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Real estate broker on mission to renovate Elliotborough
By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer
The strip of St. Philip Street between Cannon and Line streets in downtown Charleston is close to Daniel Atwill’s heart.
Atwill, a broker with commercial real estate firm Clement, Crawford & Thornhill, lives in that section of Elliotborough in the general upper King Street area. When he bought his St. Philip Street house three years ago, many of the houses on the street were abandoned. The wooden house Atwill bought was itself rotted and in need of repair. A nearby corner store was a hangout for loiterers.
“My mission is to fix this area,” Atwill said.
His mission is part of his job with Clement, Crawford & Thornhill, which is conducting the 500-acre Magnolia urban redevelopment project in the Charleston’s neck area. Principal Robert Clement introduced Atwill to this line of work by having him oversee renovation projects on the city’s east side.
So far, Atwill’s mission is succeeding. His brokering of a few St. Philip Street properties has helped turn what was once a rundown, neglected neighborhood into a burgeoning real estate hotspot where in three years prices jumped from about $145 per square foot to about $300 per square foot, with the $400-a-square-foot mark a foreseeable target.
Tender loving care
Atwill began the neighborhood facelift by fixing his three-story Charleston-style house, which he estimates was built in 1889.
He bought the home in 2003 for $189,000 and immediately gutted the place. He installed new air conditioning, plumbing, electrical wiring and floors. He replaced the rotted window shutters along with the windows and added a bathroom. The renovation tab came to about $105,000.
Today Atwill figures the 2,428-square-foot house can sell for about $600,000 on square footage alone.
Meanwhile, Atwill helped broker two other real estate deals on his street. The renovated two-story building at Bogard and
St. Philip streets that once housed the shabby corner store will have a pizza parlor on the ground floor. The second floor is a 1,200-square-foot, three-bedroom condominium selling for $390,000.
Diagonally across from that building stands a three-story dilapidated structure that was built by a German immigrant in the 1840s and became the first black-owned bank in the United States in 1920. Atwill brokered a deal in which the Historic Charleston Foundation sold the building for $78,000 to Jeremy Boatman, who restores old houses throughout the Charleston area.
Boatman will put in a grocery store specializing in fresh produce on the ground floor and living quarters for the Boatman family on the second and third floors.
Boatman puts the building’s renovation costs at between $280,000 and $300,000 and anticipates the project will be completed by December.
Atwill and Boatman agree that such daunting renovations require a strong, clear vision of the final product and plenty of tender loving care.
“It’s constant work,” Atwill said about his house. “You need a lot of love for it.”
Keeping the character
Upscale homebuyers and investors once shunned this section of St. Philip Street. But the times, as legendary folksinger Bob Dylan proclaimed, are a-changin’.
An attorney has purchased a house near the corner of St. Philip and Line streets for about $200,000, Atwill said. Just south of Bogard Street along St. Philip, a former funeral home and a building next to it are for sale.
Other buildings are occupied by college students, a residential choice the 28-year-old Atwill, a College of Charleston graduate, said students did not dream of making when he attended. The college, located farther down St. Philip Street, is south of Calhoun Street, the dividing line between the upper and lower King Street areas.
“The majority of College of Charleston students lived south of Calhoun Street,” Atwill said. “Now they live north of Calhoun.”
Atwill’s beloved strip of St. Philip is part of an upper King Street renaissance that began about six years ago. He said he hopes to accomplish his share of the rebirth with the help of local builder Ian Tomlinson, who has restored a number of homes on the peninsula.
Although Atwill’s neighborhood is slowly changing from blight to beauty, he does not consider the transformation a gentrifying one.
“It’s a mixed neighborhood,” he said, pointing out that the Christ Gospel Church of Charleston, directly across from his home, has a black congregation. “People aren’t trying to make current residents leave.”
Atwill bought his home from a black woman who got tired of the home’s upkeep, which he said is characteristic of Charleston’s old and historic houses.
“People who don’t have the ability, the time or the money to maintain these homes can sell and move out,” he said.
Boatman said he does not want gentrification to overtake the neighborhood.
“I don’t want people forced out,” he said, adding that he hopes the city and the state create initiatives to keep property taxes from soaring and forcing existing neighborhood residents to leave. “We want to keep some of the character here.”
Dennis Quick is senior staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.
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