Columbia City Council approved a Business Improvement District assessment for the Vista, intended to fund safety and marketing in the entertainment and dining corridor. Plat Street covered the council's public hearing on a Vista district as an Issue 1 platcard and argued in Issue 2 that the corridor had become one of the Southeast's strongest without any managed district structure. It now has one. The card is the fact; the analysis, including Plat Street's own self-correction, runs in Block Ops (BO-F-6) this issue. For city officials in comparable Southeastern secondary markets, the item to request from Columbia is the assessment methodology and the year-one budget, because the split between safety personnel and marketing at formation is the number that predicts what the district looks like in year three.

Watch: The adopted rate, basis, and term, and the year-one safety-to-marketing split.

Source: WLTX, on or about August 5, 2026; City of Columbia ordinance, pending