The Seward Park Art Studio--a large storefront gallery on Rainier Avenue South in Columbia City's historic district--closed up their 2,200-square-foot space at the end of August. The large gallery used to be full of colorful ceramics, with art classes in the back room. But the ceramic arts studio wasn't drawing in enough people to keep up with expenses, and now the windows are bare except for a large real estate sign.

Near the gallery, Eleventh Hour Productions--the nonprofit group that organizes Seattle's annual poetry festival, along with other literary events--is quietly packing up their second-floor office to move to Capitol Hill.

A few blocks south on Rainier, Take Another Look Books, the only general-interest bookstore in Seattle's entire south end, has finally shut its Columbia City doors.

Those three cultural centers of Columbia City aren't the only ones leaving: Indie record store Eye and Ear Control closed last year and a salon is set to leave soon.

While this looks like a disaster for the tiny south-end community, it's really not. The neighborhood has simply rejected a few arty businesses that moved in during the area's so-called renaissance in the late '90s. And as it turns out, Columbia City is happy about that--the neighborhood wasn't destined to become the next Pioneer Square or Capitol Hill. "What we wanted to create was what we have now," says Darryl Smith, a bespectacled African American realtor who was involved with the revitalization effort. "More homegrown and a little less gentrified."

Now that some arty businesses have been jettisoned, there's room for smaller businesses that actually speak to the neighborhood's needs, and aren't simply prefab destinations for greater Seattle.

But first, a little Columbia City history: Before the late-'90s boom, drug dealers, prostitutes, and boarded-up storefronts were common sights on the three-block stretch of Rainier Avenue South--from Alaska Street to Hudson Street--that runs through the neighborhood. When two major restaurants closed in 1995, residents and remaining business owners got together to save the seedy area. They helped clean up the street and renovate the historical buildings, many of which were in disrepair but still standing due to a 1970s declaration to preserve Columbia City as a historic district.

By the late '90s, instead of boarded-up windows and dirty streets, Columbia City now had brightly painted storefronts, new windows on some businesses, and trees on the freshened-up sidewalks. Columbia City earned comparisons to a 1940s movie set, with its solid brick buildings, colorful awnings, and store signs like the little red one swinging above the door of the Columbia City Ale House.

Buzz about the neighborhood's undiscovered trendiness quickly followed, and the old Columbia City--characterized by small businesses and taverns that drew in nearby residents--was now upgraded to include a Starbucks, art galleries, and a half-dozen nice restaurants like La Medusa and Salumeria. With the improvements, however, the neighborhood was more expensive to live and work in. Adam Swam, an employee at Revival Lighting (a lamp-restoration store near the Seward Park Art Studio space), says he had to get lunch from Safeway, nearly a mile away. It's much cheaper that way, he explains.

"It's the word that everyone hates, the G-word," says Washington State Senator Adam Kline, who represents the area. Gentrification, like it or not, was a big part of Columbia City's renaissance.

But now it seems that Columbia City is rejecting that gentrification. "A few things are getting shaken out," explains Smith. Columbia City was touted as an arty area after its renewal, but people from outside the neighborhood are not trekking down Rainier Avenue in droves to check out the arts scene.

The departing bookstore, gallery, and poetry organization all say they couldn't draw in enough business, and that Columbia City wasn't a destination for their customers. "It's a struggle to get people in Seattle to come down to Southeast Seattle. There's still a stigma that it's too far away," says Danika Dinsmore, Eleventh Hour's executive director. "And the people [in Columbia City] aren't our audience. I'd love them to be, but they're not." Most Eleventh Hour patrons were from other areas of Seattle hip to the literary scene--like Capitol Hill, where the organization found a space on 12th Avenue to share with other arts groups.

Seward Park Art Studio president Karen Stevenson matter-of-factly told a community newspaper that the neighborhood "just isn't a destination" for their art patrons.

Really, it seems people in the neighborhood are more interested in the smaller retail shops. "The businesses that are staying are doing a great job of reaching out to the type of people that are living in the area," says Karen Kinney, a youthful, energetic woman who runs both the Columbia City Business Association and the weekly Columbia City Farmers Market. The two remaining galleries, Columbia City Gallery and Garde Rail Gallery, are doing just that. Marcus Piña, who opened Garde Rail in July 2001 with his wife, says most of the people on his mailing list are from Columbia City's zip code. The Columbia City Gallery is a co-op that draws members from the neighborhood.

Most of the neighborhood's attention is focused less than a block away from the empty Seward Park Gallery, where one of a few new shops opened recently. The aptly named A Second Breath Consignment Store, near the Starbucks at Rainier Avenue and Ferdinand Street, opened just a few weeks ago. Owner Centhretia Franklin says she specifically chose Columbia City. "I wanted to be here," Franklin says. "This is where I get my nails done, and I live five minutes from here. I want to be one of those that stay [in the neighborhood]."

Smith hopes the business turnover makes way for more small retail shops like Franklin's. "We don't have very much of that now," Smith says.

amy@thestranger.com