Proposed convention center could sharply improve inside 526
by Bill Davis | News Editor
It is hard for a reporter to describe D.E. “Jimmy” Palassis’s plan to build a massive hotel/convention center in West Ashley without making a “palace” pun. This thing is going to be huge.
Currently winding its way through county planning boards, the plan is to build a seven-story, 200-room luxury hotel replete with rooftop dining and bar and a 10,000-square-foot convention space off the back on a 10-acre plot along Savannah Highway that’s lain dormant for the better part of a decade.
The hotel itself would be comprised of two main wings, six stores, and a swath of parking along its front. Bordered by Orleans and Dupont roads, the former Hyundai dealership site would also include retail stores at each intersection and views of the Stono River with dining and drinking options on its rooftop.
While Palassis would not comment on budget, some sources with knowledge of the project ballparked the build-out at $50 million. “I hope it’s less,” he said, laughing.
The hope is that if his plan comes to fruition, the project could have a similar economic impact on that end of West Ashley as the Charleston Place hotel did on the peninsula decades ago.
That could harken more and better and faster commercial infill to West Ashley, as businesses may try to appeal to the hundreds of guests checking in and out of the hotel and convention center.
Around the corner, Richard C. and Ginger Davis of Trademark Properties made a similar investment when they purchased a dying Citadel Mall, and began the steps to change into their vision, the EPICenter.
In the five years the Davises have owned the former mall, they’ve welcomed MUSC’s ambulatory hospital and have more ambitious plans for the site’s future.
“We’re glad we are not the only ones with a class-a vision for West Ashley,” said Ginger, that firm’s director of sales and management.
When asked when his “a-ha” moment came to develop it so intensely, Palassis jokes that it came “not long after I bought it” and had to pay for it. He said that its location – so close to a yet-to-be-completed 526, within comfortable reach of downtown and the airport – was perfect for this kind of use
Still, the site lay fallow for years, but Palassis wasn’t sitting idly by. Already the owner of the nearby 129-room Town and Country Inn and Suites for the past 38 years, he has since built the 150-room Home2 across the street.
His work on Home2 netted national recognition from the Hilton corporation, and his success downtown with the Market Pavilion and its award-winning restaurant Grill 225 leaves little doubt Palassis knows what makes a good hotel.
He’s made a fan out of Charleston County Councilman Brantley Moody.
“Jimmy Palassis is West Ashley. He raised his family here, he’s reinvested here, and I am looking forward to what he can make happen on that site and on those eyesore corners,” said Moody.
For years, about the only action on the site was the occasional bus parking at the Dupont intersection, or down-market plant sale on the Orleans corner. Covid made matters worse, as the economy stalled, and banks quit loaning money.
Moody said about the only things holding back full county approval of Palassis’s plan are a few items, like setback regulations and stormwater handling.
Palassis hopes to have “all the permitting completed by the first economic quarter of 2023, and open by 2025.”
Some in the community have complained that this level of development could overwhelm those intersections. Moody hopes current county plans to address those and other intersections along the Savannah Highway corridor will alleviate any problems.
Moody is far from the only local politico excited about the project.
Charleston City Councilman Keith Waring sees the project as “potentially setting a template for a higher quality of development in West Ashley.” Even though the project is in the county, and not even in his district, Waring said the setback issues should be waived.
Waring doesn’t think this project would benefit from a “one size fits all” ordinance, whereas the city and the county have pushed together to sequester parking lots behind storefronts in new construction for the past few years.
Waring likens the project’s “momentum” to what he’s seeing in the Nexton area: transformational. He sees a future where people in West Ashley won’t have to leave their part of town to shop or dine, as this project will bring it to them.
Peter Shahid not only represents a portion of West Ashley on City Council, but he chairs the West Ashley Revitalization Commission.
Shahid believes this property is going to bring in hospitality and accommodations tax dollars, increase city revenues from business licenses, while increasing the tax base in general for the area and the city.
“This really could be our Charleston Place,” said Shahid.
