The second phase of Courier Square, the 12-acre redevelopment around The Post and Courier’s longtime home on the upper Charleston peninsula, got underway Thursday with an unusual groundbreaking.
Nearly 100 people watched as a backhoe uprooted a live oak and moved it across a parking lot at 635 King St., The Post and Courier reported. The tree measures 37 inches in diameter and may be more than a century old, according to the newspaper.
Once it is out of the construction zone, the oak will become the centerpiece of a green space beside several hundred new apartments and shops along 400 feet of Upper King Street.
“This project represents growth and a transformational growth for this part of Charleston,” said DJ Van Slambrook, a senior director at Greystar Real Estate Partners who led the ceremony. “As you know, this block is very incredibly important to the city. We took that seriously.”
What’s being built
The second phase is expected to take two years. It includes an eight-story apartment building with 300 rental homes and more than 13,000 square feet of retail space, the newspaper reported.
Greystar, the largest apartment operator in the U.S., is leading the project. The land belongs to Evening Post Industries, which is also Greystar’s partner in the development. The company traces its roots to 1894, when Arthur Manigault founded the Evening Post, and was the parent company of The Post and Courier until a 2021 corporate restructuring, the newspaper reported.
Greystar is working with the architecture firms Sottile & Sottile of Savannah and LS3P of Charleston. Students at the American College of the Building Arts on Meeting Street are designing and making keystones, ironwork and ornamental cast details for the building. Four keystones they carved, depicting the seasons, will go above first-floor windows.
Van Slambrook said the design has been endorsed by preservation groups, including the Historic Charleston Foundation.
A long plan, built in pieces
“We’re excited about the master plan that we put together 13 years ago and that we’ve been working and constantly updating and improving,” said Ron Owens, Evening Post Industries’ CEO, according to The Post and Courier.
Owens said project representatives met with neighbors, preservationists and city staff more than 40 times over the last few years about this phase. The planning took place during the pandemic, which caused timing and financial setbacks, the newspaper reported.
City Council member Robert Mitchell said he had pushed for years for the project to be built gradually, partly to ease the effect on nearby residents.
Evening Post picked Greystar and Charlotte-based Lincoln Harris in May 2013 to develop the first phase on a vacant 2.8-acre site at Meeting and Columbus streets, The Post and Courier reported at the time.
“Our goal is that this project will ultimately be thought of as an enduring asset to the city and that every Charlestonian will take pride in it,” Evening Post Chairman Pierre Manigault said then.
The first phase, completed in 2019, includes The Guild, an eight-story apartment building with a 650-space parking garage, and the office building next door that serves as Greystar’s headquarters, the newspaper reported.
The second phase took its first step in early 2018, when Evening Post won approval from the city’s Board of Architectural Review to demolish a strip of 1950s-era buildings at 631 to 637 King St., The Post and Courier reported.
What comes next
Next door, Evening Post Industries and a company based in Wilmington, N.C., are expected to break ground in 2025 on The Peninsula of Charleston, a seven-story luxury senior-living building with more than 140 condominiums.
For the third phase, Evening Post Industries is working with East West Partners to redevelop the newspaper’s vacant former building at King and Columbus streets. That project is expected to include affordable housing, luxury apartments and commercial space, the newspaper reported.
