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Bull Street Common


The_sandlapper

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Not to get too off topic, but I think the success of Innovista will be in concentrating housing in the district rather than building a huge research campus. USC has too many facilities needs and too small of an endowment/state funding to speculatively build new labs. The Bull Street campus on the other hand is being build with private money and should start to take off if the development moving up Main Street starts to inch closer to Elmwood.

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  • 2 weeks later...

On Tuesday, the city took its final vote, 4-2, on the Bull Street campus. This officially allows Bob Hughes to begin developing the property. He said he will first begin by completing the purchase of the property.

 

The agreement commits the city to the $31 million in public aid for water and sewer lines, streets and other utilities and possibly an additional $40 million for two parking garages and the baseball stadium that would double as a concert and civic-function venue. The deal also saves from demolition five major buildings on the nearly 200 year-old state mental health facilities campus. But the agreement leaves most the remaining 40 without any protection.

 

Council adopted a series of changes since the first vote on July 1. The highlights of those include:

•  Richland 1 school district will get the first right to operate any primary school built in the neighborhood.

•  Hughes pledges to try to accommodate city preferences to steer some business to local and minority- and women-owned contractors.

• Hughes agrees to do a noise- and lighting-impact analysis along with an already required traffic-impact study before a baseball stadium can be built.

•  Hughes pledges up to $25,000 toward the cost of excavating the Camp Asylum site where captured Union soldiers were kept prisoner during the Civil War. He will make the site available for digging within 120 days.

 

Columbia’s chief financial officer, Jeff Palen, released a broad outline of the ways by which council could pay for the initial expenses of Bull Street.Council could use general obligation bonds, a second hospitality bond or draw money from the city’s stormwater and water and sewer funds. Palen’s list includes the possibility of tax increment financing,
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There are so many op-eds in The State about the lack of transparency and the rushed approval timeline, but I feel like this is the pace at which all of these deals proceed. To say that it happened overnight seems inaccurate considering this has been going on for ten years now. The condition of a lot of the buildings is so bad that I'm surprised they can even save five. It's good that the projected build out is 20 years because it will give the area time to gentrify and hopefully allow for lower crime in the immediate area.

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Yesterday I drove through this area for either the first time or the first time in a very long time.  I feel much better about this project, having done so.  The really important buildings ARE being preserved, it appears, or at least in most of the plans. 

 

I question whether national retailers will be attracted to this location, considering 5 points, The Vista and even Main Street seem like safer options to me.  The Harden and Bull Street borders are pretty fast paced traffic corridors, and I think it would be tricky to rely solely on bring people into the interior of the site.   

 

It will be interesting to see what happens first. 

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I can see bigger stores like Target, Marshall's, Bed Bath and Beyond, and others locating here given the availability of space. The areas you mentioned are built on a much smaller scale and there really aren't areas that can be developed into urban shopping centers. The closest locations for these stores are probably in Northeast and I think USC is a big enough population to draw these guys downtown. My fear is that Walmart will try to find a way in using its urban market concept. Let's hope not.

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^^ Those stores would be reaching for the stars, IMO, given the demographics. DT Charlotte only recently got stores of that nature in a much higher income neighborhood.  

I-77 and I-26 dump right into the site basically.  If the right names set up shop in there, Columbia is a short enough trip from northeast Columbia and Charlotte via I-77 and from the Upstate via I-26, and from Augusta via I-20 to I-26.  Just because it's Columbia doesn't mean some coveted names that aren't anywhere else nearby can't locate there.

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Keep in mind that Columbia almost jumped Charlotte on Whole Foods and got a Trader Joe's at the same time. Charlotte is not exactly the best market to compare to because it's behind on retail in the center. To address your point though, Metropolitan, which is in the same relative position to the downtown area, has Target, Marshall's, Staples, Best Buy, and (soon, probably) Kohl's. I think the demographics are actually perfect and they would fill the gap between Harbison and Northeast.

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Charlotte got a Target because of demographics, not "just" because of I-277. Columbia has the demographics. Arsenal Hill, University Hills, Shandon, Rosewood, Forest Acres, etc are all fairly close by. Columbia also has 277 and 126 and dump out at this site. I could see a Target being successful here. My concern is that they will design it like Charlotte's... very poorly.

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The parking is a bit disappointing. The design is more similar to suburban developments like Sandhills than it is urban neighborhoods in other cities. I was hoping it would look more like Baldwin Park, which was the redevelopment of the old Navy Training facility in Orlando:

 

http://www.baldwinparkfl.com/photogallery.html

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The parking is a bit disappointing. The design is more similar to suburban developments like Sandhills than it is urban neighborhoods in other cities. I was hoping it would look more like Baldwin Park, which was the redevelopment of the old Navy Training facility in Orlando:

 

http://www.baldwinparkfl.com/photogallery.html

I see a lot of surface parking there, too.  Two big parcels that I first thought were surface parking on the Bull Street rendering are actually labeled "parking garage."

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I think a Metropolitan style/ Epicentre shopping and entertainment area would really look great in this area. also it should have areas for many buses to meet and stuff. something alongthe line kinda like the CATS Transit Center mixed together with a shoping center.

Edited by growingup15
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  • 3 months later...
The shopping and dining area planned for the redeveloped State Hospital campus on Bull Street has a name – Columbia Common. And Greenville developer Bob Hughes has put together a retail marketing team – armed with a glossy new promotional book – which started talking with potential tenants this past week at a high-profile trade show in Atlanta.
 
Columbia Common takes up about one-third on the western end of the tract. The center section would feature a minor league baseball park and apartments or condominiums. Land along Harden Street on the eastern side of the property is slated for offices.
 
A large park centerpieced by a newly day-lighted Smith Branch Creek would traverse the development. Bob Hughes said that opening up the creek would be the first work to be done at the site in the spring.
 
ppROF.AuSt.74.jpeg
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I like it. It would be nice to get a more organic-feeling property, but parking requirements cut into Hughes' ability to build a true downtown feeling. I envisioned the redevelopment as something akin to Baldwin Park in Orlando (http://www.baldwinparkfl.com/planning.html) and I think this is about as close as you can get in Columbia. I'm glad he's starting with the core of the neighborhood rather than single family homes because this in my opinion is the much tougher sell. I think building a sense of community and excitement will naturally draw young families and perhaps baby boomers looking to be closer to the action when their kids have moved away.

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  • 1 month later...

COLUMBIA, SC — A planning study says a Minor League Baseball park could bring in more than $400 million to Columbia over 30 years.

The money would come from tax revenues, personal earnings and private business earnings – including from hotel rooms, restaurant meals and shopping dollars spent by visitors to the city and the Bull Street area, where Mayor Steve Benjamin has suggested the ballpark be built.

But the study, commissioned by City Council, does not suggest exactly how the city should pay to build a stadium, expected to cost about $41.8 million, according to the study.

http://www.thestate.com/2014/01/04/3190165/study-says-minor-league-ballpark.html

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These numbers are always so inflated. I can't really imagine $13M in yearly direct and indirect spending generated within a six month season by a minor league baseball stadium considering that most if not all of the attendance will be from a 30 mile radius. I wonder if they are including all of the development in Columbia Commons? I doubt the financial benefits of the stadium would outweigh its costs. The real reason to build is probably the need for something non-USC related to engage people in Columbia.

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