Palmetto Compress Building Remains (For Now)

The big brouhaha over what to do with the Palmetto Compress Building is going to continue, since apparently, the preservationists have run the business developers away. Nice job, y'all. Way to run those Yankees off who are looking to invest money in a business here in Columbia.

For those of you who don't know, the Palmetto Compress Building is this building:

Palmetto Compress & Warehouse (Via The State)

The Compress & Warehouse sits at Devine and Pulaski, in downtown Columbia. Back in the day (the very early 1900's), it used to be a short term warehouse for bales of cotton on their way to textile mills. Once the textile mills went under, the warehouse kinda lost it's usefulness.

The real estate that this building sits on is some pretty good real estate for commercial development. It's located near the University of South Carolina's campus and is near a major thoroughfare (Blossom and Huger). The problem is that storing things in an old warehouse isn't exactly a great way to make money. I'm sure the property taxes on this real estate alone are pretty significant. Accordingly, the folks who own this building are thinking about getting out of the warehouse business and into something more profitable. As you may have guessed, that will likely require knocking down the building.

So, what's the problem? Well, there's a contingent of folks who want to preserve the warehouse. I guess they're nostalgic for the old textile mill days of Columbia, or they like brick buildings with little windows, or maybe they just like warehouses. In any event, there's a group of folks who don't want the building to go anywhere.

I kind of get that. It's a quaint old building, and it's a reminder of Columbia's past. That's cool. The other side of me thinks that it would be cool to get some new stuff in Columbia. Charleston and Greenville keep growing, expanding, renovating, and developing. What's Columbia done recently? I guess we've gotten a Whole Foods and....yeah, that's about it.

You may not have noticed, but the banks aren't exactly giving money out for speculative projects these days. And make no mistake, it would cost a boatload of money to "restore" this old building to a point where it would be fit for some sort of development if you want to keep the structure intact.

I know there are lots of people who want to save the building, but I don't see a whole lot of ideas on what do to with it. The people on the preservationist side seem stuck on the "This is a historic building so we must save it...because it is historic". argument. Look, y'all: It's an old warehouse that used to store cotton. It's not like George Washington used it as his headquarters.

Don't get me wrong. The best solution is to develop it in a way that makes money for the owners and preserves the building. However, the push to keep it because it's old isn't a very good argument. If you want to save the building, try and figure out how to make that profitable for everyone.