Controversial student apartments get new life as city design board reconsiders vote
A city of Columbia design board will reconsider whether a massive student housing complex can be built near the University of South Carolina.
The city’s Design/Development Review Commission voted unanimously Jan. 9 to not allow an Indiana company to build an eight-story student housing tower at the corner of Pickens and Gervais streets. The commission has now scheduled a special meeting for Feb. 7 to consider rescinding that action.
Lucina Statler, a city planner who works with the DDRC, said a commission member had asked for the meeting to receive legal advice and and consider a motion to rescind.
“Maybe they were not comfortable with the decision they made,” she said.
The building, which conformed with zoning laws for the area, was opposed by USC, Historic Columbia and the University Hill Neighborhood Association. They argued the height of the eight-story building, while allowed, would overshadow the adjoining neighborhood and nearby historic buildings.
The eight-story building proposed by Indiana-based Trinitas Ventures would have 276 apartments and 540 beds. It would be marketed to students by the bed rather than the unit.
Neighborhood leaders said they feared the 540 students would cut through University Hill on the weekends to get to Five Points and back, causing mischief.
“We already have a lot of problems,” Kathryn Fenner, the neighborhood association’s vice president, said at the Jan. 9 meeting. “We’re really not happy in a zillion ways.”
A university spokesman said USC opposed the project because of an agreement with University Hill to discourage more student housing near the neighborhood.
The argument had resonance with the DDRC, which voted unanimously to turn back the project.
Member Harris Cohn said he was troubled by the size of the project, because it was “dancing on the fringes of the guidelines.”
The DDRC decision was the project’s last bureaucratic hurdle. But the issue may end up in circuit court.
Members of the Trinitas team noted that the project met all zoning guidelines, and that it was in proportion with adjacent buildings, such as the new USC School of Law across Pickens Street and Hilton Garden Inn/Home 2 Suites across Gervais Street.
Trinitas has developed student communities in 12 states, including North Carolina and Georgia, according to its online portfolio.
The project would be built in the 1600 block of Gervais Street, on property currently owned by former S.C. Republican consultant Richard Quinn. The complex would include studio, two- and three-bedroom apartments.
The property where the apartments could be built include the home of Havens Framemakers & Gallery, a 51-year-old Columbia-grown business.
Trinitas’ design application indicates it would include a parking garage, swimming pool, fitness center, study rooms and other amenities along with the apartments.
If the Trinitas apartments are built on Gervais Street, they would join a flood of other student apartments soon to hit the market:
▪ Zoning approval recently was granted for The Edge, a 15-story, 679-bed tower of apartments on Assembly Street, next to the main branch of Richland Library.
▪ On Shop Road, just below Williams-Brice Stadium, construction is well underway on Reign Living, a three-story, 550-bed complex by developer Reign Living.
▪ Construction work has just begun on a five-story, 486-bed development on Huger Street at the edge of the Vista.
▪ And USC is soon to begin construction on its 1,800-bed Campus Village, which is replacing some outdated dormitories and increasing the number of students who are able to live on campus.
These five projects could amount to some 4,000 new beds for college students in downtown Columbia in the next few years.
Already, there are around 20 privately-owned apartment complexes catering to college students — not just USC, but Benedict College, Allen University, Midlands Tech and others — in downtown Columbia and its outskirts.