On a Clear Day You Can See Best Buy

Some people can spend their entire working life in the same office with the same morning commute and the same view. Not me. Since beginning my professional career I've occupied sixteen different offices in five states. Three of those offices were windowless. I liked them the least.

My sixteenth move has landed me in the Gateway Corporate Community in Columbia. Corporate community is an apt label for the 600 acre business park that contains almost seven million square feet of commercial space but no residences.

It wasn't my first choice. If I had my way we would have located our new office in downtown Columbia. That said, I have to admit that I’m warming to life in this corporate community. I have a second floor view overlooking thickly wooded open space. In the distance I can just barely make out the Best Buy sign at Gateway Exchange. In matter of weeks, as the trees leaf out, I probably won’t even see that. In my former office my view was of another building.

Gateway is also Columbia’s largest disenfranchised community. Even though it is larger than any of the ten Columbia villages and its building owners pay the same CPRA lien as village residents, it has no representative on the governing body of the Columbia Association.

It’s our own HoCo loco version of taxation without representation.