Cogdill carpet and Cromer’s Peanuts look to exit Huger Street

Two of Columbia’s most venerable family-owned businesses – Flooring by Cogdill and Cromer’s Peanuts – may soon be leaving their shared Huger Street location.

Cogdill’s owner has put the 3.25-acre property and 43,350-square-foot retail and warehouse building up for sale, said Bill Cogdill, the retired president and owner of the carpet and flooring company, located at the intersection of Huger and Laurel streets.

If the building sells, Cogdill’s will open smaller retail carpet and flooring stores in more suburban commercial and residential centers around the metropolitan Columbia area, such as in Irmo, northeast Richland County, Harbison, Lexington and the Sumter Highway area, Cogdill said.

Cromer’s, which leases 15,000 square feet of space in the Cogdill building, will employ a similar, new business strategy, manager Agata Chydzinski said Monday. Cromers plans to exit the busy Huger Street area for smaller outlying residential and commercial centers.

“This location is not ideal for a retail business because of the velocity of the (vehicle) traffic,” said Chydzinski, whose lease expires at the end of December. There are no plans to renew, unless it is month-to-month until a new location is secured.

“We’ve definitely seen the people from Lexington and across the river have a hard time coming this way. We’re (at) that first traffic signal when you’re coming off (I-126), and it’s really, really hard to make that turn to get to us.”

The business gets “no traffic” from Huger Street, Chydzinski said, and Cromer’s wants more pedestrian traffic. But the business is not leaving downtown Columbia.

Cromer’s is “definitely looking for a downtown retail location,” Chydzinski said. A prospective new location on Main Street recently “fell through,” she said. Lexington and the northeast also are on their radars. “It’s going to be very different from the Cromer’s that you know today,” Chydzinski said.

“It’s not going to be the warehouse and the concessions and all of that in one location. We’re going to have a mothership ... and several smaller retail stores all over town,” Chydzinski said.

Cogdill Carpets, founded in 1970 at Candi Lane and Greystone Boulevard, moved to its current location in the Vista in 2006.

Cromer’s P-Nuts, founded in 1935 at the State Farmers Market, moved into the Cogdill building 10 years ago after closing on Assembly Street in 2003 and landing on Berea Street near Williams-Brice Stadium for three years.

The Cogdill building, being marketed by Colliers International for $5.4 million, could be the site of any number of new businesses, including a hotel, said E. Craig Waites Jr., Colliers vice president and director of commercial brokerage.

“That area of Huger is one of the main gateways into Columbia,” Waites said.

Construction plans are moving forward for the former Kline property at Huger and Gervais streets, and the former SCE&G bus barn property is up for sale.

“It’s very possible in the next 18 months or so the whole landscape of Huger will change,” Waites said.

This story was originally published April 4, 2016 at 8:15 PM with the headline "Cogdill carpet and Cromer’s Peanuts look to exit Huger Street."