A caption for a photograph in yesterday's Howard County section of The Sun misidentified a building in Columbia's Town Center. The building is the headquarters of the Columbia Association.
The Rouse Co., which promoted Columbia's Town Center as the new town's center of excitement even before the first residents arrived in 1967, still is trying to figure out how to enliven the planned community's downtown area.
Over the next 15 years, the Rouse Co. plans to build high-density, "urban-style" housing by Lake Kittamaqundi and several other Town Center locations. It also plans to erect at least three more high-rise office buildings, expand The Mall in Columbia by three department stores and establish new downtown restaurants, coffeehouses and nightspots.
But some residents and urban design experts say that creating a more vibrant downtown out of Town Center's decidedly suburban atmosphere will be hard. They say downtown Columbia is unfriendly to pedestrians and still lacks a soul.
Roger K. Lewis, an urban planner and professor of architecture at the University of Maryland, said calling Town Center a "downtown" may be a misnomer.
"It's kind of an amalgam of a regional shopping center and an office park. It's still very much a suburban, low-density destination for people to do their comparison retail shopping," said Mr. Lewis, who wrote a 1989 Columbia Magazine essay entitled, "Are We a City Yet?"
Donna Rice, Town Center village board chairwoman, agreed Columbia's downtown hasn't lived up to its lofty billing. "You don't get a real strong feeling of downtown or center city in Columbia," Ms. Rice said. "There's the mall, the lakefront, a couple of restaurants and that's it. It seems to me there's a need for something else."
James Loesch, chairman of the Columbia Forum's Downtown Work Group, said downtown only comes to life in the summer when events are scheduled at Merriweather Post Pavilion and the lakefront, but is in the doldrums at other times.
"When there's no event at Merriweather or the lakefront, I find downtown very sterile and bare of people," Mr. Loesch said. "You don't see people wandering around except for a very concentrated area."
Town Center's development has ramifications that go beyond Columbia. In Howard County, it is the most visible urban hub and a key area for future job growth and increased tax revenue, said Richard Story, executive director of Howard's Economic Development Authority.
Mr. Story said he's working with Rouse officials to attract large corporations or government agencies to establish headquarters in Town Center. Rouse's general manager of Columbia, Alton J. Scavo, said Town Center provides businesses a combination of urban conveniences in a suburban office campus setting.
Over the last three years, he said, the vacancy rate at downtown office building has decreased from 20 percent to 12 percent -- a key factor in how quickly The Rouse Co. will add more office high-rises to Town Center.
The original vision for 1,000-acre Town Center hasn't changed much since Rouse Co. officials began planning it in the mid-1960s, Mr. Scavo said. "We're faring pretty well for our 28th year," he said.
Downtown Columbia, which still will be about one-third parkland when completed, was never meant to be a highly urbanized area, he said. But he emphasized that The Rouse Co. is trying to adapt to changing demands for housing types and a desire for more leisure-time options.
"We'd like it to be a little more urban in character, less suburban," said Mr. Scavo, a Rouse Co. senior vice president. "If there's anything we've found in 25 years of development, it's that you need more choices than less."
"We want to bring some life beyond 8-to-5" as Town Center becomes more densely populated with residents and workers, he said.
In promotional materials from the 1960s, The Rouse Co. said downtown Columbia would be the "focal point" of the new town, with facilities comparable to cities with populations of 500,000. It promised that "night and day, the heart of the city will be alive."
However, Town Center's development has lagged far behind this vision, with only one-third of its planned development carried out so far. Many of The Rouse Co.'s early promises for downtown have been left on the drawing board, including a conference center, museums, an amusement park, more transportation links and art and music schools.
The latest version of the developer's plans for Town Center includes expanding the number of residences from about 600 to 2,500 or more, attracting large corporations or government agencies and filling vacant spaces and the ground floors of future office buildings with eateries, shops and entertainment outlets, Mr. Scavo said.
Mr. Lewis, the professor who advised Rouse Co. planners on how to create a more urban, animated Town Center in the early 1970s, said more development won't do much to change Town Center's "inherent structural condition."
In his 1989 Columbia Magazine article, Mr. Lewis said Columbia has a "diffuse, incoherent, automobile-oriented center" -- the antithesis of lively downtowns featuring city squares, pedestrian-friendly streets and diverse, high-density housing and activities.
Ms. Rice of the Town Center residents' board said she'd like to see artists' studios, a theater for live performances and Georgetown-like retail areas. Downtown also would benefit from pedestrian safety measures along Little Patuxent Parkway and transportation links, she said.