New student housing tower gets name, seeks tax break

A new, 15-story student housing tower planned for south Main Street has a name: Icon on Main.

Memphis-based private student housing developer Education Realty Operating Partnership in documents filed with the city of Columbia said it chose the name because it is the first new tower to be built on south Main in many years.

“It will exemplify the type of downtown urban density Columbia is seeking to attract,” it said in the documents.

The tower will have 246 units with 704 beds. That brings to nearly 6,400 the number of beds marketed to University of South Carolina students in eight separate projects around the city — one completed and the rest under construction.

The tower, going at the corner of Main and College streets, will include a 578-space parking garage, which is not enough for all the students but just enough to meet city code. The project is required to have at least 553 spaces, the city planning office said.

Education Realty is seeking a tax break from the city.

Education Realty also filed the documents to apply for a new city incentive that would halve property taxes on the tower for 10 years. The passage of the incentive last spring, which applies specifically to private dorm projects of more than $40 million, set off the downtown student housing boom.

City Council is set to consider Education Realty’s application at its meeting Tuesday. Efforts to reach company officials were unsuccessful Monday.

The Main Street tower would be the closest to the Horseshoe, the heart of the school’s traditional main campus. Most of the other projects are clustered west of Assembly Street where the university is expanding west toward the Congaree River.

USC has grown by 5,700 students since 2007, and more are on the way, although USC officials won’t comment on how many students it plans to add.

Also, the number of freshmen, who must live on campus, grew by 1,262 since 2007, to 4,981. There are only about 6,500 in dorms and 700 in Greek housing.

The tower would be built on the site of what is now Sandy’s Famous Hot Dogs and the Baptist Campus Ministry. Documents indicate that the company plans to lease part of the first floor to the ministry.

The first floor also includes 1,441 square foot retail space, which Sandy’s plans to occupy, store manager Ty Williams said Monday.