USC could sell plantation on coast it received as gift
USC is eyeing a pair of properties near campus to open more space for parking and to add sports fields, but it isn’t actively pursuing them for now.
Chief Financial Officer Ed Walton told trustees in Aiken last week that the university is interested in buying land owned by SCANA Corporation across Assembly Street from the Capital City Stadium to house its facility operations and some soccer and lacrosse fields. Walton said he doesn’t expect USC would see much competition for the land.
The land was last appraised in 2009 for $4.9 million, though appraisals have differed and SCANA may not be willing to sell the full plot of land anymore, said Helen Zeigler, the associate vice president for business affairs.
Space for club sports has gotten tight, especially with a growing student body, Walton said.
Attempts to reach Campus Recreation officials Friday were unsuccessful, but the need doesn’t appear to anything new.
The possibility of buying the SCANA property is mentioned in a 2010 master plan for the university, which describes such a project as “an initial phase of the Rocky Branch Creek redevelopment” that imagines a greenway from Maxcy Gregg Park to the Congaree River.
Moving USC’s Facilities office would also make room for campus’s westward move across Assembly Street.
The office is currently located on Greene Street near the Colonial Life Arena, in an area that university plans show will eventually house a parking garage.
USC is planning a public-private partnership to build a residence hall on two parking lots near the Carolina Coliseum, and it’s expecting future development on the other lots, according to a presentation to trustees.
The new hall will include garage parking to guarantee spots for its 840 residents, Walton said.
A need for soccer and lacrosse fields also accounts for USC’s interest in a 1,216-acre area of land off Bluff Road, Walton said.
The asking price for that land is $7.85 million, or $6,455 per acre, Ziegler said, but the cost per acre is higher — about $8,559 — to buy smaller pieces of the property.
The property is part of an area that was once planned for the “Green Diamond” project, a large and controversial development.
The crux of the controversy: The development, near a city sewage treatment plant and Heathwood Hall Episcopal School, would have been in a flood plain, which poses a risk to property and requires most structures to be built on stilts.
Walton said the land USC’s interested in is on a higher elevation, so the university wouldn’t encounter those issues.
But buying land isn’t entirely supported by the state of affairs at the university, where deferred maintenance needs are extensive and space is tight.
For now, the prevailing sentiment is a desire to “fix the things that we have and serve the students we have,” Walton said, not to expand further.
Part of the cost of the land could be covered by selling or leasing a 1,500-acre plot of land USC owns in Georgetown and Charleston counties near McClellanville called “The Wedge,” Zeigler said.
USC got the land in a gift, Walton said, and has been spending “tens of thousands of dollars” to maintain it.
It used to house the Arnold School of Public Health’s International Center for Public Health Research, but it was closed because of the cost of maintaining its facilities, according to an internal study of the school.
Only about 541 acres of that land, once a rice plantation, have value, Zeigler said, because the rest is marshland.
The valuable portion was appraised in 2009 at $6.54 million, Zeigler said, but USC plans to have it reappraised next month because property values have likely shifted as real estate markets have fluctuated in recent years.
Some trustees at last week’s meeting expressed concerns that if the money from a sale didn’t have a clear destination, it would be wasted.
But in the mean time, the property could have some other value.
“Does it have any duck impoundments?” one trustee asked.