Is the Vista the new Five Points? What a shift in nightlife means for downtown Columbia

Sport jackets and crop tops clash as a line into the lounge above Pearlz Oyster Bar snakes through the restaurant.

It’s just after 10 p.m. on a Friday night. Patrons are still finishing late dinners and post-work drinks as 20-somethings are hustled up a staircase behind the dining room and onto a dance floor where they’ll double-fist Michelob Ultra and dance to Usher.

The air is hot and thick and smells like fruit-flavored e-cigarettes. Three bartenders scramble to serve a never-ending swarm of patrons.

The bouncer says it’s always like this.

It’s a similar scene at other bars nearby in downtown Columbia’s Vista district. At Carolina Western Pub, flannel shirts, denim and department store cowboy boots abound. Later, there will be line dancing. This is where you can go to find “Southern culture,” says a college student waiting in line to enter.

Vista Union, Tin Roof and Social Columbia are bustling, too.

A pickup truck with a bed full of young people turns into Republic Biergarten’s parking lot and unloads. Those already waiting to enter sip from red plastic cups and Bud Light cans. They say a University of South Carolina fraternity rented out the whole bar.

The Vista nightlife and arts district just west of Columbia’s Main Street — home to some of the city’s most expensive restaurants and galleries — is increasingly becoming a weekend hot spot for college students. This new trend is a marked departure from the area’s traditionally grown-up vibe, largely driven by a deluge of recently built apartments catering to college students. More housing and new bars have drawn more bodies downtown in a way that’s changing the face of the district.

Still, the Vista remains quite a different scene than Columbia’s signature college stomping grounds, Five Points, when it comes to nightlife notoriety. Some students say that could be changing.

Is this signature downtown district headed in the direction of its cross-town counterpart? City leaders generally say no, but it’s a question never far from the minds of those who live and work in the Vista.

More heads in beds, more feet on the street

Vista Union nightclub, tucked away in an alley off of Gervais Street, bumps a remixed ABBA song.

Sophia Dileossa, a junior at USC, stands with a group of friends outside the entrance waiting for the bouncer guarding the doors to check their IDs. They don’t always come here. Some nights the group ventures to Five Points, the district well-established as the center of weekend college antics.

But going to Five Points requires paying for an Uber there and back. Dileossa lives just over half a mile from the Vista, in The Hub student apartments on Main Street — walking distance.

“Obviously, this is more convenient,” she said. She’s not the only student who thinks so.

The Vista has become a nexus for student activity over the last few years, as the University of South Carolina admits more people and as more downtown housing options become available for students and young professionals.

“The first uptick I saw in students down here was when the building on Main Street was converted to student housing,” said Clark Ellefson. “Everybody’s going, ‘Oh, no, students, it’s terrible.’”

Ellefson is a pioneering artist and businessman in the Vista who owns Art Bar on Park Street and the Lewis and Clark art gallery on Huger Street. Art Bar opened in 1992, at the dawning of The Vista’s emergence as a local arts scene.

When developers first proposed their renovation of the 21-story former SCANA headquarters on Main Street into what would become The Hub student apartment complex for nearly 1,000 USC students, some residents bristled. They raised concerns about raucous behavior and increased crime.

But instead, when the tower of apartments opened in 2014, the injection of students into the heart of downtown helped revive an atrophied corridor and spurred dozens of new businesses to open along Main Street in the following years.

“For all intents and purposes, it was the shot in the arm that Main Street needed,” said Ryan Coleman, Columbia’s economic development director, explaining that the student foot traffic helped transition the district from being a strictly 9-to-5, Monday through Friday zone into a place with night and weekend activities as well.

Around the time The Hub opened to students, City Council was placing a new bet on student housing. In 2014, the city passed a 10-year, 50% property tax break for new private student housing projects. In the years since, those projects have become the largest generator of property taxes in the city, according to Mayor Daniel Rickenmann.

More than half a dozen student housing complexes and apartment buildings aimed at young professionals have opened in and around downtown since The Hub came online in 2014, expanding the previously limited options in the area.

The Palmetto Compress at Devine and Pulaski streets and its nearly 200 apartments opened in 2016, as did Greene Crossing at Greene and Pulaski streets with nearly 1,000 beds. Other apartments that followed include The Nine’s 405 beds at Huger and Hampton streets and Empire Apartments’ nearly 700 beds at Assembly and Pendleton streets.

Not all of the proposals have been entirely welcome.

Before the former location of Richland County’s traffic court at 1400 Huger St. was turned into The Nine, residents and City Council members tried to reject the plans.

“We do not need to be overcome by a large number of individuals who are away from home for the first time,” Vista resident Rick Rowe testified at the time.

And the forthcoming The Standard apartments on Assembly Street, a 17-story tower under construction beside the Richland Library, got some pushback early in its planning stages for displacing a century-old building that once was part of downtown’s historic Black business district. By next fall, it will house hundreds more college students within easy walking distance of the Vista’s nightlife scene.

In a way, residents weren’t wrong about the influx of student housing reshaping the district.

Over the last 20 years, USC’s enrollment has grown by almost 30% to its current headcount of 35,590 undergraduate, graduate and professional students.

Bars and restaurants in the area have followed suit.

In 1996, there were fewer than 15 bars and restaurants in The Vista. The figure grew to between 35 and 40 such establishments by 2003. Recently, The Vista surpassed 90 bars, restaurants and other food service businesses, including Publix grocery store.

More bars attracting college crowds have opened in recent years. Vista Union opened in 2017, Carolina Western Pub in 2018. Republic Biergarten opened in 2020.

While the area has changed, residents say their worst fears haven’t been realized.

Reputation versus reality

In 2018, The State published an article about student partying in Five Points. It opened with the vignette of a woman so drunk she peed down the back of a young man who gave her a piggy-back ride while out for a night in the district, which has been long associated with rowdy college drunkenness.

The area was so notorious for wild nights that area residents, including state Sen. Dick Harpootlian, waged a successful legal battle to permanently shut down several bars and temporarily suspend liquor licenses for others in 2019. At least six college bars closed their doors directly or indirectly as a result.

Five Points’ reputation is one that Vista residents say they want to avoid.

“We didn’t want to adopt all the cheap beer and wings problems that Five Points had,” said Rosie Craig, a longtime resident of the Vista and a member of the Congaree Vista Guild merchants association.

Residents have in the past pushed back against certain developments, including student housing, in the Vista in part because of a concern that students wouldn’t be able to afford the “more upscale” galleries and eateries the area had built a reputation for.

City Art, One Eared Cow glass studio, the Carol Saunders Gallery and Stormwater Studios all call the Vista home, as do venues such as Trustus Theatre and the Koger Center for the Arts.

“There was a concern that we would get overrun,” Craig said.

Some thought the “delicate ecology” that had made the Vista successful might be altered.

In practice, that hasn’t happened.

Students are beginning to gravitate toward the Vista partly because it’s “a nicer atmosphere,” USC sophomore Katherine Duane said while waiting in line at Pearlz Oyster Bar.

Not far from the Carolina Western Pub on Lady Street or Tin Roof on Senate Street, visitors can enjoy $40 entrees and valet parking at Motor Supply Company Bistro, for example.

The elevated atmosphere makes for a more relaxed environment, said USC sophomore Lexi Ream. She’s in the Vista sometimes multiple nights a week for Greek Life events.

Despite growing pockets of student activity, the Vista has remained a destination for professionals and older residents, said Cynthia Waggoner, a Columbia Police Department metro region captain.

Waggoner began her career with the Columbia police 18 years ago in the metro region, which includes the Vista and Main Street.

The area has definitely changed, she said. With more apartments and hotels, weekend nights can get busy. Colonial Life Arena, home to USC’s basketball teams and host of major artists like Post Malone and Elton John, is a short walk from the Vista.

The department staffs extra officers Thursday through Saturday nights and during large events. They know there is going to be more activity downtown.

It’s difficult to compare the Vista to Five Points, Waggoner said, “because they’re just so different.”

The Vista is more spread out and less walkable than Five Points, which also affects the density of activity, she said.

The State submitted a public records request for data on citations for underage drinking and other crimes in the Vista. That request is still being processed, but Waggoner said with the increase in population in the area it would make sense for some of those citations to also increase.

But as the area continues to boom, there remains a worry that college bars will overrun the area. If one business model is seeing success, the numbers might multiply, Craig said, adding that, for now, the student activity is welcome.

As the area continues to attract new attention, Craig said longtime residents need to be aware of how many new liquor licenses are approved in the district.

“I think it’s a mistake to pigeonhole or stereotype districts,” said Rich Harrill, an Experience Columbia tourism board member, USC tourism professor and 17-year resident of Columbia. “They all have something for everyone.”

Harrill said he, too, has noticed the uptick in student interest in the Vista but said it has happened alongside growth more generally.

In addition to student housing, there are more luxury apartments aimed at professionals downtown. While there are plenty of dance clubs, many bars in the Vista fill different niches, from line dancing to live music, and from intimate lounges to drag shows.

Word of mouth and more student employment downtown may also contribute to student interest, Harrill said. It’s something the city is excited about.

“I think that we’re developing a nice ecosystem that serves many different audiences,” he said.

Recent USC graduate Spencer Dickey said he has also noticed more activity downtown as he’s watched the university grow. He agreed that student housing is a big factor, but said word of mouth is more of a driver. He explained this as he waited to get into the Carolina Western Pub, which he and friends had wanted to visit after hearing other students talk about it.

Ellefson said he also hasn’t seen any tectonic shifts in his business, which is admittedly geared toward a more eclectic audience. But he sees plenty of students at Art Bar along with longtime regulars.

The economics of student living

Students, business owners, parents and more routinely bob in and out of the various stores and restaurants down the stretch of Gervais Street in the heart of the Vista.

City leaders market it as a district that has something for everybody. The hope is that developers will feel the same way, said Coleman, the city’s economic development director.

“From an overall standpoint, it’s still a very popular district, lots of nightlife and restaurants and entertainment options. … Clearly, other people see that too,” he said.

Hotels and housing developers frequently eye the area. If and when the city develops the Congaree riverfront, more housing and retail is inevitable, Coleman added.

That’s the ultimate goal for the Vista — density.

The city estimates there are about 3,200 people living downtown.

“We’d like that to be 9, 10, 12, 15,000 people living downtown,” said Rickenmann, the city’s first-term mayor.

The growing nightlife in the area is a logical continuation of downtown’s housing boom, and it also might be key to keeping more students in Columbia after they graduate.

Making Columbia a more fun and vibrant city, tourism professor Harrill said, is key to preventing “brain drain” — the emigration of young, college-educated professionals like USC graduates. The city wants them to stick around, and engaging them is one way to do it.

“I would tell you, 60,000 students in our community is a great asset,” Rickenmann said. “Not only is that our recruitment tool for economic development, it’s a huge economic impact on every level.”

Rickenmann doesn’t believe students are overcrowding the Vista. Instead, he says it’s still a place that caters to a variety of lifestyles. But he added that anyone concerned about the college nightlife should look at it from an economic perspective.

“We have to have entertainment districts and places for people to go. That draws tourism,” Rickenmann said. “People don’t go where nobody’s at.”

Other residents said another impact of student activity in the corridor has been improved pedestrian safety, including major fixes to portions of Assembly Street and a complete reconstruction of Greene Street. The city will flourish because of these pathways, Ellefson said.

The fate of the district

But will the popularity of Vista nightlife among students ever truly rival that of Columbia’s famous Five Points?

It depends on who you ask.

Lauren Pearson and Alyssa McManho, USC law school students, stand on Senate Street waiting to enter Tin Roof. It’s almost 12 a.m. as Friday bleeds into Saturday, but the night is far from over. They laugh as the sound of a live band echoes from inside the bar.

While they enjoy Vista bars like Tin Roof, they said they’re “Jake’s girls,” referring to the popular Five Points joint.

The Vista’s older crowd sometimes deters students, they said. And the district doesn’t hold the same reputation for partying or the allure of undergraduate nostalgia.

But Jackson Avera sees it differently.

He lingers on a corner with a group of friends — they haven’t yet decided which bar they’re going to for the night. Avera said with more bars opening and the ability to rent out spaces in the Vista, which is a common practice for Greek Life parties, it has potential.

“It will be the new Five Points,” Avera said.