New hotel and residential buildings going up downtown

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - The city’s Board of Architectural Review is scheduled to meet Wednesday to discuss ongoing plans for the construction of the buildings in the Ansonborough neighborhood.

The project includes a new hotel and residential building behind a block of King Street businesses.

The project encompasses the 29th through 35th blocks of George Street and the 84th through 88th blocks of Society Street. The existing parking lot on George Street is going to be converted into a residential building, with 115 apartment units, a restaurant, and 2 retail spaces. Design plans by Bittoni Architects also specify there will be 136 parking spaces and the site will be six stories tall.

A new hotel is planned to come to Society Street. It will have 50 hotel units and 60 condominium units in the seven-story structure. There will be a restaurant on the first floor and include 100 parking spaces, according to the design plans.

The city’s Board of Architectural Review has already approved these plans, so Wednesday’s meeting is largely going to cover the aesthetic and design elements of these new buildings.

Public comment is allowed during the meeting and it’s anticipated that some may be concerned about the loss of parking.

“One element of this project is creating an integrated parking solution that not only parks the project itself but continues to provide some additional parking over and above that can be used for public parking to help service those neighboring businesses as well, given that this is the loss of a surface parking lot in the space,” Director of Planning, Preservation, and Sustainability for the City of Charleston Robert Summerfield said.

Summerfield said that the new buildings will not be owned by the city, and therefore parking availability will be determined by the property owner.

“They will be putting back some commercially, publicly available parking. But, to be very clear, this is a private lot,” Summerfield said. “This is not a public parking lot in the sense of the city’s parking facilities where we have our metered lots and our metered parking spaces and our parking structures.”

Summerfield stated that construction could start late this year or early next year.

Wednesday’s Board of Architectural Review meeting will firm up design elements and materials to be used when construction begins.

Copyright 2023 WCSC. All rights reserved.