Palmetto Compress Warehouse: A Good Fit
April 11, 2013
By Temple Ligon
April 11, 2013
Columbia’s airport is top of the line, especially for a city of its small size and especially for the low amount of passenger traffic. Columbians can be secure and proud of their airport facilities. Even the parking garage is first rate.
But what about surface travel? Who takes the buses and who takes the trains? Should Columbia worry about its status as a transportation hub?
It’s a popular myth in the South that buses and passenger trains are for poor people only, travelers on a tight budget who have to stay on the ground. Many affluent surface passengers who don’t want to drive (or can’t) take the bus or the train because they’re going to a small town, one without an airport. Some train passengers prefer a sleeper and a dining car over a cramped airplane seat and a folding tray, paying above the going airfare to buy roomy and comfortable travel on the train, enjoying the ever-changing view through the windows at ground level.
Yes, buses are cheap; and, yes, trains can be a bargain when compared with one-way walk-up airfare. On the whole, though, as the United States slowly approaches the numbers in surface travel found in Europe, train stations and bus stations in the United States should eventually approach the quality found in Europe.
Where does Columbia fit into this national travel evolution?
The Greyhound Bus station at the corner of Gervais and Harden is a converted automobile dealership. Operating 24/7, the place is always hopping with pedestrian and vehicular traffic. Cab drivers depend on it. Its restaurant is a vending machine. The building is a high-profile embarrassment.
The Amtrak station just off Pulaski between Gervais and Devine – you almost can’t find it – is a sheet-metal job open after 10:00 p.m., and it closes at 5:30 a.m. Its restaurant, coin-operated vending, is less than what the Greyhound station offers. The building is a low-profile embarrassment.
Meanwhile, the city says it wants to preserve the Palmetto Compress Warehouse. With a proposed purchase price of $5.65 million for the 320,000 sq. ft. building on a 4.7 acres site, the acquisition doesn’t sound half-bad. After all, 320,000 sq. ft. means $18 per square foot for the building, not counting the land; and 4.7 acres implies $28 per square foot of land if the building is demolished. Buy for the building or the land or both – the purchase price can make sense.
The building, though, is a problem. No one says who designed it, probably because no one knows. Design was not at the top of primary concerns when it was built in 1923. Cost and function were. The load-bearing masonry walls are 16 thick, two bricks end-on-end. At four stories high, the roof is not too far up because the floor-to-floor dimension is shallow, too shallow for people but fine for cotton bales.
So let’s not get too sentimental over an old industrial building, the last illustration of what that section of town once did for a living. The warehouse is ugly and altogether too straightforward. There’s no decoration or detailing or just plain quirkiness to appeal to the heart.
The Palmetto Compress Warehouse is, however, the ideal footprint under the ideal volume for a combined train station and bus station. Around the world, the great train stations all have high ceilings, maybe starting at 30 feet and going higher. The Palmetto Compress Warehouse can have its floors ripped out, selling the heavy timbers, and then the universal interior space will need cross-bracing to hold up against the next Hugo.
Columbia begs for a new train station, one suitable for civic pride and one that stays open. The New York to Miami crowd comes through town every night in their sleepers, coming and going. What do they see?
Columbia needs a new bus station, also suitable for civic pride and one that sits in a high profile close to the corner of Huger and Blossom. With maybe 40,000 college kids in town, how many bus tickets is that on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving?
Part of the ground floor can accommodate a 24-hour coffee shop, or maybe the coffee shop can locate across Pulaski next door to Palmetto Pig. Great bus stations have food service. Not too long ago, the best coffee shop in town – the favorite among cab drivers such as yours truly – was the Seaboard at Lincoln and Gervais, open all night.
What about current plans by the city to install a city museum? Careful. That sounds about as exciting as the Richland One Hall of Fame already installed nearby in the convention center up Lincoln.
If the city needs its museum to score support from hospitality taxes, claiming the museum brings visitors to the city, a combined bus station and train station has a whole lot more to do with bringing in visitors, a whole lot more.
The hospitality taxes are justified saving the Palmetto Compress Warehouse while building a grand and glorious bus station and train station.
Sign up here to receive MidlandsLife weekly email magazine.
