Columbia’s auto mile shifts to the Northeast

During rush hour twice a day, traffic on Killian Road around the Interstate 77 interchange can become bumper-to-bumper with commuters on their way to work and their way home.

That makes Killian Road at I-77 a car dealer’s dream, says Bill McDaniels, chief executive of the McDaniels Automotive Group. Dealers get a captive audience with little to do but gaze at rows of new cars.

With the construction of two McDaniels’ dealerships, 12 automobile brands will soon line Killian Road east and west of the I-77 interchange.

The lineup gives Columbia its new ‘auto-mile.’

“If you collectively put 12-to-14 dealerships together, that’s the drawing power,” said McDaniels, who will end up moving all of five of his Columbia dealerships to the area. “You may not have set out to buy a Porsche. You may not have set out to buy a Subaru. But, you passed us, and you said, ‘Holy cow! Let’s go look at that Porsche.’ ”

All the major automobile brands – from Buick, GMC, Cadillac, Honda, Toyota and Lexus – have relocated to the Killian Road area within the past seven years, said E. Craig Waites, Collier’s International vice president and commercial brokerage group director. His firm is marketing the 1.3 million-square-feet Killian’s Crossing development on the north side of the I-77 interchange.

Northeast Richland’s population has roughly tripled since 1990, creating its own separate consumer market, Waites said. Car dealerships also require sizable plots of land, and five to 10-acres of commercially-zoned real estate near populated areas is tough to find, he said.

In addition, auto dealers like to locate to areas where the population base is growing and that have relatively easy access to the other residents of Columbia.

Killian Road has Columbia public utilities, a growing population and interstate access.

“Frankly, Killian Road is the closest vicinity that offers all those objectives,” Waites said.

‘Nothing but trees’

When McDaniels opened his first Columbia dealership on Two Notch Road near downtown Columbia in 1989, it had a 23,000-car daily traffic count with a strong Columbia Mall nearby. The area also had a strong population base surrounding it, including Forest Acres and Arcadia Lakes.

Two Notch was Columbia’s “auto mile” at that time.

But many of those residents have since moved to WildeWood, Woodcreek Farms and Cobblestone, McDaniels said. Columbia Mall has vacancies as merchants were drawn to the Village at Sandhill.

One of the deciding factors for locating a car dealership is close proximity to customers, McDaniels said. Proximity to the dealership affects repeat business. A 20-mile separation from the dealership will lose it 95 percent of its customers, he said.

McDaniels purchased 35 acres on Killian Road in 2007, he said, just ahead of the recession “when there was nothing but trees out there,” he said.

McDaniels said he bought the property knowing Jim Hudson Lexus and Midlands Honda were planning to move out there, He said he knew he would have to wait for development to come to the area.

Now, after moving three dealerships to the new ‘auto mile’ already, McDaniels is moving his last two – Subaru and Porsche – from Two Notch Road to new digs under construction on five acres at Clemson Road and Killian Road next year.

Meanwhile, just northwest of downtown Columbia, Greystone Boulevard near the Riverbanks Zoo has attracted a number of auto dealerships as a successor to Two Notch Road.

But that area is not convenient to residents in Northeast Richland, experts said, which has helped spark the growth of dealerships along Killian Road.

‘Good things in store’

Car dealers are not the only businesses finding Killian Road attractive. The area is dotted with restaurants near the I-77 interchange.

“There is a ton of people that live in the Northeast, it has the highest income per household in Columbia and it is the fastest growing (area in Columbia),” McDaniels said.

Kroger is building its first superstore at Killian’s Crossing.

The Kroger Superstore is a $100 million investment and will feature 123,000-square feet of grocery shopping. In addition to shopping and restaurants, Killian’s Crossing will include 500,000 square feet of office space and more than 2,000 housing units.

“When you see all this coming, there are a lot of good things in store for Killian,” McDaniels said. “The whole place is going to explode. We wanted to make it convenient for our customers to come do business with us. And now, I’ve just waited it out and now we are reaping the benefits by being in that location.”

Planners, such as the Urban Land Institute, have predicted that close to 500,000 people will be moving to the Midlands by 2030, creating the need for 170,000 new households, 169,000 new jobs, 66 new K-12 schools and 1,700 hospital beds.

A number of factors are driving Killian Road to be the next motor mile in Columbia, said David Beitz, president and co-founder of Beitz and Daigh Geographics in Columbia, which helps with site selection.

The Killian Road/I-77 interchange is easily accessible for a large portion of the Northeast and Forest Acres, he said. A population of 83,802 people are within a 15-minute drive time from the intersection and 202,662 people live within a 20-minute drive.

“Incomes are strong in the Northeast, and a large portion of dealership profit is from service work, so it pays to be close and convenient to people with good incomes,” Beitz said. “A dealership is a destination, and when it comes to car-buying, people will travel some distance to go car shopping, that’s why the interstate is such a good bonus for this intersection.

“And if there are many dealerships in one place, it makes it easier to compare models.”

This story was originally published December 18, 2015 at 8:40 PM with the headline "Columbia’s auto mile shifts to the Northeast."