The spell's description says it literally raises the ground or floor, like an earthquake. That opens up a whole can of worms for usability - and abuse.
Not quite. It doesn’t mention “like an earthquake.” I think this one is open to interpretation. I took the wording to mean that a pillar rises from the floor/ground in order to keep a creative player from creating a 10-ft tall column in mid-air and having that drop on a foe. Also took “from” literally (ie the location of the base) instead of “out of” (ie created from the floor/ground).
However, I dig your interpretation. Like the idea of a bunch of potholes and rubble being left after 15 min (a Stretch) instead of the column just going “poof.”
When I read the spell description, I immediately thought of Cryonis in Breath of the Wild (and that's also how I explained it to my daughters when playing with them: "This is Cryonis, but on land instead of water").
In other words, I've treated it as if the pillar rises out of the ground, but it isn't actually the matter that used to occupy the 1x1x3 m volume directly underneath that rises up. Rather, the magic (temporarily) creates new matter that is modeled after what exists beneath the place where the spell is cast, but that is rigid even if the natural matter is not (so that Pillar could be cast also on, say, soft earth). At the end of the spell duration, I will (we haven't gotten that far yet) probably have the pillar just dissipate. I suppose it could sink back down, but that raises unnecessary questions about what happens to things that have been inserted into the pillar.