No new student housing in Columbia? Here’s how city council could make that a reality
Following an explosion in the growth of of student apartments in recent years, some city of Columbia leaders are saying enough is enough. One City Council committee is considering ways to slow or halt the construction of student apartments in favor of other kinds of development.
At least 14 student housing complexes have been developed in recent years across the city, stretching from the Olympia neighborhood all the way to the 1400 block of Main Street. Two new projects — a 247 unit apartment on Assembly Street near the Richland Library and a 276 unit apartment on Gervais Street near the University of South Carolina Law School — are currently in the works.
Student housing developments typically have a dorm style layout featuring three or more bedrooms connected by a common room. Students rent by the bed, not by the unit.
The building boom has coincided with increasing enrollment at USC, which has gone from 25,599 students on the Columbia campus in 2010 to 35,468 students in 2020, according to the University’s Office of Institutional Research, Assessment, and Analytics.
To meet the need for new beds, in 2014 the city offered a 10-year, 50% tax reduction for student housing developments priced at $40 million or more.
Though that program has since expired, in 2019 the city and Richland County began offering a similar tax break for any development priced at $30 million or more. All kinds of developments are eligible, but City Council Member Will Brennan said student housing developers are disproportionately taking advantage of the program.
“Designing and building projects specifically around the lifestyle of students, that’s not contributing to the future growth, the smart growth of Columbia,” he said.
At a meeting last week, members of the city council’s Economic and Community Development Committee discussed adopting new guidelines for approving those projects to encourage a more diverse mix of developments aside from student housing.
Committee members agreed that the city no longer needs to go out of its way to attract student housing developers. Brennan said the city should go one step further and exclude student developments from the tax break altogether.
Instead, he said he wants more hotels and market rate apartments geared at young professionals.
“It’s great that we offer such great residential options for our students,” he said “Now we need to set our sights on creating that economy to keep them here.”
Council Member Tameika Isaac Devine said she agreed that the need for student housing developments near the University of South Carolina had been met. But Columbia’s other schools including Allen University and Benedict College may see a need for more off-campus housing in the future.
“What I don’t want to do is say that we had this and it benefited one higher education institution where there may be a target and a need for some of the others and we’ve taken away the incentive,” she said.
Matt Kennell from the City Center Partnership, a group that promotes downtown business improvement, said student housing has helped the economy to flourish, particularly on Main Street.
“Shops are doing better, we have less vacancies in retail spaces downtown than we did pre-student housing,” he said. He noted that while the council should explore ways to attract new kinds of developments including market rate housing, “I don’t think having more student housing discourages that.”
From a developer’s standpoint, it is “literally impossible” to finance student housing projects without the tax break, said Andrew Weddle, the real estate investor behind the Olympia Mills student apartments. Still, he said it makes sense for the city to focus on other kinds of housing in the short term.
“The truth of the matter is we need taxes in the city and we need student housing in the city. For the time being we may have met that goal,” he said. “But over the mid or long term, the university is just going to keep growing so it’s something the council may have to reconsider.”
Brennan said city staff will spend the next month researching how other municipalities have handled tax incentive programs before reporting back to the Economic and Community Development Committee. From there, the committee will make a recommendation to the full council on how to proceed.
