owen

geez. That's two abandoned movie theaters at Columbia Place, not to mention that almost entirely empty strip mall to the west.

For Sushi, I really like Inakaya. There is one in St. Andrews (on Jamil Rd?), and one on O'Neill Court. Solstice is fantastic. I usually eat there on Thrusdays, because the appetizers are half price. The Mac & Cheese (smoked gouda and bacon!) is friggen' awesome.

As to the guy that doesn't own a car, Boston and NYC have a rental car company called ZipCar. Rather than the traditional method of having a central site for renting cars, they leave the cars scattered over the city, in parkiing sites that zipcar rents. For instance, there might be four or five cars parked in every garage in the city. To get a car, you jump online, and the company tells you where the nearest car is. You take the bus or the T to the parking location and you have your car to use for as long as you need it. The car comes with a credit card to be used for gas. I have a friend that lives in Beacon Hill in Boston, and he uses the service once or twice a month, and loves it. Zipcar As far as bus stop enclosures, how much does an enclosure cost? $2k or so? Part of the problem with Columbia is that you almost have to drive or ride to get where you need to be. I live near Decker, and the trip to the nearest grocery store is almost 2 miles. That's too far if you want your icecream to remain frozen in August. This seems to be the issue all over Columbia, and that is faulty zoning. The old zoning methodlolgy of placing industrial in one corner of the city, retail in another corner, and separating residential from everything is just lame. It's nice to see places like Village at Sandhills pop up, where I could potentially spend 90% of my time ( I work just across Two Notch from VAS) without driving anywhere, but then they price the residential out of the ballpark for the majority of the people that would actually work there, completely defeating the purpose.