Group wants to buy Palmetto Compress
The city may have found a development group willing to buy the historic Palmetto Compress warehouse at a price that would return all of its $5.65 million in public investment.
Columbia-based Palmetto Compress Preservation Developers LLC has tentatively agreed to purchase the Blossom Street warehouse and the land it sits on for $5,907,000, The State reported.
The groups says it has plans to turn the century-old, four-story cotton warehouse into a mixed-use development with a roughly 100-room hotel, a handful of rooftop condominiums and a mixture of office and retail space, according to The State.
Columbia preservationists have fought hard to protect the building from being razed. Palmetto Compress Preservation Developers LLC says it will try to get a city landmark designation for the property, which is on the National List of Historic Places.
Woman sentenced to 50 years for killing boyfriend
A Newberry woman who shot and decapitated her boyfriend two years ago was convicted Monday and sentenced to 50 years in prison, The Associated Press reported.
Mandy Smith, 35, was sentenced after a five-hour deliberation Monday.
Investigators say Smith worked with her friend Timothy Wise to lure her 43-year-old longtime boyfriend John Mayers into Sumter National Forest in May 2011, where they shot him twice in the chest and returned later to decapitate him, according to AP.
Divers recovered the victim’s head from the Enoree River.
Smith first claimed to have acted in self-defense, then told investigators that Wise had killed Mayers without her, AP reported.
Wise has yet to be tried on his own murder charge.
State agencies must provide list of properties
State agencies have about two months to compile and submit information on state-owned buildings — something state law says they’re already supposed to do every year, WLTX reported.
Gov. Nikki Haley issued an executive order Monday morning requiring agencies to comply with a law that mandates an annual inventory of real estate. The state Budget and Control Board will assist agencies with submitting a list of land, buildings and structures they own, including the address, number of employees who work there and other details about the property, according to WLTX.
“If we don’t have a purpose for the property, we don’t need the property, and when you look at all the money that’s being spent in leases, why are we not in our own state-owned property as opposed to leased properties,” Haley said, according to WLTX.