On a warm late-summer afternoon at the GameOn bar+arcade in Columbia, ‘90s music was bumping while roughly 100 young local residents wearing white-and-blue name tags mingled and played games like pinball and skeeball.

They were there for a monthly event hosted by Columbia Social, a local organization that builds connections among the planned community’s young professionals.

Joe Zerafa, who is 31 and has lived in Columbia for about a decade, started the group to help young professionals avoid the isolation he felt in his initial years there as a recent college graduate.

“I truly believe in wanting to build a community for young adults in Columbia,” Zerafa said. “I want to break the stereotype that Columbia is only a place for families and that it is a suburban-dominant community.”

Year after year, Columbia is named one of the best places in the country to raise a family. Its reputation among young professionals is less defined.

While cities such as Baltimore and bedroom communities like Arlington, Virginia, have waged organized campaigns to assure millennials and Gen Zers that they’re cool and fun, Columbia hasn’t made as clear a pitch.

At an event earlier this year hosted by The Baltimore Banner, Zerafa asked Howard County Executive Calvin Ball how the county engages with and listens to younger residents. The question gave him pause. Then he talked up the county’s investments in sidewalks and walkways and Wi-Fi and broadband.

Residents like Zerafa have developed a bit of a DIY approach to helping Columbia shake its reputation as a place just for families. They’re hosting social hours and forming run clubs. The social sports program VOLO expanded to Howard County last year.

There are signs that government officials are getting serious about attracting young professionals, though those efforts have been stop-and-start.

The Columbia Association, the nonprofit corporation that manages the planned community of more than 100,000 residents, studied Columbia’s relationship with millennials in 2019, but those efforts stalled.

A plan to reimagine downtown Columbia — an area that includes The Mall of Columbia, Lake Kittamaqundi and the well-known concert venue Merriweather Post Pavilion — could offer the urban amenities attractive to young professionals. That has been in the works since 2010.

Called the Downtown Columbia Plan, it outlines recommendations for land use, transportation, housing and more for the downtown area. So far the county has issued building permits for 244,000 square feet of retail space, 754,000 square feet of office space and about 1,670 new housing units — mostly apartments.

Zerafa said the plan is promising — but he’d love to see the 30-year project move more quickly.

Howard County’s median age in 2023 was 40.2, making it one of the oldest of Maryland’s 24 counties, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. It has gotten older over the past few decades, with a median age of 35 in 2000, 38.4 in 2010 and 39 in 2020.

Columbia’s median age is slightly younger. In 2023, the median age was 39.4, up from 38.4 in 2010, according to Census figures.

Columbia’s third spaces

Columbia was founded in 1967 by James Rouse, a pioneer in planning and development who wanted to create a place where people of all different economic, cultural and racial backgrounds could live, play and work. It’s made up of 10 residential villages and central business areas like the mall and the Merriweather district.

When Zerafa first moved to Columbia in 2015 with two of his high school friends, the trio picked the community because they didn’t want to live in Montgomery County, where they had grown up and where two worked. They choose to live near The Mall in Columbia because of the walkability, restaurants and access to Merriweather Post Pavilion, Zerafa said.

But they didn’t feel that they had a clear area for socializing — often referred to as a “third space,” meaning not home, not work.

“My third space was meeting up with friends in Baltimore and those still living in the Towson area,” Zerafa said. “It was isolating.”

Parker Meek, 27, and his fiancée Colleen Kaufman, 26, said the county caters more to families than younger residents. Still, they enjoy living in Columbia.

Job opportunities for Meek, a software developer and Ellicott City native, brought the pair to Columbia. Meek said he loves the trails in Columbia and athletic activities organized by local run clubs and an adult swim team.

Meek said the couple moved to Columbia during the pandemic, first into a two-bedroom apartment before purchasing a home a few years ago. While he and Kaufman participate in weekly trivia events at local bars, they are happy to socialize at home.

“Our third space is our backyard,” Meek said with a laugh. The couple often hosts college friends at pizza nights and for cornhole in the backyard.

Columbia Association’s millennial report

A 2019 Columbia Association report, “Exploring Ways to Better Serve Millennials,” found that millennial transplants and those who grew up in Columbia expressed “the desire for a strong sense of community.”

The report said there is “a clear need” for programming and physical spaces to socialize and recommended food truck events on the association’s spaces as well as turning those areas into more informal gathering places for young residents.

Another recommendation of the report was establishing a millennial advisory committee, made up of residents ages 19 to 35. The committee met a few times before the pandemic, but hasn’t gotten together in recent years. There aren’t any plans to revive it.

Ashley Vaughan, 39, a former advisory committee member, has lived in Columbia since 1996. Except for studying abroad during college, she’s never left. Happily kid-free, Vaughan finds plenty to do in Columbia but knows there is room for improvement.

“The 20-30-year age range is the demographic CA [Columbia Association] needs to be constantly in touch with,” said Vaughan, who is now in her first term as the Village of Harper’s Choice representative to the CA Board. “We are great with our aging population and families, but we need to figure out how to help our 20- to 30-year olds.”

Before fizzling out, the millennial advisory committee and CA’s SportsPark created a lasting and successful event, Midnight Mini Golf. This 21-and-older event brings out roughly 200 people each time.

The theme of this month’s gathering, planned for Friday, is “Go Team.”

A 20-something in local government

Safa Hira, the county’s director of communications, began working for local government when she was 20, eventually landing in Howard County’s administration when she was 21.

Now 26, Hira is the youngest senior member of Ball’s cabinet.

“This is my first real professional job,” Hira said. “So, it was really the opportunity to learn and grow in a space where I could, and I had the ability to do it, and I think it was a safe space for me to adjust and create.”

Hira was raised in the county but went to school and worked in Baltimore City. Hira came back to Howard County as a young adult because, for one, it’s her home, and she also feels like it’s now catering more to people her age.

She called that, growing up, there weren’t many things open past 9 p.m., which is when she and her friends would want to hang out.

“We would have to leave the county to go and do stuff, or like, the latest thing that was open is the local Wegmans that would be open till midnight,” she said.

But now, she said, there are so many places and restaurants that cater to young people, such as Color Burst Park and the Merriweather District, where young adults hang out after work hours.

Ball said one of the investments he has made in young people is to hire them in local government.

“I wanted my team, especially my senior leadership team, to reflect the beautiful diversity of Howard County in experience, background and also in age,” Ball said. “So I have a lot of 35-and-under people who are in my senior leadership team who give me insight.”

He said Columbia is the place to be for young adults and for people who want to take the next step in their career.

The community embraces higher education and boasts “one of the highest percentages of doctorates in the nation,” he said. Columbia also recently was ranked in a WalletHub survey as the No. 1 place for best summer jobs, said Ball, adding that he’s increased apprenticeship programs.

Ball said employment for people under age 35 has grown by almost 14% since 2022, outpacing the rate for the 35-and-over demographic. Columbia’s broadband backbone is strong, making it a place where people can reliably work virtually, he said.

“Having young professionals here as they’re starting on their journey and adulthood is something that’s really going to help our entire community thrive,” Ball said.

Volo Sports comes to Howard County

A new draw for young adults in Columbia is Volo Sports, a social sports program that made its way to Howard County last spring, said Ryan McGonigle, the managing director.

Last year, The Mall in Columbia’s leadership told Volo staff that there was green space next to the mall that Volo could use, McGonigle said. He helped to set up a volleyball league, which has now expanded to include kickball and bocce ball.

In 2023, 566 people signed up for Volo sports in Columbia, demonstrating the area’s interest in an activity geared for young adults, he said. As of Aug. 15, 698 people had signed up for Volo in Columbia, McGonigle said. Registration closes on Thursday, and there is already a 23% increase in registrations compared to 2023

The typical age group in Baltimore’s leagues leans more toward 24 to 30, he said. Columbia skews a little older with the average age of 29

McGonigle said Volo looked for opportunities to connect communities, and because of Columbia’s central location between two large cities, it was a happy middle to choose. He met with the Young Professionals Network of Howard County to assess the needs of the area, and “the response was overwhelming.”

Now in the county, Volo partners with local bars like Union Jacks, where players head to play flip cup after kickball

Run clubs and socializing

Before Volo came to Columbia, Brittany Jackson, 29, said she would drive from Howard County to Baltimore to play in Volo Sports just to meet people her age.

After growing upi n Anne Arundel County, Jackson lived in Columbia for about four years when she was in her mid-20s. She recently moved to Baltimore and now works for Volo. Living in Columbia as a 24-year-old, she said, there weren’t a lot of things to do socially besides go to breweries with existing friends.

Meeting people, she said, was a challenge.

To take matters into her own hands, she joined a monthly run club through &Fitness — a women-owned and -led treadmill studio — so she could make friends and stay active. Now living in Baltimore, she still makes the trek back to Columbia for the run club, which “became a little family.”

Jackson, along with about two dozen other people, met at Black Flag Brewing Co. in Columbia for the run club’s mid-August meetup, where they stretched and ran, then hung out at the brewery. They chatted, ate snacks and tried new IPAs.

Like Jackson, 37-year-old Ronnie Aquino, who lives in Montgomery County but works in Howard County, said he likes spending time in Columbia because he can socialize with people his age. He had the same idea as many of the hundred or so young people who came to GameOn in the Merriweather District that warm Thursday afternoon.

Aquino said he’d much rather come to Columbia than hang out in Montgomery County, so much so that he’s thinking about moving to Howard County.

“Howard County is trying,” he said. “Montgomery County is for families.”

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Joe Zerafa's last name.