2024 Preservation Awards | GBX Group LLC
Thursday, May 16th 2024
WINNER | Preservation Leadership
GBX Group LLC
For more than a decade, GBX Group LLC and its partners have played a critical role in revitalizing Columbia’s Main Street Historic District, with the goal of transforming it into a vibrant retail, residential, and commercial corridor. GBX has worked alongside public and private-sector partners to repurpose and transform 13 buildings in 13 years, with the objective of bringing economic and community growth and prosperity to the historic downtown.
GBX has achieved this by leveraging its deep and broad knowledge and expertise in federal, state, and local preservation incentives to facilitate financing for the development and preservation of many of downtown Columbia’s historic buildings, while ensuring these properties remain protected for generations to come. GBX’s historic preservation work played a key role in helping to attract residents back to downtown; spur job, business, and housing growth; and increase tax revenues for the city to help fund education, public safety, and tourism programs.
Throughout its historic preservation efforts in Columbia, GBX played multiple roles—investor, developer, and partner. It was the combined work of all parties, public and private, that enabled a vacant part of downtown Columbia to blossom into a vibrant urban center that today reflects both history and modernity. Visually, the historic preservation results speak for themselves, but they are almost overshadowed by the economic impact of this city-wide rehabilitation initiative.
A study was conducted in July 2018 by PlaceEconomics, a research firm specializing in analyzing the impact of historic preservation, to measure the impacts on downtown Columbia and examine how preservation changed the area between 2006 and 2016. This report found property value increases of 19%—and even as high as 85%—on the blocks where nine of the preservation projects were located. Three of the 36 blocks with preservation projects contributed 56% of the total increase in downtown property values.
GBX’s work in Columbia continues today with the recent redevelopment of the historic W.B. Smith Whaley House at 1527 Gervais Street. The ca.-1893 property now features apartments, a coffee shop, and additional residential units will be added in 2024.
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