On the Horizon

It’s Friday afternoon, and there’s only about an hour left of useful sun. Yet, payday or not, the men are still out there working.
Some are in hardhats, others in orange vests, and one in a cowboy hat. They are hammering, wiring, lifting, and walking along lofted wooden beams.
35 Folly, a development years in the making, is coming together. It will be months before the former home of Turky’s in the shadow of the connector and the circular Holiday Inn will be ready for people to move in.
The pre-leasing website says units will be available in “Early 2016.” Is that February, or “early” July? Flournoy, the Georgia-based developer in charge of the project won’t say, as multiple calls earlier that day have gone unanswered.
When completed, though, 35 Folly will include 300 units in studio, one-, and two-bedroom configurations.
A massive 451-vehicle parking deck will be completed inside the complex, which will also include an onsite dog-spa and an onsite DIY bicycle shop where residents can work on their two-wheelers and four-leggers.
The 4.33-acre site will abut a planned city park that will connect the extended West Ashley Greenway and the proposed bike and pedestrian lane over the peninsula-bound bridge lane of Hwy. 17.
Cost? An out-of-state pension fund has sunk “$50 million-ish” into the project, according to a source familiar with the deal. But isn’t West Ashley in need of revitalization?
“I think this shows the incredible potential of West Ashley, that solid investors from all over the southeast are seeing it, too,” said Christopher Morgan, the planning division director for the city. “This is going to be a great addition to the city.”
Morgan points to the massive overhaul the Ashley Landing Shopping Center is undergoing at the corner of Sam Rittenberg Boulevard and Old Towne Road with the expertise, and wallet, of Charlotte’s Faison as proof of West Ashley’s rising profile.
But decisions to build projects of 35 Folly’s scope do not happen overnight. And certainly, the planning must go back to the dark days of the Great Recession, in order for planning, design, permitting, and other hurdles to be cleared to get to where it is today.
“Actually, it goes back even further. More like 15 years,” says Ken Grimes, a capital advisor with the Patterson Real Estate Advisory Group out of Atlanta that brought the pension fund to the table.
Grimes said the site selection process had been going on long before the world was embroiled in a huge financial upset, as Flournoy has been developing similar projects to 35 Folly throughout the southeast for years.
Yes, Grimes said that its proximity to the peninsula and the proposed bike lane helped. But he said, look what also comes with the site selection: “What you see in West Ashley is a great community.”
“You are close to Five Points,” Grimes said, sounding like the former Atlantan he is, referring to Avondale Pointe as if it were the hip shopping district in the Peach City.
“You’re on the Greenway, you can go to the Windermere village, Five Points. And still if you want to work at MUSC, you can walk there, too, soon.”
35 Folly, he said has pedestrian access to shopping and food, “there’s not noise all the time like there is on the peninsula,” and that it provides a lifestyle attractive to residents who are more than a couple years removed from their undergrad days, while still giving great access to downtown.
But Grimes, who moved here in 2010, sees a magnet bigger than shopping, eating, and downtown bustle attracting new residents. It’s also the arrival of big companies and jobs at places like Boeing, Bosch, Monster, and the like.
“It’s the state of South Carolina growing up,” Grimes said. “This is a great city, a great region, that has firmly established the southeast as a great place to invest.”
Appropriate that the state is growing up, since South Carolina was born in West Ashley at Charles Towne Landing so many years ago.