Downtown Partnership Aims to Change Boring, Sleepy Image

Phillip Dodge, Executive Director of the Downtown Columbia Partnership (DTCP), says that organization exists to activate downtown Columbia, change the story that Columbia is boring and sleepy, and to show it's actually a cool place through marketing and a lot of neat events.

Dodge is a 2020 graduate of Leadership Howard County and a 2022 graduate of the International Downtown Association's Emerging Leaders fellowship. He was Columbia-Patuxent Rotary’s guest speaker recently and explained that DTCP is one of three organizations created in the 2010 downtown Columbia plan.

“You all know the history of Columbia,” he said. “It was created as a planned city, always intended to be a city, not just a better suburb, but that stalled out numerous times thanks to various recessions.”

In the 30-year plan, Columbia was envisioned as a just-under 400 acre area that surrounds the mall and Merriweather, with 14 million square feet of new development, 6,000 residents, 4.3 million square feet of office space and 1.25 million square feet of retail space. New development thus far totals about 2.5 million square feet.

“The DTCP’s biggest partner is probably Howard Hughes Corporation, the successor to the Rouse Company. They are the master developer of downtown, also the largest property owner,” Phillip explained.

Other major partners include the Merriweather Arts and Culture Center , a nonprofit created to take ownership of Merriweather Post Pavilion and produce arts programs downtown; the Columbia Downtown Housing Corporation, created to provide affordable housing; the Columbia Association, essentially the largest HOA; the Columbia Festival of the Arts, offering Lake Fest and other programs throughout the years; the Inner Arbor Trust, the group that programs Symphony Woods and the Chrysalis; and Howard County government, plus others.

“The thing you'll see most from the partnership is events. That's certainly our most visible output,” Phillip said. Some of the most popular include Festive Friday Family Fun nights at the lakefront; running events in April, October and November; cocktail and culinary crawls to sample food and drink from downtown restaurants; and Books in Bloom , a collaboration with the school system that brings well-known authors into contact with middle and high school students to celebrate the joy of books and reading.

Along with these and similar events, DTCP also promotes biking and walking as an alternative to driving to, around and from the downtown area, including scooter sharing and bike sharing pilot programs. “The point is to get people on their feet, out of their car, moving around downtown, first seeing how it's developing, how it's changing, how much cooler and vibrant it's getting, but also … to get people to realize it’s actually pretty compact down here … I don't have to drive everywhere. It really is a city,” Phillip stated.

Columbia-Patuxent Rotary is the largest and most active of Howard County’s seven Rotary clubs.