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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In the six years since Matthew Congdon unveiled plans for Killian’s Crossing — a $750 million lifestyle center — the nearly 400 acres on Killian Road at Farrow Road in Northeast Richland have done little more than sit vacant.

But in recent weeks, workers have started moving 750,000 yards of dirt to prepare the site for a mix of retail, residential and office space — similar to the nearby Village at Sandhill.

Retailers and developers held off on making commitments as the project lingered in the planning and permitting stages after Congdon made costly mistakes early on in the process. Now, with final permits in hand, “we’re moving forward,” Congdon said. “There’s been a lot of interest.”

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The historic portion of Columbia’s Vista is slated to get a six-story Hyatt Place hotel, the third hotel in the core of the entertainment district.

An Atlanta-based developer has begun the approval process for a 130-room hotel facing the 800 block of Gervais Street.

The Hyatt Place would serve visitors to the convention center and fill in a street-front gap on a prime piece of Gervais property — between the SakiTumi restaurant and bar and Jason’s Deli, on land now being used as a parking lot.

A long, 62-space parking lot will sit behind the hotel, stretching to Lady Street. The lot will sit where, about a century ago, a company manufactured and sold gas to city residents. Sidewalks will run the length of the hotel on both sides of the building.

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One building and a section of land at the former Northside Baptist Church location on Sunset Boulevard in West Columbia has been sold for $1.4 million, NAI Avant announced.

The commercial real estate firm said Park Street Church of Christ purchased the approximately 40,000-square-foot sanctuary and three acres at 1303 Sunset Blvd. Four buildings totaling 56,000 square feet and nearly eight acres of land at the Sunset location remain for sale, NAI Avant said.

Ben Kelly and Patrick Chambers of NAI Avant represented the seller in the transaction.

Columbia’s commercial and industrial real estate markets posted mixed results for the third quarter of 2011.

The vacancy rate for Columbia’s industrial real estate market improved, while the office market took another hit, according to a report by NAI Avant.

The vacancy rate for the industrial space dropped to 10.7% due to a net absorption of 149,827 square feet of manufacturing and distribution space, the firm said. That compares with a vacancy rate of 11% at the end of the second quarter and 11.1% for the first quarter.

Key sales transactions for the quarter included Spirax Sarco’s acquisition of 35,800 square feet at 1101 Carolina Pines for $1.9 million. SC Liquidators’ move into a former 54,000-square-foot warehouse at 1215 Shop Road topped industrial leases.

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Fred Delk, Executive Director, Columbia Development Corporation / Congaree Coalition has won the 2011 Brownfield Renewal Person of the Year Award.  According to Brownfield Renewal magazine, the winner of this award is “an individual who has demonstrated the ability to innovate, collaborate across multiple industry disciplines, executed the plan and deliver the goods. Someone who has captured a unique vision of how to effect real change and generate positive results in our industry.”

Congratulations Fred, from SCREnews.com!

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There may be as many as three new, smaller-scale Walmart stores coming into the heart of Columbia, an official familiar with the retail giant’s plans for expansion into the city said Thursday.

One of the sites getting the company’s attention is the former Jim Moore Cadillac dealership on North Main, near the Elmwood Park and Cottontown neighborhoods, according to the official as well as the executive director of Sustainable Midlands, a coalition of environmental groups active in the debate about Wal-Mart’s interest in downtown.

Mayor Steve Benjamin and Councilwoman Belinda Gergel said they, too, have heard about Wal-Mart’s multi-store plan.

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Real Data has released their November 2011 Apartment Index Report for Columbia. Highlights of the study include

• Overall occupany improvement to 90.5% – up from 88.1% in May 2011
• The average montly rent is $774
• There are currently four communities under construction

PricewaterhouseCoopers plans to move its 400 workers who handle IT, data processing and administration functions to the former Verizon customer support center in Richland Mall.

The move, which will take place in waves over the next year, will consolidate the company’s operations in Columbia under one roof and on one floor, said Steve Silber, PwC spokesman.

Services provided by the Columbia office support “the entire firm across the country,” he said.

The move also will provide PwC, which four years ago launched the back-office operation in Columbia with a “relative handful” of workers, room to grow, Silber said. “One of the reasons we chose this space is that it can accommodate potential growth over the years,” Silber said, adding that the company is continuing to grow.

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Palmetto Health finally is ready to break ground on its long-discussed new hospital in northwest Columbia.

The first shovels of dirt will be turned during an 11 a.m. ceremony Thursday at 190 Parkridge Drive. The public is invited.

The new $99 million Parkridge facility will be a 76-bed, full-service hospital with emergency care, a labor and delivery unit and six operating rooms.