Space Race Innovative Space Solutions for the Business Environment -2007
Space Race 40th Anniversary Issue
Columbia
freetimes
Issue #23.28 :: 07/13/2010 - 07/19/2010
Jason's Deli, Developer to Occupy Revamped Vista Building
BY EVA MOORE
Developers and real estate market watchers are looking everywhere for signs that the recession is lifting. So it's no surprise that Fred Delk, who heads the Columbia Development Corporation - and knows development in the Vista very well - says the redevelopment of the Columbia Supply Company means things are picking back up again.
Columbia Development Corporation director Fred Delk stands in a vacant lot by the Columbia Supply Building in the Vista earlier this year.
But the Columbia Supply project is also much smaller than originally conceived when the Miller-Valentine Group purchased the property in 2005. And the more modest plans for the site could just as easily represent the cautious, post-recession development mood in Columbia.
This month, Miller-Valentine began redevelopment of the Columbia Supply Company building, a former wholesale facility built in 1910. The company bought the property for $3 million. The site stretches from Gervais Street back to Lady Street between Lincoln and Gadsden, right in the heart of the Vista. Indeed, the site is so central that Miller-Valentine's earlier development plan was to be called Center Vista.
Originally, Miller-Valentine hoped to build a four- or five-story building with 70,000 square feet of office space behind the existing Columbia Supply Building. Some tenants for the building were even lined up. A 128-room hotel was also in the works. They planned to build right over an existing parking lot next to Columbia Supply, turning part of the site into a pedestrian-friendly pass-through between Gervais and Lady.
In 2007, the project cleared the hurdles of the city's land use commissions - which required rezoning and a lot of back-and-forth with the city's Design Development Review Commission and Planning Commission.
But then the recession hit, and the project stagnated.
The economy forced the company to reassess its plans, says Dale Stigamier, a developer with Miller-Valentine Group. But it didn't want to abandon the project.
"To continue the momentum, we decided to redevelop this building," Stigamier says.
So now, Miller-Valentine is breaking ground this month on a smaller project. For now, the parking lot will remain a parking lot, and the empty back lot facing Lady Street will remain undeveloped. Both are for sale by commercial realtor Colliers Keenan.
According to Stigamier, Miller-Valentine will overhaul the roughly 16,000-square-foot Columbia Supply building, keeping the exterior and adding an elevator and staircase, expanding the total square footage to about 18,000.
On the ground floor will be a Jason's Deli - a national chain - and a small retail space. On the second floor will be Miller-Valentine's regional headquarters.
Stigamier says the building will be ready and Jason's Deli will be open for business by the end of the year.
Fred Delk praises the project.
"It's very positive for a couple of reasons," Delk says. "It's a substantial national development firm bringing its headquarters to the Vista." He's also excited about the development activity and the jobs it might bring.
The site has a long history - and one that complicated its redevelopment. In the second half of the 19th century, a manufactured gas plant stood on the Lady Street side of the property. The plant powered the downtown streetlights; it also produced coal tar, benzene and other byproducts. And like thousands of other such plants in the United States, it contaminated the soil below it.
"They buried the coal tar residue in brick containers underground," Stigamier says. "Over time, it leaked."
With a $100,000 federal grant, Miller-Valentine hired a firm to assess the extent of the contamination. Miller-Valentine then spent $1 million and 14 months cleaning up the site, hauling away more than 21 tons of dirt, according to materials prepared for the Columbia Development Corporation about the federal program.
Over the past few years, a lot of the development discussions in Columbia have shifted to Main Street, Innovista and North Main Street. The Vista is held up as a model of development success. But there's also the sense that the Vista is done - it's already built. Wrong, says Delk.
"I have heard that for the last several hundred million dollars of development in the Vista," he says. And there's plenty more to come. "What will occur in the next 10 years will double what's been done in the last 10."
