A new downtown parking garage, which would be one of the tallest buildings in the city, is a step closer to reality after the Columbia City Council directed architects to move ahead with design documents for the eight-level, 99.5-foot-tall building.

"We're not deciding to build it, but we're coming close," Mayor Darwin Hindman said this week. "By asking for the detailed drawings and specifications - a large investment - it wouldn't make sense that you'd make that investment and then not build it."

Representatives from Walker Parking Consultants and Peckham & Wright Architects Inc. gathered input from council members about design elements for the parking garage, which would be built on Walnut Street between Fifth and Sixth streets, across from the downtown post office.

The garage would house about 660 spaces, and about 50 of those would serve as spots for police vehicles. The first level of the structure would include about 17,000 square feet of retail space along Walnut.

Several council members again raised the issue of the city creating retail space in competition with the private sector. Hindman noted that the Special Business District has endorsed the project. "While it does build some retail space that perhaps a developer might build somewhere else, it's where it needs to be to benefit downtown," he said.

Panelist expects crunch to make way to Main Street

The president of a Chicago-based manufacturing company said it's only a matter of time before the global credit crunch trickles down to midsize companies such as his.

"It will ... spill over into the real economy," Bill Little, president of sound system manufacturer Quam-Nichols Co., said Tuesday during a panel discussion about the financial crisis.

Little said smaller businesses will have a tougher time getting credit, and that, he said, will have consequences. "I believe it will be the fear, the lack of confidence and concern" that eventually will lead businesses to cut back on spending, lay off employees or delay expansion.

Little was one of seven panelists who participated in the discussion, which was hosted by the University of Missouri Trulaske College of Business and attracted about 500 people, mostly MU students.

Andrew Beverley, chairman and CEO of First National Bank & Trust Co., said Columbia has several factors that will help it weather current troubles. He said it has a strong employment base bolstered by the university and the health-care and insurance industries, and although home sales are down, the local housing market is stabilizing.