Rejected Rosewood liquor store plan returns; owner wants student apts next door
After a unanimous rejection and a no-show at a hearing last year, a Rosewood Drive gas station owner’s proposal to add a liquor store to his business is back before Columbia’s zoning board this week. The plans come as the same property owner is also pursuing student apartments on a vacant parcel immediately next door.
Owners of the Sunset Point gas station and convenience store at 1701 Rosewood Dr. are asking Columbia’s Board of Zoning Appeals to grant it special permission to put a liquor store in an attached storefront to its existing convenience store.
The proposed location is on the corner of South Pickens Street, and the adjacent lot is across Fulton Street from a Family Dollar store.
In an application filed by Amandeep Singh, the gas station owners Sahil of Columbia LLC promise the would-be liquor store will be well-lit and secured with cameras, and that the project “will contribute to local economic activity, create jobs, and provide a regulated retail option without adversely affecting public interest.”
Columbia’s zoning board will consider the request at a Thursday meeting. That board disagreed with the applicant when it unanimously rejected the plans in early 2025, with board members saying a liquor store there would be detrimental to the community and contribute to an over-proliferation of similar stores.
Representatives for the property owners did not attend that 2025 meeting.
The liquor store application asks to put the liquor store in an attached retail space in the same building as the convenience store.
Planning staff have determined that the request appears to meet certain city requirements, like providing adequate parking and limiting light and noise pollution. But staff have also highlighted the criteria the project didn’t meet in 2025.
Those include requirements that a project is consistent with the area, that it doesn’t create a concentration of similar businesses, and that it will not adversely affect the public interest.
When the zoning board first rejected the liquor store plans in 2025, two neighborhood representatives for the Hollywood-Rose Hill and Wheeler Hill neighborhoods spoke against the proposal.
“We have a neighborhood with a lot of very nice, livable homes, and many of those are a block from this... location,” said Hollywood-Rose Hill resident William Lynn Shirley at that 2025 meeting. “We fight all the time with what goes in on Rosewood Drive that would discourage young people with kids from moving into our neighborhood.”
The request comes back as the zoning board recently approved two new liquor stores within 1.5 miles of the Rosewood property, and as the board has also recently debated how many are too many such stores.
Today, there are six existing or recently approved liquor stores within 1.5 miles of the Rosewood property where Sahil of Columbia wants to add the liquor store.
Those include two recently approved stores on Whaley Street, as well as two long-standing liquor stores already on Rosewood Drive.
Still, Sahil of Columbia’s pitch for the gas station states the store wouldn’t create an over-concentration, citing a “market analysis,” that “shows balanced distribution of similar uses.”
That market analysis was not included in the zoning application. The application also cites a traffic study, that document is also not included in the application.
Sahil of Columbia also owns a vacant piece of land next to the existing gas station where property owners are looking to build three-story student apartments.
Columbia approved a zoning change earlier this year paving the way for the project.
The plans had previously been challenged by aeronautics experts and Jim Hamilton-L.B. Owens Airport leadership who were concerned about the apartments being too tall and threatening the flight path for planes landing and taking off from the small airport.
The apartments’ builder, Ashok Kumar, told The State the apartment plans are still in progress and that he is working to meet airport overlay restrictions. He said the project will be under 40 feet tall, and is still intended to become student rentals.
He could not say when construction could begin on the apartments.
Columbia’s zoning board will consider the liquor store request Thursday at 4 p.m. in City Council chambers.
