Downtown, historic groups skeptical of new Columbia CVS plans

Robert Tucker loves the history within the bricks of downtown Columbia. As the former owner of Tucker’s Fine Jewelry, one of the first properties nominated for the Historic Preservation Commission’s honors in 1998, he believes anything that goes on one of the city’s busiest corners needs to look just right.

“You’ve got an older city, you’ve got the entrance to the city, and we want it to be nice,” Tucker said.

Tucker, now the head of Columbia’s Historic Preservation Commission, led the group’s special meeting Tuesday night to discuss a new design for a CVS pharmacy store on the corner of East Broadway and Providence Road. The Columbia City Council tabled a vote on the new plans on March 2 to allow the commission and the Downtown Columbia Leadership Council to weigh in on the topic.

“We’re revisiting the same thing,” Tucker said. “Even though they’ve made some changes, they haven’t made enough.

Plans for a CVS on that corner started in 2013. The owners of two plats on Providence Road would allow CVS to demolish the buildings there and build the store and parking lot. The store would sit at the corner of Providence and Broadway, where the blue stone Ice House resides, while the parking lot would sit south of it, where the old McAdams Ltd. building stands.

Since its 2013 proposal, the city changed C-2 zoning codes, which would apply to the site of the CVS store. Robert Hollis, a local attorney working for CVS, displayed the new plans at the Downtown Columbia Leadership Council meeting, which preceded the Historic Preservation Commission meeting. Based on the new codes, a building in C-2 zoning must have two stories. The new CVS plans featured the use of a second floor, as well as the location of a trash enclosure at the corner of Broadway and Fourth Street.

Members of both groups expressed discontent the entrance of the store faced the parking lot on Providence Rd., rather than on Broadway, which C-2 zoning codes dictate.

“It looks like a suburban CVS stuck in the most important corner of Columbia,” DCLC member Scott Wilson said.

“It’s a suburban design,” Tucker said. “It’s a square peg that you’re trying to fit into a round hole.”

Pat Fowler, a member of both groups, showed pictures of CVS stores in downtown areas of towns like Boston and Kansas City, which use either existing buildings or structures that looked similar to that of the ones around it. Tucker said he did not oppose CVS building in town, but wanted its structure to match the look of those around it.

The Columbia City Council will vote on whether the building goes up t its April 6 meeting.