Friday, Oct. 10, 2008

Developer threatens to cut back CanalSide

Council defends Calhoun Street site

A Charleston developer threatened Thursday to scale back his $200 million CanalSide development if Columbia officials put a permanent homeless shelter less than a mile from his property.

John Darby, the president and CEO of The Beach Company, which three years ago bought the canal front property from the city for $6 million, came to Columbia to again ask city leaders to withdraw their proposal to put a homeless shelter on Calhoun Street.

“We have a commitment to the city to complete the development of that, which we just can’t do with a homeless shelter nearby,” Darby said.

“It may be the greatest homeless shelter in the history of the world, but it affects the market.”

On Thursday, as the stakeholders for the homeless shelter gathered in the same room for the first time, the consensus was clear: No one was willing to budge.

The Midlands Housing Alliance, a group of business leaders, pastors and service providers, wants to put a homeless center on Main Street and Elmwood Avenue.

But city officials want to move the shelter to Calhoun Street — near the Beach Company’s CanalSide — because neighborhood leaders have aggressively opposed the Main Street site.

That proposal pits the city’s interest in developing the canal front property against its interest in providing a homeless shelter.

And whichever site is selected, the alliance could face a lawsuit — either from the Beach Company or from a cluster of neighborhood associations. The Beach Company also has threatened to sue the city.

“I don’t like this talk of lawsuits. I expect better from you,” Columbia Councilwoman Belinda Gergeltold Darby on Thursday. “I expect you will work with us and not raise roadblocks to keep us from going forward.”

“Back at you,” Darby said after the meeting. “Council made a commitment to us. They ought to know that.”

Darby said he got an e-mail from a man who, after learning about the possible homeless shelter site, decided to reconsider renting an apartment for his daughter.

“If you Google CanalSide today, you will get article after article about a homeless shelter,” Darby said. “It has wiped out hundreds of thousands of marketing we have done the past few years. And I don’t see that City Council cares.”

Some City Council members said that just because Darby invested millions of dollars doesn’t mean he gets to decide where a homeless shelter should go.

“I understand your investment,” Councilman Sam Davis said. “But other members of the community are also speaking of their investment.”

Neighborhood groups said they understand the need for a homeless shelter, but said they don’t want it anywhere near them and are committed to fighting the Main Street site.

“It is going to spoil your plans. We hate that. We feel like the party poopers,” said Peter Korper, president of the Elmwood Park Neighborhood Association. “We just simply cannot have a homeless shelter, no matter how you disguise it, in the center of the capital of South Carolina.”

Cathy Novinger, chairwoman of the alliance, said both sites would work but she felt better prepared to defend a lawsuit at the Main Street site because the alliance is backed with two years of research and planning.

“If that’s the only site we can make work, we’ve got to stay the course. We have no choice.”

The Midlands Housing Alliance has a board meeting Monday. Earlier this week, they officially asked the city for $4 million in funding and hope to hear back from them by Thursday.

The city has spent an unknown amount on a number of failed homeless projects over the past 10 year.

Columbia also has spent millions trying to develop the CanalSide property, and lost between $4 million and $6 million when it sold the property in 2005, Jim Gambrell, the director of economic development, said.

In 1996, the city purchased what was once the Central Correctional Institution from the state for $3 million.

In the 10 years that followed, the city spent about $9 million cleaning up the land, demolishing buildings and trying to develop the property.

In 2005, after at least one developer walked away from the project declaring it unusable, The Beach Company bought the land for $6 million to develop CanalSide — a 750-unit neighborhood with apartments, condos and homes.

In 2007, after years of failed efforts to build a permanent homeless shelter, City Council members decided to put a temporary winter shelter on Calhoun Street by the Broad River and the Columbia Water Plant.

CanalSide objected to the site at first, but went ahead with the project after council members assured them the shelter was only temporary.

Reach Beam at (803) 771-8405.