New liquor store near USC OKed as Columbia board debates how many is too many
A Columbia board has OKed plans for a new liquor store on Whaley Street after a debate over whether the corridor already has too many such businesses, and just a few months after the same board approved similar plans on the same street.
Bakulbhai Patel, owner of Patel’s Convenience Store at Whaley and Assembly streets, received approval from Columbia’s Board of Zoning Appeals Thursday to put a liquor store adjacent to his existing convenience store at 1013 Whaley Street. The new liquor store will be built in the existing building occupied by the convenience store, but will have a separate entrance from the convenience store’s main doors.
Before granting Patel the special exception to the city’s zoning rules to allow the liquor store in a 3-1 vote, the board debated whether there are already too many liquor stores in the area.
Board member Sherard Duvall was the sole vote against approving the new business, saying that he feels there is already a concentration of similar stores nearby.
“I just don’t see how that is a benefit to the community,” he said before casting his no vote.
The debate comes just a few months after the board voted in favor of allowing another convenience store owner on the same street permission to expand that business by adding a liquor store.
In March, the zoning board granted a special exception to Hashmukhbhai Parekh, owner of Shiv Mart at Wayne and Whaley streets, to create Tony’s Liquor Store in a vacant storefront adjacent to his existing convenience store at 625 Whaley Street.
Vietnamese sandwich shop Bahn Mi Boys opened in that Whaley Street storefront owned by Parekh in June 2023, but the business could not survive the area’s student-driven boom-and-bust seasons, despite being located across the street from the Olympia Mills student apartments, Parekh told the board in March.
With the approval of the new liquor store attached to Patel’s Convenience Store, there will now be three liquor stores within a mile of each other, and 4 within 1.5 miles in a corridor that hosts numerous student apartments.
Those stores include Greens Beverages at 400 Assembly St., Tony’s Liquor Store at 625 Whaley St., and Tilly’s Warehouse at 2020 Greene St., in Five Points.
Board members disagreed on what constitutes an over-proliferation of similar businesses, with zoning board co-chair Colton Driver saying he doesn’t think granting the special exception for Patel, who already sells alcohol out of his convenience store, would be detrimental to the neighborhood.
“That doesn’t scream ‘Oh my gosh, that’s way too many,’ to me,” Driver said.
One University of South Carolina student spoke in favor of Patel’s request, saying that the convenience store’s management always IDs patrons and that Patel is a responsible business owner.
