Turning a Neglected State Roadway Into an Economic Engine

Business Loop 70 looks like many American roads as it cuts through Columbia, Missouri. Four lanes of traffic; some sections with sidewalks, others without; a car dealership with a sea of available cars; an old single-floor mall set behind rows of parking, and an old brick smoke stack from a long-forgotten power plant.

Yet that one-and-a-half-mile stretch of state highway contains a model of innovation for the nation. Every day, Carrie Gartner parks in front of a small storefront and steps into the offices of the Loop Community Improvement District, where for the past decade she’s been working to achieve the seemingly impossible: turning a random collection of properties along a state highway into a destination for families and entrepreneurs.

Her economic development strategy – leveraging small-scale manufacturing, placemaking and programming – provides a roadmap for how local improvement districts in cities nationwide might revitalize anonymous commercial corridors.

The Loop wasn’t always a pass-through place. Before the state highway expanded from two lanes to four, and before the Columbia Mall pulled businesses away, this was where high school students went cruisin’ well into the ‘80s. Locals remember coming to a white tablecloth restaurant here for special occasions. This was where families shopped at JCPenney and spent an evening at the drive-in.

By 2014, dwindling tax revenues and steady maintenance costs created urgency for the city and local business owners to turn the tide. That year, True Media owner Jack Miller moved his business headquarters from downtown to The Loop. He began to organize property owners along Business Route 70 and recruited Gartner to help bring the new improvement district to life.

Gartner’s first job in Columbia had been as executive director of the city’s Downtown Community Improvement District (Missouri’s version of a business improvement district). After 14 years in that role, instead of heading off to the next bigger city, Gartner decided to put down deeper roots and invest in the relationships and knowledge she had built in this city.

With her background as a political advisor and PhD in communications, Gartner had pivoted from working on political campaigns and teaching communications to pursuing a lifelong dream of running an improvement district. (Her young love of placemaking might sound odd, she knows, but she credits her upbringing in Orange, California – a town with historic buildings, beautiful architecture and local shops – for giving her a love of beautiful places. )

When Miller recruited Gartner to run The Loop CID, she knew that bringing life to the area along Route 70 would require something very different.

It wasn’t downtown. There was no place to hang out. Buildings were pushed back from the road. Traffic was full of trucks cutting through. Sidewalks, where they existed, were cracked and inconsistent. Behind the south side of the road stood an historic African-American neighborhood filled with older homes becoming vulnerable to neglect. On the north side, between the state highway and the interstate, stood a hidden area of light industrial businesses: cabinet makers, HVAC companies, and other small fabricators.

But the property owners and Gartner believed it was possible to create a place where locals come together, where businesses make things, and where Columbia can showcase what makes it unique.

It would take collaboration, policy change and creative thinking to realize their ambitious vision. They would need a strategy to navigate very real obstacles: bad road design, high truck traffic, zoning restrictions and poor perception of the place.

First, Gartner worked on what kind of local businesses could exist along the corridor. Conversations with food businesses and artisans in the community convinced her that small-scale manufacturing should be core to the solution. The area north of Route 70 was already filled with product businesses; a commercial kitchen, makerspace and other shared spaces could help bring more entrepreneurs to the area and add to that energy. They also would not be dependent on foot traffic, which was nonexistent. These businesses could help bridge the gap from a pass-through place to a business place, even before new development happened.

Second, she figured out how to attract people to the area – to spend time there rather than just driving through. She approached the local electricity co-op about its empty parking lot, organized donations of shipping containers and picnic tables, and brought together 200 volunteers to create a pop-up park. The first community event in 2019 brought together local artisans, maker activities for kids, and a renewed sense of possibility in this forgotten area. This kicked off the twice-yearly makers markets featuring over 50 business owners, which resulted in sales to over 350 people at each event.

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Then, she found new partnerships and resources to invest in the envisioned shared spaces. In 2020, Gartner and her partners convinced the University of Missouri to let the CID lease the old kitchen in their long-closed hospital on the corridor. With funds supplied by the city and the regional economic development organization, the first CoMo Cooks commercial kitchen opened in 2021. A clear vision helped others add to this plan: That same year, the community college built on Gartner’s plan and pursued and won a federal grant to open the makerspace, where residents and students could learn to use laser cutters, CNC machines and other tools. Others took notice, and residents soon opened a shared digital studio with video, photo and sound recording access nearby.

But businesses still faced the hurdle of zoning that made permitting more shared production uses along the corridor at the discretion of the city. For two years, Gartner led a rezoning effort to allow small and shared-production businesses to occupy storefronts on the corridor. She attributes The Loop’s strategic focus on small-scale manufacturing businesses and their needs, and extensive conversations with local leaders, to the success of the rezoning campaign in 2021 that approved shared production spaces up to 15,000 square feet.

By 2023, CoMo Cooks used this new provision and moved into its own building with a larger kitchen and The Loop offices out front — now a permitted use throughout the district. Gartner hired a kitchen manager and expanded the kitchen, adding space for local farmers to process raw produce into value-added products to increase their revenues.

Last year, something remarkable began happening: Locals started showing up at The Loop offices to buy products directly from the businesses working in the kitchen that day.

Now, direct sales are part of the plan. Every night, Gartner and her staff put away their office supplies, and different food businesses host evening pop-up events. On Thursdays, locals line up out the door for Polvorosa’s Savory Pies, a Venezuelan pie company owned by Christina Nunez. Nunez works next door at the Boost Mobile most days and has her art studio out back. She’s designed art for the corridor and hosted maker activities for kids during the popup park events; now, her pies sell out weekly.

With the combination of twice-yearly maker markets, and business owners working at the podcast studios and makerspace, The Loop’s reputation is changing. It’s becoming a place to stop in, get work done, a place where entrepreneurs from different parts of the city can learn and create together.

“It’s an economic engine just under the surface,” Gartner says. “I needed to uncover it, help it grow, and let it shine.”