USC and Columbia's housing market has grown, leading apartment developers to target the area.
The growth is leading to a new complex, VERVE Columbia. The complex is coming to the corner of Huger and Blossom streets and will open to students in Fall 2026.
There will be 233 units that are a mix of one-to-five-bedrooms and studio apartments .
The apartment developer, Subtext, is a national developer that makes location decisions based on the growth they see in colleges.
“We take a very data-driven approach to selecting the markets that we're in," Maggie St. Geme , director of marketing at Subtext, said "These larger institutions that are growing, and many of which have a commitment to growth and have come out publicly and shared their plans for growth.”
And Columbia is growing because of USC. Student enrollment has reached a record of over 38,300 students, according to a press release from the university.
The record enrollment has come without a sufficient increase in campus housing stock, according to research conducted by The State and The Daily Gamecock last spring. Campus housing has added 2,840 beds in the past 15 years, to accommodate a student body growth of over 9,000 during roughly the same time. Only just over a third of USC students can live on campus, while the remainder seek off-campus housing.
Apartment complexes geared towards students moving off campus often include a variety of amenities.
VERVE will have a variety of amenities, including outdoor spaces, a pool with cabanas, grills and sports courts.
“I think it's geared toward basketball and pickleball, I am told," St. Geme said. Of course, that could also change over the next two years as we're building the project, depending on how trends go.”
VERVE will also have amenities for what Subtext calls "places for all headspaces" St. Geme said, ways for students to explore interests and hobbies beyond being a student.
“What that means is that we're really trying to take into account how students are more than students,” St. Geme said. “They have personal goals, individual goals, fitness goals, professional goals (and) obviously the academic goals.”
Along with study rooms, there will be a content creation studio, fitness center, meditation rooms and yoga studios .
Twenty residents interviewed by the Daily Gamecock last year, who live at university-affiliated apartments report they don't often use the amenities that drive up their housing costs. The apartments describe themselves as having luxury amenities.
Park Place, a university-affiliated apartment, has a movie theatre, pool and golf simulator. Out of 16 interviewed at the apartment, nine residents reported they had not used the movie theatre and six had not used the pool.
Though VERVE's target audience is USC students, this is not a university-affiliated apartment.
A couple of rows of construction tubes lay in the dirt behind a wire fence on Aug. 19, 2024. The construction site, located at the corner of Huger and Blossom streets, is the future site of a new apartment complex.
“USC doesn’t have a role in this development but recognizes the demand for more student housing close to campus,” university spokesperson Collyn Taylor said in a written statement. “Students not living in residence halls want to live close to campus and their on-campus friends, and this development gives them that option.”
The planned number of beds and parking spaces has decreased since the proposal, according to The State. The original proposal was going to include 960 beds with 500 parking spaces. The project was ultimately approved with nearly 700 beds and 368 spaces.
A resident of the Granby neighborhood, where the development is taking place, expressed traffic concerns at VERVE's planning hearing.
“(Adding a traffic signal to) one of the two egress points from Granby, from our neighborhood, onto the larger street grid is essential, in our view, to managing the traffic from this project,” Robert Kyle, a resident of Granby Mill District, said. “I’ve lived in the historic mill village for 50 years...and we're at the stage right now where it is hazardous to egress from the neighborhood onto either Huger Street or Blossom Street.”
The planning commission said the applicant provided a traffic impact study, and traffic lights are being tentatively placed around the apartment on various streets. The presenter of the project at the planning commission said Subtext has committed to putting $150,000 into traffic lights.
The lights will either be placed on Huger or Blossom Street around the project. This was decided by SCDOT, who denied the request for comment.
"As stated in the analysis, it is expected that the proposed land use will generate less peak hour traffic than the current land uses on the site," Lori Campbell, District Traffic Engineer at SCDOT said in the traffic analysis document. "The development will, however, slightly increase traffic on some of the network roadways, primarily Williams and Wheat Streets."
SCDOT is also considering the proposed traffic signals.
"The neighborhood expressed a desire for a traffic signal at the intersection of Catawba and Huger Streets," Campbell said. "SCDOT is willing to issue a permit for the construction of a traffic signal at this location provided that a Traffic Signal Warrant Analysis shows that the traffic signal either currently meets traffic signal warrants or is likely to meet warrants based on the development traffic and rerouting of the existing traffic."
Site clearing has started, and construction will soon be underway.
Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled VERVE and Maggie St. Geme's name. The story has been updated to reflect the correct spelling.