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Law school to occupy former furniture store
By Kathleen Dayton
Staff Writer
The ghosts of retail will have to make way for books when a former King Street store is converted into classroom space for the Charleston School of Law.
The law school is expected to move into the former Chase Furniture building at 414 King St. in January. The 11,000-square-foot, two-story building, one of the best examples of Art Deco architecture in Charleston, recently changed hands for $3.45 million. A group of investors, 414 King Street LLC, in late August bought the building and a parking lot from Land South, a Myrtle Beach real estate development company with offices in Charleston.
The building has been vacant since the furniture store, which had been operated by the Chase family since 1938, was closed in 2005. The family is now concentrating on its four Mattresses & More stores in the suburbs and plans to expand.
Recent changes on upper King Street, including a new streetscape and widespread renovations, have attracted new businesses to it while some longtime businesses have relocated. The area is in the full flush of a renaissance that is turning the area into a hot spot for boutique retailers and trendy restaurants and lately has become known as the Design District.
Ben Chase, grandson of the furniture company’s founder, said his business model is better suited for the suburbs than for the King Street location.
“It served our family very well for many years, but I think the current use is a terrific use,” Chase said. “I think there will be many young minds developed there, as all of ours were.”
Ben Chase and his three siblings learned the retail business on King Street, where his grandfather, Marty Chase, constructed the furniture store in 1946. The value of the building at the time was about $65,000.
“It was one of the last Art Deco buildings built in Charleston,” Chase said. “I can tell you that there have been a lot of lessons learned in that building—a lot of life lessons, a lot of business lessons and a lot of legal lessons.”
Land South bought the Chase Furniture building, a parking lot and an adjacent building from the Chase family for $3.8 million in 2005. Until its recent sale to 414 King Street LLC, the furniture store has sat empty but admired by experts on Charleston history and architecture.
“I love that building,” said Lissa Felzer, a historic preservation consultant and owner of
Felzer Consulting Inc. In 2000, Felzer wrote her master’s thesis on the building’s architect, Augustus Constantine, a Greek immigrant who also designed a number of other Charleston public buildings, including the nearby American Theater on King Street.
Other buildings designed by Constantine include the Morris Street Baptist Church, built in 1964, the Dumas building at 294 King St., built in 1942, and Blessed Sacrament Church on Savannah Highway, built in 1950. Some of Constantine’s work has been demolished, including Condon’s department store at 431 King St., the Marion Square Bandstand, which had been built in 1944 and the Arcade Theater on Liberty Street.
Felzer said some of the outstanding elements of the Chase Furniture building are the vertical strips of glass block, the vertical neon sign, and the polychromatic bands of marble which give the building a vertical feel. There is also mirrored glass in the upper portion of the façade.
“I went inside when I wrote my thesis in 2000 and they hadn’t changed a thing,” Felzer said. “They still had signs from the 1940s. It was like going back in time.”
Eddie Bello, director of the city’s Board of Architectural Review, said the Chase building and its sign are architecturally significant.
“Constantine did a number of buildings in the city and that is probably one of the best buildings he designed,” Bello said. “We don’t have too many examples of that style of building. The city would be very opposed to any major change to it. I would consider the sign valuable to the city and I would be surprised if the BAR would allow any alteration to the sign.”
Bello said he believes the law school will be a stable tenant for the building and a good steward of the structure. He said he could also see the building returning to retail use in the future.
Brent Case, a partner in 414 King Street LLC and a broker with Coldwell Banker Commercial Atlantic International Inc., represented the limited liability company in the recent purchase. Case said the Charleston School of Law has a five-year lease on the building and has begun construction on classrooms and office space.
Andy Brack, spokesman for the law school, said the building is a short distance from the law school’s library facility at 81 Mary St. and near classroom space the school leases in the nearby BellSouth building at Meeting and Mary streets.
“Everything is within three blocks,” Brack said.
Case said his group wouldn’t mind if the law school decides to stay 10 years instead of five, but the long-term plan is to return the building to retail use.
“We designed it so we could probably convert it to more of a retail establishment with two separate retailers on the first and second floor,” Case said. “The long-term plan is to create a second-floor access from Hutson Street, kind of a showcase entrance. That will complement the hotel they’re doing on the corner.”
The Bennett Hofford Co. plans a 185-room Hilton hotel at the corner of King and Hutson streets on the site of the former Charleston County Library. Case said the planned hotel was a factor in his group’s purchase of the Chase building.
“It will definitely increase property values and traffic,” Case said. “It will increase the desirability to operate and locate businesses there. It will definitely make it a more vibrant pedestrian area.”
Kathleen Dayton is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her at kdayton@setcommedia.com.
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