Yet another new hotel planned for Columbia’s Vista
Downtown Columbia is getting yet another hotel.
A 144-room Choice Cambria boutique hotel is planned for the Vista at the corner of Lady and Park streets, according to documents filed with the city of Columbia Board of Zoning Appeals.
The location is the lot across Park Street from the Art Bar and behind Mellow Mushroom.
The Cambria joins five other hotels that have recently opened, are under construction or have been announced. A sixth has changed owners and undergone a complete makeover.
They are:
▪ A full service Holiday Inn that opened at the end of last year in a former office building at 1223 Washington St., a half block from Main Street next to the Sheraton. It features 90 rooms, a restaurant and a bar.
▪ The duel Home2Suites and Hilton Garden Inn property at 1615 Gervais St. that also opened late last year. The Home2Suites has 100 rooms, and the Hilton Garden Inn has 123.
▪ A five-story, 105-room Holiday Inn Express under construction at the corner of Washington and Lincoln streets adjacent to the Columbia Police Department. The hotel is expected to be completed in May or June.
▪ An 11-story, 150-room full-service boutique hotel planned by developer Ben Arnold in the Vista. The Hilton Tapestry hotel called The Anthem would be built at 700 Gervais St. behind the former Jillian’s building, called The Depot, and have pedestrian plazas and walkways that would connect it to a possible future expansion of the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center.
Arnold also is working with the city on a 350-room full service hotel that would be the city’s largest. However, that hotel would be tied literally and figuratively to plans to expand the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center. That issue has yet to be decided.
▪ The former Inn at USC, which has been transformed into the over-the-top, trendy Graduate Columbia.
Jason Outman, head of the Columbia Convention and Visitors Bureau, said a growing University of South Carolina and more tourists and business travelers, along with a steady diet of state and federal workers, lobbyists and Fort Jackson parents, are keeping downtown attractive to hotel developers.
“And we’re hosting more and more meetings (at the convention center), which is why we are pushing for expansion,” he said. “That way we can have more and bigger meetings and conventions.”
Through the end of 2019, the now-13 hotels in the downtown area — which is roughly from Blossom Street to Elmwood Avenue and Gregg Street to the Congaree River — had a 72 percent occupancy rate, down from 75.7 percent earlier in the year.
“But that’s a good number — anything over 70 percent,” Outman said. “And we have some hotels that are over 80 percent.”
The drop was caused by the three new properties coming online, Outman said. He expects occupancy rates to rise as more people discover and begin booking the new properties.
The average daily room rate has also dropped slightly from $159 last May to $154.31, he said, but noted that it’s not uncommon for room rates on Tuesdays and Wednesdays — the optimum days for business travel — to reach $200 a night.
Fred Delk, executive director of the Columbia Development Corp., which encourages and guides investment in the Vista and other areas of the city, said he is still being approached by hotel developers.
“It feels like we’ll have an additional hotel (announced) this year,” he said.