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COLUMBIA — A hub for Columbia tech-based startups is coming to Five Points as a group of entrepreneurs continue their efforts to grow the capital’s tech sector.
Saluda Avenue in Columbia’s original rural neighborhood will soon house office and gathering space for about 100 to 150 tech workers, thanks to a $1 million grant from the Darnall W. and Susan F. Boyd Foundation.
GrowCo, as the startup group calls itself, has been working on the effort alongside Mapquest co-founder Chris Havely since mid-2021, when Havely was hired by Richland County to help with its tech-focused economic development initiative.
“For the first time as a tech community, we have this multi-year period where we can just grow and not worry about how we’re going to sustain things from one month to the next,” said the group’s acting director and fellow entrepreneur, Joe Quinen. “It’s a luxury we’ve never had before.”
The center will be unveiled July 12 at a press conference in Five Points with Columbia Mayor Daniel Rickenman.
Funding comes from the Boyd Foundation, which has long been known for its contributions to area amenities, including Boyd Island on the Columbia Riverwalk, Boyd Plaza, the Columbia Museum of Art and, most recently, a reptile aquarium at the Riverbanks Zoo and Garden.
With this latest investment, the foundation and its nine-member board hope to help create the jobs of the future for the city’s college and university graduates and encourage those young people to make Columbia their home, foundation spokeswoman Mary Bond Bailey said.
“If you don’t keep the brains in the city to grow and expand, then how is Columbia going to grow?” she asked.
The Boyd Foundation grant will support GrowCo for two years, allowing it to build its Five Points location at 711 Saluda Blvd., in the former White Mule space. The funding will also allow the group to host entrepreneurial programs such as coffee meetups and happy hours, ideation workshops and three-day Startup Weekend events where people can come together to collectively develop and pitch new startup ideas.
Colombia does not have a large mass of startups. Queenan and Havely said regular gatherings of the entrepreneurial minded in the city and the space to do so are an important step in encouraging the creation of these types of businesses.
“We don’t have a plan to talk to about 100 to 200 new entrepreneurs here. So we have to figure out how to build it,” Havely said earlier.
When Boyd Foundation Executive Director Joe Wilczewski heard about the group’s idea, it resonated with him. He worked with the foundation’s founder and namesake, the late Columbia developer Darnal “Donnie” Boyd, for 35 years.
The pair often held impromptu investment strategy sessions, Bond Bailey said, discussing together the potential pitfalls and virtues of new business ideas.
Wilczewski said Boyd would be intrigued by GrowCo and saw the technology-based business as the future of the industry.
“We want to promote education; we want to encourage growth for the betterment of Columbia and South Carolina as a whole,” Wilczewski said. “If even one company comes out of this, we will be successful.”
The entrepreneurial space is also playing a role in efforts by Columbia politicians to rebrand and bring new types of businesses to Five Points, once home to a large number of student-serving bars.
While nearby neighborhoods teamed up with attorney and state Sen. Dick Harpoutlian, D-Columbia, to bring the bar scene back to the village, they found themselves left with empty storefronts.
A number of new stores and restaurants have since sprung up to fill the space, but about 25 spaces remain, said Katie Renfrow, manager of merchant group Five Points Association.
The association hopes that the GrowCo Technology Center will prove that Five Points is not only a retail and entertainment district, but also a good office location and a viable place to do business.
“We like that they’re taking a chance on us,” Renfro said.
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