Columbia City Council could give the go-ahead as early as tonight to allow private dorms for college students in the 21-story Palmetto Center along Main Street.

The main issue before the seven-member council will be to allow greater densities of people than are currently permitted for office space. The meeting begins at 6 p.m. at City Hall at 1737 Main St.

The project’s developer has not yet announced a final decision on converting much of the building into student apartments. Council must relax current zoning for the project to get started.

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According to Real Capital Analytics, the new 1,000,000 square foot Amazon facility in Cayce, SC has sold as part of a three property portfolio. The allocated price is reportedly $46,662,578, or approximately $46.66 per square foot. An allocated cap rate is reportedly 6.5%.

I have no further details on the transaction, and have not confirmed it.

Continuing cutbacks in state government and downsizing by businesses caused the vacancy rate for the Columbia area office market to rise less than one percentage point in the past quarter, Colliers International reported.

The vacancy rate for the first quarter was 24.97% across the market compared with 24.09% at the end of 2011, Colliers said. The market saw an increase of 87,810 square feet in unoccupied space.

Colliers added that the vacancy rate increased because tenants trimmed “shadow space” from their leases, Colliers said.

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LMS Real Estate Investment Management and Avison Young Commercial Real Estate acquired the Paces Brook Apartments at 113 Paces Brook Ave. in Columbia, SC from Harbor Group Management for $16.5 million, or about $63,000 per unit.

The three-story, 215,796-square-foot multifamily building was built in 1990 in the Columbia-Dutch Fork/Irmo submarket, near Columbiana Mall. The 260 units are comprised of 130 one-bedroom, 82 two-bedroom, and 48 three-bedroom apartments.

Porter Jones and David Gutting of Jones Lang LaSalle represented Harbor Group Management. Patrick Harwell with LMS represented the buyer group in-house.

The first time Lyle Darnall met with Whole Foods executives, it was 2004. They all piled into an SUV and drove through Forest Acres.

When they arrived at a site across from Richland Mall, they sat silent for several minutes before Whole Foods co-owner A.C. Gallo said it was time to go. “He was trying to get the feel of the site, the feng shui,” said Darnall, managing director with Edens, a Columbia-based developer and manager of East Coast shopping centers, speaking last week to a group of Leadership Columbia alumni.

That deal fell through, but Darnall and other executives kept the company’s ear for the next eight years until conditions were right – from a site with the proper feng shui (a system of positioning buildings for the best energy flow) to proving that Columbia was a town with a “foodie network.”

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The 21-story Palmetto Center could be the newest home for USC students. A Chicago company is proposing private dorms for the building, which has remained empty on Main Street since SCANA Corp. moved its 900 employees to Cayce in 2009.

Core Campus, a limited liability corporation from Chicago, has applied for a zoning change from the city of Columbia for the building at 1426 Main St. The variance would allow the company to convert the building into student apartments at a density of more than 150 people per acre, to include about 700 parking spaces in an adjacent garage, according to the zoning request.

Billy Way of Grubb & Ellis/Wilson Kibler, the broker for the building, declined comment. Efforts to reach an official of Core Campus were not immediately successful Monday.

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The disputed rezoning of the Bull Street property received a qualified first approval Tuesday night from Columbia City Council.

The 6-0 vote came after a two-hour public hearing in which council heard resident after resident express concern that the proposed rezoning plan cedes too much control of the property to Hughes Development Corp. of Greenville. Councilman Daniel Rickenmann did not attend because he is on vacation.

Despite developer Bob Hughes’ assurances that City Council, the Planning Commission or the city’s planning and development staff would retain control over the big construction decisions in the 181-acre neighborhood, council gave Hughes the first of two votes.

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Trader Joe’s appears to be headed for the former Columbia Athletic Club site on Forest Drive.

Contractor Bradford Building Co., out of Birmingham, Ala., is asking for bids from subcontractors to refurbish the building for the grocery store, project manager Ben Dobbins confirmed.

The quirky grocery store with a fanatical following — based on its cheap store brands and unique products, including “Two-Buck Chuck” wine that costs $2.99 — has been looking for a site in the Columbia area for months, local developers have confirmed.

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EDENS, which is currently working on the redevelopment of Trenholm Plaza in Columbia, SC, is adding Cafe Caturra, SOMA Intimates and Ann Taylor LOFT to the retail site’s tenant mix.

Cafe Caturra is a cafe/wine bar concept that has a relationship with EDENS throughout the mid Atlantic region. It will be opening in March.

SOMA Intimates, a division of White House/Black Market, will open its first and only boutique-style store in the Columbia market in April. Ann Taylor LOFT will open this summer with a new design concept, offering consumers a more intimate shopping experience.

YOU CAN FOLLOW TRENHOLM PLAZA ON FACEBOOK

LINK TO TRENHOLM PLAZA WEBSITE

A 22.33 acre tract in Irmo has sold for $1,625,000, or $79,931 per acre. Zoned MF16, the sales price equals $5,000 per allowable unit. The site is located off of Exit 97 of Interstate 26 (known as the Peak exit). The site is located adjacent to the Plex, near the intersection of Broad River Road and Broad Stone Road.

Mark Boyce, with the National Multi Housing Group of Marcus and Millichap represented the buyer and seller.

Selwyn Property Group has signed new leases with Dick’s Sporting Goods and Michaels Arts and Crafts for 47,600 and 23,400 square feet, respectively, for its newly acquired Target Center on Two Notch Road in Columbia. Selwyn purchased the retail property with Return Holdings, Gateway Holdings and Richardson Properties. The property is expected to be fully leased and open this summer.

Columbia’s CBD office sector is on the verge of becoming a landlord’s market. So says David Lockwood, senior vice president of leasing for Colliers International South Carolina Inc., who expects that in 2012 owners of downtown office buildings will offer fewer concessions than the previous 12 months as vacancies fall and rents rise.

“Tenants just aren’t going to be able to find the deals that were out there a year or 2 years ago,” said Lockwood during a 30-minute webinar hosted by Colliers on Monday that focused on office leasing and employment trends in greater Columbia.

In contrast, however, Lockwood fully anticipates rental rates in Columbia’s suburban office market will fall as landlords pull out all the stops to land tenants. “Suburban landlords will become even more aggressive,” said Lockwood. “They’ll offer more concessions, and they’ll offer more TI (tenant improvements), and that has a short-term degrading effect on the market by lowering the average rental rates.”

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When Connie Jones Hancock was a little girl, Christmas meant a trip to Belk on Main Street in Columbia to enjoy the window displays and sit on Santa’s knee. Spring bought a pilgrimage to the Tots and Teens store for a new pair of Easter shoes. And a perfect Saturday included a trip to the Tapp’s soda fountain for an egg salad sandwich and a bowl of its famous vegetable soup.

Today, those department stores are long gone. And Main Street is on the crest of a wave of redevelopment swelled in part by the opening of Mast General Store a little over six months ago.

Hancock is part of that revitalization. She operates one of the newest and most unique businesses on Main Street — Wedding 101, in which she advises brides for free on the vendors and venues available for their special day. The vendors pay to be featured in her stunning space on the second floor of the building at 1537 Main St., near the Columbia Museum of Art.

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The Midlands should see an increased demand for office space, industrial properties and distribution facilities in 2012, according to a commercial and industrial real estate forecast by Grubb & Ellis Co.

In its annual forecast, the company also projected greater investment in office and industrial products, but added that volume will remain highest for multiple housing complexes.

“In Columbia, most financing was limited to owner-occupied properties over the last four years, but that is changing,” the report said.

While the economic recovery has been sluggish across the South, Grubb & Ellis’ survey of local business conditions showed some improvement in the office and industrial real estate markets.

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