Among the many issues Columbia’s next mayor will face — fiscal disarray at City Hall, a tough economy, inadequate public transportation, aging infrastructure — is the task of keeping Columbia’s businesses happy.

Controversy over a proposed development in Five Points highlighted problems in the city’s planning process.

The candidates know it, too. It’s especially clear with regard to City Councilman Kirkman Finlay and attorney Steve Benjamin, whose positions on a few hot-button issues are aimed squarely at courting the votes of Columbia’s business community.

Finlay and Benjamin are both experienced businessmen. Finlay owns two local restaurants, Doc’s Barbecue and Pawley’s Front Porch, and is involved in various farming and real estate ventures. Benjamin, a partner with the law firm McAngus Goudelock & Courie until he resigned to campaign full time, has significant real estate and economic development experience, including serving on the city’s Planning Commission in the late 1990s and on the board of payday lender Advance America.

The mayor’s race will play out against a long-running city debate: Does Columbia do enough to support business interests?

One area of concern has been the city’s Planning Commission and its Design Development Review Commission, which are tasked with reviewing many new development plans, renovations, zoning ordinance changes and other projects.

In past years, many have said the two commissions are too dominated by neighborhood interests — including Kirkman Finlay, who led an effort two years ago to put more businesspeople on the commissions. 

Earl McLeod, president of the Home Builders Association of Greater Columbia, says the boards could still do a better job of representing the business community.

“We would always be interested to make certain that the people serving on those commissions understand development, real estate, etcetera,” McLeod says. “We’d like to see businesspeople and people that understand these issues.”

McLeod also says the city is too slow to fill vacancies on the commissions.

“It never seems to get to the agenda for some reason,” McLeod says.

Both Finlay and Benjamin express some concerns about the boards. Finlay says he would like to restrict the number of times a project must appear before the commissions. He’s also interested in allowing City Council to overrule decisions by the DDRC; currently, appeals of DDRC decisions must go through the courts.

But the biggest problem, says Finlay, is that the rules for development are often inconsistent — or inconsistently applied.

“We need to be very clear to people coming into the city what we expect,” Finlay says. “It’s at points cumbersome. It also at points appears very time-consuming.”

Without prompting, Benjamin makes a nearly identical point.

“We’ve done a pretty poor job of clearly establishing what the rules may be, whether that’s the height of a parking garage, or over at Bull Street,” Benjamin says, referring to two recent city fiascos. 

The Five Points South development project was scuttled when neighborhoods, developers and the city couldn’t agree on how high a proposed parking facility could be. And the city’s sale of its historic Bull Street campus was held up by a fight over a historic designation applied in mid-process.

“If you change the rules in mid-stream, it inhibits investment,” Benjamin says.

The candidates also highlight their plans for attracting businesses to Columbia.

Finlay has a plan to eliminate business license fees for new businesses, then phase in the license fees over the first few years of the businesses’ operations. He’s also interested in lowering other costs to businesses, such as water and sewer fees.

Benjamin says he likes the idea of lowering business fees, especially in areas where the city wants to attract more new business — Main Street, in particular.

And Benjamin is particularly concerned with attracting smaller businesses, he says.

“We’ve gone above and beyond in finding ways to bring large business to the city, and we need to find ways to get small entrepreneurs here,” Benjamin says.

Despite their interest in attracting business votes, both candidates are quick to challenge the idea that neighborhoods and businesses are necessarily at odds.

“We allow ‘business versus neighborhoods’ to become a straw man for issues we’ve got to fix,” Finlay says. “We’ve got have everybody focused on Columbia’s future development.”

Says Benjamin: “What’s important is to have rules that allow business to grow and particularly allow entrepreneurs to prosper, while at the same time protecting the residential character of our neighborhoods.” 


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