Decker Boulevard was promised a ‘renaissance’ 15 years ago. Residents say they’re still waiting

It’s basically muscle memory at this point, as Qwen Lewis rolls and twists strands of hair around her fingers into dense braids at the base of her customer’s neck.

Across the room, another pair of women braid and are braided, as a Tim Allen Christmas movie plays silently on a small television mounted to the wall.

“This is only going to take me another three hours,” Lewis says with a laugh.

Down the street, Abdullah Adly sits in the quiet of Zigdon’s Locksmith. A salesman for an auto glass company enters and strikes up a conversation.

“I noticed, even that little silver car out there has got a star in the windshield,” the man says to Adly as he passes a business card across the counter.

Teenagers and young adults hired by a tax preparation company try to entice shoppers in a plaza farther down the way, where Bennie Gillie sits in his empty barber shop waiting for the day to pick up.

It is a normal Wednesday morning on Decker Boulevard — a roughly 2-mile stretch between Two Notch Road and Interstate 77 designated as Richland County’s International Corridor.

It’s a corridor where small business is king and where Midlands residents can find international grocery items and authentic cuisines from around the world.

But despite the acumen of those who occupy the strip, Decker remains saddled with vacant, overgrown lots and long-abandoned buildings, and it can be hard to know where to find the businesses that are thriving on the strip. Richland County set forth a plan 15 years ago to address the blight, but residents say much of what was promised never came.

The people and businesses on Decker have trucked on, finding ways to turn the blighted corridor into a collection of underdog success stories. Residents say Decker’s future could be incredibly bright, but they’ll need some help to give the district a much-needed polish.

Beyond the reputation

Lewis’ braid shop, Shuga, has been open on Decker since May.

She passed by this location, situated in a strip mall at 2207 Decker Blvd., three times before she stopped for more information. At first it seemed too big for her, but the price was surprisingly reasonable — much cheaper than storefronts she’d been considering on Two Notch Road.

She loves Decker for all of its “little gems.” It’s rife with new foods to try, everything from Jamaican to Vietnamese fare. There are international grocery stores and any kind of salon you might need.

“Surprisingly, I see people jog up and down here,” she said.

Families walk together to and from the grocery store in the mornings, and parents walk home with their kids from school in the afternoons. There’s one man who uses the sidewalk for his daily exercise routine. “So it’s a little different than what people say it is.”

Decker’s largest hurdle, residents seem to agree, is the overwhelming blight in the area. Buildings that appear to have at one time been restaurants sit empty and boarded, with signs punched out and tape over the windows. Large overhead advertisements announce businesses that have long since moved on.

“(There are) ugly shopping centers that you can’t tell what’s there. There’s a sign up there, ‘easy check cashing,’ There’s no check cashing there anymore.” said Adly, who has lived in the Decker area since 2013.

Adly has worked at Zigdon’s for only a few weeks, but he’s known the owner, Tony Zigdon, for a decade and knows Decker Boulevard well.

There’s a lot of good stuff on Decker, he explained, but he understands if it slips under the radar of most people.

“You can’t just go out and say ‘I’m gonna get something.’ We got good spots out here, but you gotta know them,” he said.

He’d like to see a facade grant program for the area for businesses to improve their storefronts, like he’ seen in other parts of the county.

Sylvia Hanna agreed.

“Certainly, there’s no corridor, no street where you want to see a lot of empty buildings,” she said.

In 2008, Hanna and the Decker Boulevard Business Coalition that she presides over asked the county to formally recognize the area as an International Corridor.

“We didn’t take what we have for granted,” she said. Hanna has operated a State Farm Insurance office on Decker for more than 30 years and said it’s been clear for a long time that the diversity that exists on this 2-mile corridor is special and meant to be celebrated.

Indeed, the two census tracts on the northeast side of Decker Boulevard, which include the Woodfield area, are 51.2% and 69.9% African American, and 13% and 25% Hispanic, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. In the census tract on the side of Decker Boulevard that includes Forest Acres, the area is 72% white. The area northeast of Decker also has more Asian, American Indian and multi-racial residents in many census blocks than just across the street toward Forest Acres.

So, the Decker Boulevard Business Coalition asked the county for a formal designation in 2008 and got one.

The year prior, the county had concluded writing a master “renaissance plan” for Decker Boulevard, complete with public listening sessions and proposals for new parks and amenities.

There was a lot of hope at the time, though even then, vacant properties and empty buildings were rampant in the corridor.

“They’ve done those types of studies for Decker. They brought the community together and got the input from the community,” Hanna said. “I haven’t seen any action on it yet.”

Several of the properties identified in 2007 as hurdles to new development in the area are still empty, overgrown lots 15 years later. Vacant buildings remain on nearly every corner.

When, in 2017, Richland County turned a former Kroger shopping center into the Decker Center, housing the Central Magistrate Court and an annex for the county Sheriff’s Department, residents thought the long-awaited investments they were hoping for were finally on their way.

But what residents expected didn’t come.

Rebuilt sidewalks, development of long-empty lots, new investment — it didn’t happen. Aside from the building of the new courthouse, much of the discussed “renaissance” for Decker never arrived.

Small businesses have still found a way to grow in the area, residents say, but they feel left behind when it comes to beautification and new infrastructure.

Falling between the cracks?

Usually with a heavy sigh, those who spoke with The State about Decker conceded the reputation is not what it could be. In the past, the area’s been associated with high crime, though many said the placement of the Magistrate Court and sheriff’s annex has reduced those concerns.

Several people shared frustrations that despite the small business success of the area, it hasn’t been able to attract large corporate anchor stores that draw more people.

Decker is unique in how it’s positioned in Richland County. It’s wedged between Columbia, Forest Acres, Dentsville, Woodfield and the unincorporated county. Sometimes, it can feel like they’re falling between the cracks, Gillie said.

“Diverse people drink Starbucks. They go to department stores. This is a residential business area. It’d be nice to ride your bike to the store, to the Starbucks. But you know, you won’t get that on Decker,” said Gillie, the owner of Full Effects Barber and Beauty shop, located in Decker’s High Point Plaza.

Gillie has owned the shop for four years, worked there for nine and has lived in the area for a decade. There are a lot of profitable businesses on Decker, he said, echoing other residents.

He, like others, wants to see some kind of investment from the county, either in improving roads or storefronts. He said it’s frustrating to see high-end retail move into Forest Acres just around the corner and then not to see any of that new investment on Decker Boulevard.

Decker is not the only area struggling with abandoned buildings and blight. In Columbia, the city recently launched a program to address abandoned homes in parts of the city.

But on Decker, the blight is also a reminder of unfulfilled promises by the powers that be.

“I think the biggest mistake is that people do a master plan but don’t see it as an action plan,” said B.D. Wortham-Galvin, an urban designer who leads Clemson’s Master of Resilient Urban Design program.

It’s pretty routine in the urban development sphere to see plans decades old and still not acted on, she said.

Other communities have been forced to get creative and take on their abundance of abandoned properties on their own, Wortham-Galvin said. She referenced projects like Candy Chang’s “I wish this was” initiative in New Orleans, where Chang, an artist and community leader, would plaster vacant buildings with stickers saying “I wish this was,” inviting passersby to answer the question.

“You have to be willing to not let that property just sit there,” Wortham-Galvin said. “Artists do their thing or you allow micro businesses to go into those spaces at almost no cost.”

Doing something with the properties is better than letting them sit waiting for investment, she added.

It’s unclear what governmental interventions may be available. Neither State Sen. Mia McLeod nor Richland County Council member Yvonne McBride, who represent the Decker area, were able to comment on this story before deadline.

Seeing possibility

While some may drive through the area and not see the potential, those who know what Decker is and can be have more optimism.

“When I see vacant buildings, I’m always thinking about the different businesses that could come there,” said Lewis.

And she’s not alone. Residents say new businesses are opening all the time. Just across from Suga, a new business plaza, called Plaza Del Sol, will come online shortly.

Business owners in the area like Tony Zigdon, owner of the locksmith where Adly works, say seeing those new projects keep them optimistic.

“The problem in Decker again, it’s when people think low so they come open low businesses here,” Zigdon said.

“I see hope in small places, in dirty places, much better than Harbison Boulevard,” he said, referencing the heavily populated Harbison commercial district on the opposite side of the county. “For me it’s better to open a good (business) here and make it grow, and then when I grow, people come to my locksmith shop and say, ‘Oh, let’s try the restaurant on the right side.’”

That word of mouth gets around and soon, more people come, he said.