Coffee with Mayor Rickenmann — ideas and updates on city issues

COLUMBIA, SC (WOLO) — Columbia’s Mayor Daniel Rickenmann held an informal meeting over coffee with local press to answer questions and provide updates on the city.

“It’s important that people understand that we’re doing things, and we’re trying to. But this idea that we only can do it a certain way — that’s history. If you look at the cities that are progressing forward and moving forward it’s because they’re not doing what’s typically been done,” says Rickenmann.

According to Rickenmann, tourism in Columbia is on the rise with an estimated 16 million visitors a year.

Part of continued efforts to market the city to outsiders is by providing more opportunities and more places for them to stay — with only around 5 million of the 16 million visitors spending the night.

“My goal is to get another 2.5 million to spend the night, well that increases our economic development here. Gets us more restaurants more retail, and more living downtown because there’s more life,” Rickenmann says.

Another idea on the table is converting office spaces into residencies — with some larger offices no longer being used due to more employees working from home in a post pandemic world.

Rickenmann says this also allows for the development of smaller office spaces.

Among the growing trends in Columbia are homeowners utilizing Airbnb and Vrbo — with those homeowners using the sites now required to register with the city.

According to Rickenmann the city currently has a lawsuit with the sites from funds that the city is owed.

“They’ve been collecting the accommodations tax from the housing folks but not turning it into us, so we want to make sure we can track that because that’s somewhere around 5 or $600,000 a year that should go back into the community and help pay for the process,” Rickenmann says.

With a new 12-story hotel being built on Gervais Street and about 1,100 hotel rooms available within 200 yards of Colonial Life Arena, Rickenmann says Columbia’s chances of hosting another NCAA tournament are much greater — with bids for 2026  being required by this coming February.

“We took all that information and gonna go back and look at when we had it here and say alright here are the pieces that are missing and here’s what we gotta do,” says Rickenmann.

The City also continues to focus on its Rapid Shelter Columbia — which provides housing for people experiencing homelessness.

According to Rickenmann, over 200 people have been referred to local agencies through the Rapid Shelter program, and 18 people have already been placed in permanent housing.

Rickenmann says a new idea for what he calls a “Hope Center” may provide even more positive results.

“An opportunity where we have not only urgent care, we have physical therapy, we have clinicians, we have stations there where we can have DMV and DHEC come to a site, so that they’re not having to try to take people all over town to get their ID’s… make sure there are benefits, we have classrooms, connected with LRADAC, and other… the Courage Center, which is a great group in Lexington really wants to come and be a part of Columbia, we’re going to try to find out how to make them part of it,” Rickenmann says adding, “If it doesn’t work it doesn’t work I’m ok with that but we’re going to continue to try things so that we have another ability to touch people and try to get them into permanent services.”

Do you have questions you’d like for us to ask the mayor? Let us know at news@abccolumbia.com.