Kroger store a step closer on south Assembly

The Columbia Planning Commission on Monday passed without discussion zoning and annexation requests that pave the way for a shopping center development anchored by a Kroger grocery store at the site of the old Capital City Stadium.

The long-delayed project was announced nearly five years ago. On Monday, the city’s planning board approved a zoning change to commercial from light industrial that would allow the retails store. The board also agreed to annex the rest of the 4.5-acre parcel into the city of Columbia from Richland County.

The vote was unanimous. No one in attendance at the meeting spoke in opposition or support.

“It’s been discussed in depth,” Krista Hampton, Columbia’s director of planning and development services, said after the vote.

The specific site plans were not on the commission’s agenda. Those proposals would have to be approved at a later date for the project to begin.

Columbia City Council last month granted Bright-Meyers, an Atlanta-based development company, a seventh extension on its contract to buy the stadium, which hasn’t been used regularly since the Columbia Blowfish summer collegiate league team moved to Lexington County two years ago.

The extension allows the developer until Nov. 1 to close on the land, which fronts South Assembly Street near Whaley Street and stretches west in some places to Bluff Road.

The contract extension required the developer to put up $250,000 to help the city build a walkway along Rocky Branch from Assembly Street to Olympia Park. The 1,200-foot pedestrian and bicycle path is expected to cost up to $500,000.

The $250,000 is on top of the original $1 million purchase price for the six-acre stadium property. The property is to be part of a 22-acre complex anchored by the 113,500-square-foot Kroger grocery store.

The developer also has pledged to pay for much of the cost of opening three flooding choke points on Rocky Branch at the property and extending into the Olympia neighborhood.

In other business, the planning board approved a five-story, 92-room hotel on Columbiana Drive near Lake Murray Boulevard.

The hotel is a Home2 Suites by Hilton, an extended-stay chain with properties in Charleston, Florence and Greenville.

The proposed site at 610 Columbiana Drive sits just off the Lake Murray Boulevard exit from I-26 and about a mile and a half from Columbiana Centre mall and the busy Harbison commercial corridor.

This story was originally published June 6, 2016 at 6:33 PM with the headline "Kroger store a step closer on south Assembly."