'They Like What They See': Columbia Mayor Daniel Rickenmann Touts Midlands Growth, Development

South Carolina’s capital city is a community of explosive growth, and people are excited about the opportunities in the city and see its potential, says Columba Mayor Daniel Rickenmann.

The city has changed significantly since Rickenmann became part of city government in 2004 with his election to City Council and election to his first term as  mayor in 2021. “I believe Columbia was Eeyore (the pessimistic, gloomy donkey from "Winnie the Pooh") for a long time. We doubted ourselves, right?”

Columbia residents would frequently say we're two hours from the beach, and we're two hours from the mountains, he pointed out. “Well, yes, we are. That's an asset. That's not who we are. We are not a suitcase community. “

People now are really beginning to see Columbia for who it is, and they like what they see, Rickenmann said as part of a “Shaping Our Cities” presentation Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, to the Midlands chapter of the Urban Land Institute South Carolina. ULI SC brings together leaders from various fields of real estate and land use to “exchange best practices and serve community needs.” The event was held at McCrory Construction in Columbia’s Congaree Vista area.

One clear evidence of Columbia’s growth is the number of construction cranes around the city. Currently nine construction cranes dot the city’s skyline, the mayor said. ”We haven't had nine cranes in the sky, let alone one crane in the sky in over a decade,” Rickenmann said. “And it is happening because people see the opportunity here.”

And success breeds success, he pointed out. The development of the $70 million Grand Bohemian Hotel on Main Street has elevated the city’s hotel market. As a result of that project going up, the city has had four more inquiries from companies in the four-star and above hotel market wanting to invest in Columbia, he said.

Visitor growth is one of the factors fueling the city’s overall growth. The city has a lot to see and do, Rickenmann said. Last year the city had 17.4 million visitors, up from 16 million five years ago, and hotel nights went from 5 million to 5.8 million. “We want to get to 8 million, right? That's our goal. We want to get to 8 million hotel nights.” Visitors spend money, and that “helps our restaurants thrive. That helps our tourism, our museums, everything else,” the mayor said. “What people have discovered about Columbia is that there's more to do here, that it's not just coming to a football game.”

Many are coming to take advantage of the city’s riverfront along the Congaree River that sits on the city’s western border separating Columbia from West Columbia and Cayce, Rickenmann said, and a future riverfront park and riverfront district should greatly enhance that asset.

The city is working with Field Operations, a nationally recognized urban design and landscape architecture firm on the planning and design for the project that would remake the riverfront between the Blossom and Gervais street bridges into a major public park and open nearby areas for new development. The project is being paid for in part buy a $5 million contribution from the Boyd Foundation, a philanthropic organization dedicated to making the outdoors more accessible.

The city just has “opportunity after opportunity,” Rickenmann said, pointing to among others:

·        Growth along Main Street between Elmwood Avenue and the Statehouse where not only is the Grand Bohemian being developed, but Core Spaces, developer of The Hub, the first student residential housing project on Main Street, is developing a mixed-use project featuring housing and ground floor retail adjacent to a new municipal complex at 1401 Main St.

·        The BullStreet District, the major mixed-use redevelopment of the old South Carolina State Hospital campus into a 181-acre city within the city. The campus is only a third built out, Rickenmann said, “but I think every apartment that’s built there is now completely paid for.”

·        Main Street, north of Elmwood Avenue, where Commonwealth Properties is developing a 300+ unit apartment complex with courtyards, pool, a spa, and a rooftop dog park.

·        Sumter Street in downtown Columbia, where a new Palmetto Citizens Federal Credit Union five-story, 100,000-square-foot corporate headquarters is going up at the corner of Lady and Sumter streets. “Sumter Street has so much opportunity for change and growth,” Rickenmann said, including the “investment that's going to happen further down.”

Rickenmann also discussed the city’s continued need to develop housing. “Our middle-market study shows that we need more condos, we need more apartments,” the mayor said, in addition to workforce housing. He noted that developing workforce housing downtown is a key part of the city’s development strategy, “because what I don’t want to happen is what has happened in other cities, where workforce gets pushed out so far that the quit coming back in” downtown.

Part of the effort to develop more downtown housing, the mayor said, is the effort to keep more of the area’s college and university students in Columbia after they graduate, rather than have them move to downtowns like Charlotte and Raleigh. Students have told him, the mayor said, that they are “choosing to move to Charlotte and Greenville and places like that because they wanted to live in the core. They want to walk to work, walk to entertainment.”