Vista’s Whit-Ash Makeover: How Avant’s Luxury Vision Rekindles a Redlining Reckoning
- CUBNSC
- Jun 27
- 7 min read
By Javar Juarez | CUBNSC.COM | June 26, 2025
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When Columbia-based Avant Holdings announced plans to transform three historic buildings in the city’s Vista neighborhood into a “luxury mixed-use destination,” the headlines read like a promise: “Luxury living, destination dining, modern office space.” But for many longtime residents, especially Black families with generational ties to the city, the announcement felt less like a promise — and more like a warning.
Why, they ask, does every redevelopment have to be labeled luxury? Why are we not allowed to imagine spaces that are simply livable, accessible, family-friendly — and nice?
This latest redevelopment plan, led by Avant Holdings’ managing partner Todd Avant, aims to remake nearly 48,000 square feet across three historic Vista properties once home to Whit-Ash Furnishings — a local business that stood for 52 years before closing its doors in 2024.
911 Gervais Street (built 1900): A former county liquor dispensary and part of the old Seaboard Hotel
919 Gervais Street (built 1906): The Murray Drug Company building, set to be “restored to its 1925 appearance”
914 Lady Street (built 1918): A historic Nabisco warehouse
Each structure is listed as a historic landmark. Avant’s plans include high-end lofts, boutique retail, destination restaurants, and a “historically inspired mural." But so far, there’s no sign of affordable housing, community gathering space, or any meaningful acknowledgment of the area’s deeply intertwined Black history.
The Unspoken Legacy of Black Bottom
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The Vista neighborhood wasn’t always rooftop bars and wine tastings. Decades ago, parts of this district — especially around Gervais and Lady Streets — were known as Black Bottom, sometimes called Camp Fornance, once a Spanish-American War training ground that later became home to working-class Black families. Here, Black Columbians built churches, raised children, and wove the cultural fabric of the city through the Jim Crow era.
Black Bottom was a historically Black neighborhood that stretched across parts of Gervais and Lady Streets, forming a vital hub for Black residents until mid-20th-century “urban renewal” pushed them out. (Historic Columbia, Columbia’s African American Heritage, 1993; Richland Library Walker Local History Collection.)
Like so many stories across the South, this legacy now sits buried beneath boutiques and bistros. Without real commitment to honoring that cultural memory, the Vista’s “revitalization” risks becoming just another monument to erasure — polished on the outside but hollow at its core.
Black Bottom was the low-lying floodplain between the riverfront rail yards and Main Street — the industrial corridor that would become today’s Vista. Residents worked the warehouses, cotton compresses, and rail lines that once defined the district.
When the city cleared Black Bottom’s shotgun houses and boarding houses in the mid-20th century under “slum clearance” and “redevelopment,” families were forced out to make room for the Vista’s reinvention as an entertainment and arts zone.
That story should sound familiar: it’s the same pattern Columbia has repeated with the BullStreet District, Allen Benedict Court, Gonzales Gardens — Black communities bulldozed in the name of progress under the watch of today’s city leadership.
Vista, Whit-Ash, Avant: When Development Becomes Displacement
The promise of luxury — especially when paired with buzzwords like “destination dining” and “creative office space” — raises red flags for anyone watching Columbia change. These projects are often inaccessible to the very residents whose ancestors made this city what it is.
From Waverly to North Columbia, community members see a troubling pattern: City zoning and planning boards too often operate as enclaves for developers, corporate attorneys, and special interests — rarely do they make space for renters, local families, or neighborhood elders whose lived experience could change the conversation.
Another “Boutique” Push: The Lantern Hotel
And this is just another example: WLTX recently reported on Raines Hospitality’s plan to bring The Lantern Hotel to the Vista district — built around Columbia’s historic Central Fire Station on Senate Street. Branded as a “boutique” experience, it boasts luxury design, high-end dining with a James Beard–nominated chef, and workforce training partnerships with USC hospitality students and people with intellectual disabilities.
It sounds admirable — until you ask who it’s really for. Like Avant’s “luxury” makeover, The Lantern’s curated experience will hover far above affordability for the working families who live just a short distance away. The question isn’t whether we want beautiful things — the question is who gets to enjoy them.
Columbia’s History of Redlining: A Blueprint for Exclusion
When we talk about “luxury” in Columbia, we have to be honest about the historical blueprint that made exclusivity the norm here. Columbia, like so many Southern cities, leaned hard into racial segregation through redlining, racially restrictive covenants, and zoning laws designed to push Black families into unstable neighborhoods while reserving the best land for affluent white residents.
A few facts:
In 1924, Columbia passed its first zoning ordinance to “protect home ownership” — but in practice, it rezoned nearly every Black neighborhood for industrial or commercial use, destabilizing residential life and property values.
Meanwhile, white neighborhoods like Wales Garden, Heathwood, Forest Hills and Shandon were protected by rigid residential zoning and racial covenants that barred Black families from buying or renting homes there. Columbia Mayor Daniel Rickenmann lives in the Shandon neighborhood, which is one of Columbia’s oldest, historically affluent, and politically influential communities.
In 1937, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) produced a Residential Security Map of Columbia. It color-coded neighborhoods by “desirability.” Not a single A- or B-grade neighborhood had Black residents; all D-grade (redlined) areas did — some up to 90% Black. These “hazardous” ratings choked off investment for generations, deepening the wealth gap that we still see today.
This isn’t ancient history — that same planning mindset is alive in today’s “luxury-first” building spree in the Vista. Whether it’s Avant’s Whit-Ash redevelopment or The Lantern Hotel, it’s branded as progress but rooted in the same old exclusion.
What Needs to Change
Across America, cities that have reckoned honestly with the legacy of Black land loss and displacement have shown that there are practical ways to balance growth with respect and repair.
Places like Asheville require Cultural Impact Assessments to measure whether a new project erases or honors a community’s cultural memory. In Atlanta’s historic Black neighborhoods, Community Benefits Agreements ensure that developers who profit from revitalization must return value through affordable housing, local hiring, or direct investment in preservation. In Washington, D.C., some projects have used historic easements and Black-led stewardship boards to lock in community oversight and guarantee that historic sites remain protected and useful for Black businesses and artists for generations to come.
Tulsa’s Greenwood District now has a Community Design Review Board, made up of residents and historians with real veto power over redevelopment plans on sacred ground.
Columbia can — and must — follow these proven examples: require every developer to open their plans to transparent public forums, submit real impact reports, sign legally binding benefit agreements, and share stewardship of historically Black sites with the very communities that built them.
Nice things are worth building — but they mean nothing if they erase the people who made this city home in the first place.
Historic preservation should never be code for displacement. Instead, it should create Mixed-income housing, Small business incubators prioritizing local entrepreneurs, Community venues, affordable event spaces, and centers where all families belong
A Final Question
What’s so wrong with building something that belongs to everyone?
We do want Columbia to shine — but not just for the few who can flash a platinum card. We want nice things, too. We want parks, affordable lofts, family-friendly shops, good schools, safe sidewalks, and lively neighborhoods — not sand castles that wash away the people who built this city.
Luxury for some, without justice for all, is not progress. It’s theft in granite and steel.
Got a story or an old photo of the Vista? Email us at News@CUBNSC.COM
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CUBNSC will keep watching, questioning, and reminding Columbia that we can build beautifully — but only if we build fairly and together.
Reference:
Nguyen, Melanie. “New Boutique Hotel Coming to Columbia Vista: Lantern by Raines.” WLTX, 2025, https://www.wltx.com/article/news/local/midlands/building-the-midlands/new-boutique-hotel-coming-to-columbia-vista-lantern-raines/101-0ae6596e-a69b-421f-8c0d-716b02249c22#. Accessed 27 June 2025.
Richland Library. “Camp Fornance Section.” Local History Digital Collections, Richland Library, https://localhistory.richlandlibrary.com/digital/collection/p16817coll21/id/924/#:~:text=The%20Camp%20Fornance%20section%2C%20also,of%20this%20photograph%20is%20approximate. Accessed 27 June 2025.
Richland Library. “Black Bottom, also known as Hammond Village.” Local History Digital Collections, Richland Library, https://localhistory.richlandlibrary.com/digital/collection/p16817coll21/id/592/#:~:text=Black%20Bottom%2C%20also%20known%20as,is%20known%20as%20Hammond%20Village. Accessed 27 June 2025.
University of South Carolina Films. “Digital Collection.” University of South Carolina, https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/UofSCFilms/id/26. Accessed 27 June 2025.
StoryMaps. “(Untitled).” ArcGIS StoryMaps, https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/fe2f41e8b9af4227966bcf53ae7e9783. Accessed 27 June 2025.
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