More apartments headed for south Main

A Greenville developer is planning a new downtown apartment building with a twist.

At a time when downtown housing projects are dominated by sprawling student housing complexes and mid-rise towers, developer Ford Elliott thinks smaller is better.

The Lofts at the Capitol project, to be located on the current parking lot behind Immaculate Consumption and Hibachi House across from the State House complex on Pendleton Street, would be just four stories tall and have just 12 apartments.

“We wanted to do something that’s more boutique, a little more upscale than student housing,” Elliott said. “Not everyone wants to live in a big building. You’re not going to get lost in ours.”

The design of the building is expected to be approved by Columbia Design/Development Commission Thursday night. It goes before the Zoning Board of Appeals next week for a parking variance.

Plans call for the building to have ground floor parking under three floors of apartments. If approved, it should be ready for occupancy next year.

The floor plans call for six one-bedroom apartments and six two-bedroom units.

“We really like the proximity to both the university and the State House,” Elliott said, adding that he plans to market the apartments to government workers and University of South Carolina graduate students “who might want a little more quiet.”

Changing market

For Matt Kennell, president and CEO of Center City Partnership, the small building is just another wrinkle in downtown’s ongoing residential boom.

“It’s really hard to define the market right now,” he said. “You’ve got smaller projects, mid-rise projects, renovations, new construction, a little bit of everything.”

The apartments will be a block away from the 18-story Cornell Arms building, which has stood for decades, and two blocks from the site of a planned 15-story tower on South Main that was proposed by a Tennessee developer.

That tower, dubbed Icon on Main, was scrapped after a campaign backed by USC claimed it would cast a harmful shadow on the historic Horseshoe and didn’t fit in with the character of campus.

Another 15-story tower is on tap for the corner of Assembly and Washington streets next to Richland Library, and developer Don Tomlin has floated plans to build residential towers on top of several downtown parking garages.

Other pending projects include:

▪  A 307-bed market-rate complex at the proposed Kline Center mixed use project at Gervais and Huger streets;

▪  A 234-bed student housing project at BullStreet on campus of the old S.C. State Hospital;

▪  A 684-bed tower on the Bernstein property on Assembly Street;

▪  Two smaller projects – the 114-unit Land Bank Building and 130-unit Thirteen 21 – near Main Street that are under construction or now leasing.

All that is in addition to 10 large housing projects, representing nearly 4,000 students, that have opened in the past two years.

Kennell said he expects more announcements in the future.

“It’s starting to be more than students now,” he said. “It’s becoming a young professionals market.”

As a growing downtown Columbia becomes more appealing to recent USC grads, that market should increase, Kennell said. Recent grads will be accustomed to living downtown in the student housing and want to transition into market rate housing.

“If we can keep these people in Columbia then they are going to want that urban feel,” he said.

This story was originally published September 7, 2016 at 4:42 PM with the headline "More apartments headed for south Main."