Want to party over a pool? 701 Whaley getting a big upgrade

How cool would it be to party over a pool?

Columbia’s event planners are about to find out.

Workers are starting to renovate the historic pool in 701 Whaley, which has become one of South Carolina’s most popular wedding venues and event spaces.

On Monday, a group of Olympia ministers gathered at the former mill village community center to bless the pool and pray for its success. The pool area will be turned into a small reception area with a heavy glass cover over the decorative pool.

“This has been a long time coming,” said Lee Ann Kornegay, a Columbia filmmaker and 701 Whaley’s chief advocate. “It’s a special, wonderful, unique place.”

The main building at Whaley Street and Olympia Avenue was built in 1909 and served as the community center for the former Olympia and Granby Mill villages. It was the heartbeat of the community for decades, where children played and swam and adults came together for dances and dinners.

The pool was built in 1918, and a gymnasium was added in 1923. The pool was used by boys and girls separately, and the boys would swim nude.

Although there were some old-time Olympia residents at the ceremony, none had actually ever swam in the pool

The mills closed in the 1980s and 1990s, and the community center’s storefronts and 53 windows were bricked up for a furniture warehouse. Promoter Jack Gerstner bought the building in 1996 and held art shows and concerts for a brief time until the roof collapsed in a 2000 rainstorm.

Gerstner raised donations for repairs but didn’t do the work. He sold the building to Burts and then-business partner Robert-Lewis in 2007 in part to avoid jail time for allowing the building to become a public nuisance — a home for rats and feral cats.

Burts and Lewis, with help from government and community groups, risked $7 million to bring the building back to its former glory.

The work was done with a sometimes excruciating focus on historical accuracy. At one point, Burts was captured by Kornegay on film scrounging through a landfill trying to find a piece of one of the building’s century-old columns.

In addition to weddings, private parties and other events, the building also hosts the 701 Center for Contemporary Art and an artist-in-residency program.

A new lobby and terraces will be added to the building as part of the $2.6 million pool renovation, part of a larger project to renovate the back of the sprawling building.

The space should be ready this fall, just in time for Christmas parties, Burts said.

Burts and current partner, California-based developer Bob McConnell, purchased the pool and gymnasium in 2012 from a former auto parts dealer. The purchase and subsequent renovations will increase the building’s size to 60,000 square feet.

After the purchase, Burts engaged the public to figure out what do with it. Among the ideas floated were turning the gymnasium in the rear of the building into a convertible performing arts center of up to 600 seats and renovating the pool into a small reception area.

A future renovation of the gym will be the third phase of the project.

Pastor Allison Baker of Cornerstone Baptist Church was joined by pastors Andrew Isenhower of St. Luke Lutheran Church and Joe Watson of Whaley Street United Methodist Church for the blessing.

Baker, a former assistant city manager in Columbia, called Burts “a visionary.”

“And it shows in this excellent project,” he said.

This story was originally published January 14, 2019 at 5:45 PM.