|
Crowning King Street
Upper King’s renaissance is attracting new businesses, pushing some out
By Kathleen Dayton
Staff Writer
A church, a park, a liberal dose of restaurants and a growing number of high-end interior furnishings stores keep company with a few small beauty supply stores and a nearby funeral home in Charleston’s most rapidly evolving district, upper King Street.
Here, on a recent weekday afternoon, a group of well-dressed women scampered from door to door among the small, newer shops, checking out trendy furniture in the window displays.
Across the street, a man walked alone carrying a loud, angry dialogue with himself as construction workers laying a new streetscape paid no attention.
Everywhere along the street, orange cones and barricades mark construction sites pointing to a more glamorous future.
Just as Charleston is filling with new residents from elsewhere, this retail district is welcoming stores from elsewhere, including national chains. A local presence is slowly fading from the blocks between Calhoun and Spring streets, even as the neighborhood’s renaissance has brought security and a renewed beauty to the area. In the midst of all the change, some longtime merchants are determined to remain while others have left to make way for the next generation.
The Chase family sold their building at 414 King Street last year to Land South, a Myrtle Beach developer, for $3.8 million. Land South also bought the adjacent building at 412 King and part of a parking lot at 424 King.
The Chase family had operated Chase Furniture on King Street since 1938. Like the founder of nearby Morris Sokol Furniture, Marty Chase started as a street peddler. He and Morris Sokol married sisters, Frieda and Ida Lerner. Now, the family business has moved to the suburbs and is known as Mattress King.
Marty Chase’s grandson and company President Ben Chase said changes emerging on King Street did not make it the right spot for his business any longer.
“Our particular business was geared to low-to-moderate income people and, rather than change our entire business model that we built for 75 years, we’re giving someone else the opportunity to enjoy the renaissance.”
By contrast, Morris Sokol Furniture remains entrenched on its King Street corner and intends to stay. Joe Sokol, the company’s president, said the area will look much cleaner and nicer when the streetscape is complete.
“I think there won’t be that breaking point between south of Calhoun and north of Calhoun,” Sokol said. “Our streets will look like their streets and it will be one continuous street.”
Sokol said he also thinks upper King Street will differentiate itself from lower King.
“Downtown, they’re depending on Pottery Barn or Ralph Lauren or Abercrombie, but here in our area, it’s going to be individual, specialized types of things where the owner’s name is on the door.”
Foot traffic for Chase’s business dwindled in recent years as uptown Charleston became unaffordable for many of his customers, Chase said.
“We benefited from the increased property value, but it really killed my business,” he said.
Chase is glad that improvements on upper King Street are bringing back shoppers after decades of decline, but hopes local retailers will be able to stay in the game.
“I think it will be nice to see a lot of new walking traffic back on King Street. There was a time when most people would not let their wives go north of Calhoun Street to shop,” Chase said. “We’re actually hoping that midtown and uptown will remain the last bastion of mom and pop stores rather than the national tenants that make up the majority of the south end of King Street at this time. Nobody from other cities wants to come to a beautiful tourist destination like Charleston and see the same stores they see in their cities.”
Wayne Nix, managing partner of Land South, said he hasn’t found the right tenant yet for the Chase building. He is negotiating with a restaurant to lease the space next door, which housed the Bookstore Cafe for 17 years.
Linda Clark, whose husband Kevin Clark founded the cafe, said times have gotten tough for small businesses on King Street.
“It’s hard for a small business to be downtown any more; the rents are sky-high,” Clark said. “The main thing that has happened and is happening now are the chains have come in. They’ve pushed the mom and pops out, which is sad because that is the charm of Charleston.”
Bookstore Cafe moved about a month ago to a Mount Pleasant shopping center along Johnnie Dodds Boulevard.
While rents have escalated on King Street, Nix doesn’t think landlords have a choice.
Nix said buildings in downtown Charleston have gotten so expensive that rents that would be enough to offset the cost are usually more than tenants can afford.
“There’s give and take on both sides,” Nix said.
The Clark family lost another business location on lower King Street, which began welcoming national chain stores with the arrival of the Charleston Place Hotel in the late 1980s.
The Baker’s Cafe, operated by Kevin Clark’s parents, flourished at 214 King for 21 years before relocating to Daniel Island. Their daughter, Kimberly Clark, said their rent is now half of what it was downtown.
Boomer’s Books, a used bookstore on Upper King, may be the next small business to exit King Street, depending on what the building’s new owner and future tenant want to do.
Ingle Furniture sold the building to Prime South Group after offering it to the bookstore’s proprietors, Jim and Lee Breeden, who said they couldn’t afford it. A sign in the window says the business is for sale, although the Breedens say it isn’t because of what the future might bring.
“We’d like to pass this on to a younger and more vigorous owner, whether it’s at this location or in one of the suburbs,” Jim Breeden said.
The Breedens say they may be the last of King Street’s true mom and pop stores, because they have no employees. They have signed a series of one-year leases while Prime South decides the building’s future.
Philip Woollcott, a principal with Prime South, says the company might renovate the building or build a new one. Woollcott said rents on upper King Street are pushing $30 per square foot, while lower King addresses are upward of $40 per square foot.
Like the Clarks, the Breedens opened their doors on upper King Street when no one else would dare.
“It looked like a third world country when we moved in. There were pigeons and the homeless and the Condon buildings were all boarded up,” Lee Breeden said.
Still, they were in the company of at least half a dozen used bookstores downtown. Those days are gone, Jim Breeden said.
“The used book business is on its last leg in downtown Charleston,” he said. “The Charleston that we fell in love with has now morphed into this modern-day Charleston. I realize change is inevitable, but it’s kind of sad to realize there’s really no room for the mom and pops.”
Kathleen Dayton is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her at kdayton@charlestonbusiness.com.
|
E-Mail This Article
Printer-Friendly Version