What happens when a small Publix with tight parking is the only supermarket around?

Emily Rule gave an emphatic “yes” when asked if she thinks Columbia, South Carolina, needs another grocery store downtown.

“This parking lot is so bad, and the Publix is small,” she said. “I feel like I’m always going to get into an accident in this parking lot.”

Anyone who has ever visited the Vista’s Publix location at 501 Gervais St. during peak hours has likely felt the same.

The Publix has about 30,000 square feet. The typical new Publix in South Florida can have 45,000 square feet, along with a sprawling parking lot.

What are the chances that another grocer will come to downtown Columbia to ease the business at the Vista store? City leaders say at least for now, the chances are low. Until a number of changes come, downtown workers and residents can expect to continue fighting it out in the notoriously tight Publix parking lot.

KNOW MORE: Is that really a Publix? Smaller specialty stores in Florida

Challenges

To get a new grocery store you first must have people, traffic, businesses — all the things that make an area more densely packed.

While the Florida-baked Publix feels dense enough most evenings, downtown doesn’t have the people to attract another store just yet.

“We’ve got to emphasize growing downtown,” said Columbia Mayor Daniel Rickenmann.

Roughly 3,200 people live downtown today. There would need to be 10-12,000 residents for another grocery store to make sense, Rickenmann said.

Rickenmann has often cited the need for more density downtown to boost everything from grocery options to development interest. And growth is happening. The number of downtown residents has doubled in recent years.

Rickenmann said the city is “constantly” trying to sell Columbia to businesses, including grocers. There has even been talk about offering incentives to bring new grocery options to residents.

“But the problem is you can’t incentivize your way out of this,” he said. “Here’s my biggest fear: If we prematurely go and invest and build a grocery store and then it closes, we’ll never get another one.”

As it is, local grocers have already struggled to meet their sales requirements, Rickenmann said, citing the closure of two Walmart grocery stores in the city in recent years.

In 2019, a Walmart Neighborhood Market on Broad River Road announced it was closing due to low performance. Two years later, a Walmart Supercenter on Bush River Road closed, again because of low sales.

North Main, Farrow Road and South Beltline Boulevard, too, have all lost grocery stores in the past because there wasn’t enough activity to sustain them, Rickenmann added.

Beyond the people problem is a logistical one. To have a grocery store, you need a bit of space. Ryan Coleman, Columbia’s director of economic development, estimated a new grocer would need a site between five and six acres.

“You can’t go and really just find that laying around these days,” Coleman said.

He does have a few sites already in mind, including at BullStreet or a former Department of Transportation right-of-way off River Drive, near North Main Street. Though, those are just ideas at this point.

Opportunities

So, the short answer is no, Columbia’s downtown is not likely to get a new grocery store in the immediate future. But that doesn’t mean the city won’t keep trying to attract one.

Several thousand apartment units could come to fruition downtown in coming years. Two large student housing projects are also underway.

“From a numbers perspective, you can make a compelling case that somebody needs to come down here to fill the gap, because the Publix that we’ve got is just not going to be able to serve everybody at the end of the day,” Coleman said.

The city is now working on a grocery store study that will survey for population, traffic patterns and more, all things would-be grocers look at when deciding where to place a store.

Rickenmann already has a sense of what that survey will show: Columbia isn’t there yet. But the data will give playmakers a baseline to know where they’re starting from.

In the meantime, the mayor said it’s important for the city to be creative and develop other avenues for food access. They’re piloting a program in which the city would partner with grocers to offer assistance for grocery delivery for certain residents, for example.