City near Columbia has struggled with retail vacancies. Have things gotten better?
Colorful murals line the sides of once bland buildings on State Street in Cayce — a white-washed gas station adorned with a bright blue painting depicting flowers and a motivational quote, a once colorless antique store splotched with blues, purples and yellows. Sculptures and an art gallery dot parts of the street.
The idea to use public art and to revitalize run-down buildings as a way of energizing part of downtown Cayce gained traction around a decade ago, when the city’s mayor, Elise Partin, attended an urban planning conference.
“Businesses will follow where cities invest in themselves,” Partin told The State, explaining the impetus behind the city-proclaimed Cayce River Arts District, the corridor where State Street meets Frink Street that the city has put effort into improving through public art projects and building upfits.
Over the last decade or so, officials for the city of around 14,000 have emphasized redeveloping out-of-use buildings — filling an old adult daycare center with a Caribbean restaurant and a former bank building with a Mexican eatery.
But right towards the end of State Street, just next to the train tracks, a large blue building with a painted mural with homages to Cayce’s history sits mostly empty. A “coming soon” promise adorns its side. The building, along with a handful of others, is one of the few pieces left in finalizing the area’s revitalization.
As more people move to the Midlands, officials for the city across the river from the state’s capital want to capitalize on the growth. They’ve put a renewed emphasis on economic development and have brainstormed ideas for filling retail vacancies at a time when longtime property owners are shifting toward filling long-unused spaces.
How many vacancies does Cayce have?
Cayce has a relatively normal amount of vacant commercial space, compared to nearby cities, Columbia-area real estate agents told The State. The city has at least 50 vacant commercial buildings, ranging from office space to warehouses, according to data provided by Cayce.
Over the last year and a half, there’s been a noticeable shift in commercial development activity, said Rox Pollard, with Colliers International in South Carolina.
“I think a lot of that just has to do with population growth, with people moving to that area,” Pollard said. “Residential is what drives retail.”
His realty group helped put Five Below in Parkland Plaza, the shopping center anchored by Food Lion and Planet Fitness, and is working alongside the Cason Development Group to redevelop a handful of retail spots along Knox Abbott Drive, across from Brookland Cayce High School, into mixed-use space.
The filling of old, long-neglected spaces as opposed to erecting new ones has been a key part of Cayce officials’ long-term plan for the area. Last year, the city handed out over 300 construction permits, but only around a dozen were for entirely new structures. The others were for renovations and remodels.
The city put out a request for a revitalization consultant late last year, after staff indicated during the city’s budget process that Cayce needed someone who could bring attention to the “combination of undeveloped property and blight along commercial corridors.”
“In the time I’ve been here, this is probably as strong as Cayce’s ever been,” commercial real estate agent Bobby Balboni told The State, citing new developments along both State Street and Knox Abbott Drive.
Investing in older properties
For years, Barbara Wright and her late husband, Randy, used the building at 2018 State St. as storage for their adult daycare facility. Wright said it used to be “an eyesore.”
After Wright moved that daycare business a few blocks up the street, the space it used to sit in now holds Trini Lime Caribbean Cafe and the vintage home goods shop Feathered Nest. And after decades of using another piece of prime real estate in the closest thing Cayce has to a downtown area for its storage, Wright said she has plans to put a pottery studio downstairs and rent out studio space to local artists upstairs.
“We’ve heard from people who are artists, who are wanting studios, and Cayce is wanting an art district,” Wright said.
The shift from adult daycare to a restaurant, art studio and vintage store signals a change in the tides for the city of Cayce. For a long time, a handful of downtown property owners let their commercial spaces sit undeveloped, city officials and real estate agents told The State. Partin, the city’s mayor, said she’d often hear of interested tenants who just couldn’t get in touch with property owners.
“How many businesses have we missed that could’ve added life, that could’ve added vibrancy, that could’ve added jobs … people want to be here, but when you have building owners that aren’t doing anything, what are you going to do?” Partin said.
The problem became so noticeable a few years ago that the city council considered an ordinance requiring property owners to pay a fee for letting their buildings sit empty, but the ordinance has been postponed since, Partin said, who noted she believed it could be discussed by council again.
As the Midlands as a whole has grown, officials across Richland and Lexington counties have had to grapple with how to mitigate the increasing populations. In cities like Cayce, that’s meant figuring out how to balance the desires of longtime residents with the need for more housing and retail options as demands for both increase, including how to bring attractive, popular businesses to State Street without nudging longtime property owners out.
While there’s been a history of resistance to change from some property owners, Pollard, from Colliers, said he’s seen an increase in owners who want to renovate or sell their land in recent years.
“Some of those properties are older and those owners aren’t wanting to invest in them, but we are seeing somewhat of a turn in those properties, which will right that ship over time,” Pollard said.
City officials hope that improving communication between commercial property owners, interested tenants and the city, will bring more businesses to the area, Councilman Hunter Sox told The State. Sox said he’d like to see the city create a database of available commercial properties and host monthly events to connect businesses and land owners.
