Newer, ‘cooler’ housing draws USC students downtown

For four years, Dallas Meachum of Greenville lived at the Stadium Suites apartments off Bluff Road near Williams-Brice Stadium as he attended the University of South Carolina in Columbia.

But last week, Meacham, now a graduate student entering USC’s law school, was moving into the 612 Whaley apartment building in Olympia, a one-year-old building flanked by the renovated Olympia and Granby mills.

Meachum is one of thousands of students who have chosen newer student-oriented housing closer to USC’s expanding campus over older and more-distant student housing complexes along Bluff Road, Shop Road and across the Congaree River in West Columbia and Cayce.

“When I first moved in (Stadium Suites), it was all students,” said Meachum, whose triplet brother and sister, Layton and Taylor, and his mother, Diane, were helping him move last week. “When I left, there were more and more non-students.”

Three new student housing projects – complexes that rent by the bedroom rather than the apartment – and two more traditional apartment buildings geared toward students are opening within blocks of campus this week, in time for the start of USC classes on Aug. 18. They join four other complexes, such as 612 Whaley, that have opened since 2014, and another four that are in the planning stages.

That means up to 4,000 students are now living in newer housing closer to campus, with more and newer options for a few thousand more students on the way.

Efforts to reach officials of Stadium Suites were unsuccessful.

But the migration means a transition for Copper Beech Townhomes, a sprawling apartment complex between Bluff and Shop roads near Interstate 77, just down the road from Stadium Suites. At 1,002 bedrooms, it is the largest of the city’s privately owned student-housing complexes.

Sales manager Rodesha Scott said the occupancy rate this year at Copper Beech, known for its large apartments and large pool area, is only about 40 percent.

“Last year we were full,” she said.

‘There’s still demand on paper’

That doesn’t surprise architect Scott Garvin.

Garvin renovated the historic Granby and Olympia Mills into apartments more than a decade ago. They are now hugely popular with students. He also designed 612 Whaley for the same Philadelphia developer, Ron Caplan, who took a chance on the old textile mills.

Now, he and Caplan are putting the finishing touches on the century-old Palmetto Compress building on Greene Street in the Vista, adjacent to campus. Preservation of the old cotton warehouse set off a political dogfight three years ago, but is housing students and young professionals starting last week.

It, too, is “market rate,” like the Olympia mills and 612 Whaley – meaning they lease by the unit, rather than bedroom, but are geared toward students because of their proximity to campus.

Garvin predicts that as newer units come online, success will be achieved by proximity to campus, uniqueness and amenities.

“There is still demand on paper” for new student housing projects, he said. “But developers are going to try to eat each others’ lunch. The students are going to go to the coolest and closest.”

‘It’s going to hurt them’

Many of Copper Beech’s residents are choosing the new apartment buildings, especially when they become graduate students, sales manager Scott said.

“They are choosing the amenities,” she said. “So we are starting to do a little more marketing, emphasizing our large apartments and lower prices.”

Asked if the complex is going to start marketing to potential tenants outside of students and recent graduates, she said that decision “hasn’t been made.”

Fred Delk, executive director of the Columbia Development Corp., said that on the surface, it seems like the new housing will turn remote complexes into ghost towns or slums. But just the opposite is true. The outlying complexes just have to absorb other demographics.

“There is a huge demand for apartments right now,” said Delk, whose organization encourages and guides investment in the Vista and other areas of downtown.

He noted that three years ago, downtown had 1,200 residents. Today it has 6,000 to 7,000, and that number will continue to grow as USC expands by 1,000 to 1,500 students a year, he said.

“We’re undergoing a change of culture and economy,” Delk said. “Everything will be fine, but there will be a re-positioning period.”

‘They want to be closer in’

There are advantages to the Shop Road and Bluff Road complexes, however.

A three-bedroom apartment in Copper Beech runs about 2,000 square feet and rents for $505 a bedroom. A three-bedroom unit at the brand-new Apartments at Palmetto Complex is about 1,400 square feet and rents for the equivalent of $730 per bedroom.

And the pool and recreation areas are much more expansive at Copper Beech.

However, Rachel Davis, a 21-year-old visual communications major at USC who just moved into Palmetto Compress, said the extra money is worth it.

“I liked going to their pool, but I wouldn’t think to move out there,” she said of the outlying complexes. “And I don’t like some of the newer ones. They were all so cookie-cutter and the same. This is different from the others. It has so much more character.”

Diane Meacham, mother of USC law student Dallas Meacham, who is moving into 612 Whaley, said there will probably be some students who prefer the outlying complexes “if they are on really tight budgets.”

But she predicted that most students will prefer the downtown apartments.

“It’s going to hurt them,” she said of the more remote student housing complexes. “A lot of kids are just like Dallas; they want to be closer in.”

This story was originally published August 6, 2016 at 12:09 PM with the headline "Newer, ‘cooler’ housing draws USC students downtown."