columbia, USC and the private landowners will have to form partnerships to advance the project.
Innovista will be a 500-acre expansion from the current campus at Assembly Street to the Congaree River, between Gervais Street and Catawba Street.
The plan also features a large waterfront park with open green spaces, an amphitheater, a freshwater marsh and a partial re-creation of the original Columbia Canal all nestled between EdVenture and the new USC Baseball stadium. Columbia and USC say the Innovista plan will continue to be an economic catalyst that will raise the state's per-capita income and quality of life.
"It will be a great place to live and we want to bring in great jobs that are attractive to our graduates and to the businesses we are trying to attract," said John Parks, executive director of Innovista.
Parks said the main issues now are to make sure some manufacturing, such as fuel cell technology, can take place, likely near Catawba Street, to compliment the research, commercial, residential and recreational development anticipated throughout the area.
Parks said the plan has been well-received by people in the area and that the City of Columbia expects the rezoning could be completed by the spring.
Kirstie Keyser, a second-year print journalism student, said she thinks it is a good idea to develop the area with commercial businesses and recreation in order to attract the research and development jobs central to Innovista.
"I work in a restaurant and I know they bring people in," Keyser said, "I think it would be good for the Vista and good for the university to continue to grow with more restaurants and shops."
Annie Parsons, a fourth-year public relations student, said Columbia is on the brink of becoming an established city in environmental technology.
"It would be good to continue to develop the Vista to bring in more businesses," Parsons said. "We are still competing with other cities."
The waterfront park, organized around a central open space, amphitheater and flowering gardens, is the major aesthetic draw of the plan. The park will celebrate the existing natural landscape of the riverside with a freshwater marsh grass garden and intersecting creeks, and the river's industrial history with the remnants of the quarries, sawmills, brickworks, canals and towpaths.
Charlotte Bishop, a third-year print journalism student, looks forward to USC continuing to grow throughout Columbia.
"It sounds like a pretty cool idea to me," Bishop said, "Not every spot in Columbia is clean and inviting, but USC has the river and it has the potential to be a great place to work or visit."
Be the first to comment on this article!