Do You Know Middleburg?
By John Temple Ligon
Temple@TheColumbiaStar.com

Waverly Sanatorium used to be on Forest Drive across the street from Forest Hills. Founded in 1912 by Dr. J. W. Babcock, the retired superintendent of the State Mental Hospital, Waverly was a 50-bed hospital on 60 acres of wooded land. The Waverly property became today's Middleburg Park office and residential development.

Dr. Babcock's daughter, Alice, married Charles Simons, and they had three sons. Columbia's Arthur St. Julian Simons is one of the three sons, the one credited with guiding the Waverly property into commercial and high-rise residential development.

Berley Kittrell, a partner with Walter Keenan, worked with Simons in the late 1960s. Working on South Carolina's first office park, they did their homework, studied earlier office parks, and engaged architect Howard Love and landscape architect Kenneth Simmons Sr. By 1971, the first phase of construction was complete, to include The Kittrell Center.

Kittrell is also credited with the 1971 modernization of Main Street's Arcade Building, where the basement was opened up to become an entertainment and dining district called Downunder.

Middleborough High-Rise Photo courtesy of Burgess Mills

In the early 1980s, Paul Volcker, chairman of the Federal Reserve, and President Reagan had a means to choke inflation for the long haul, but for the short term their method of raising interest rates also choked business in general. Real estate development suffered tough consequences, and Middleburg Park was one of the victims.

On the other hand, the incentives of the 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act had begun to take full effect on real estate development. Consequently, the high-rise Middleborough Apartments, 18 stories, were converted to condominiums.

At the same time, the federal government began the deregulation of the savings and loan industry, which allowed the S&Ls to lend themselves money to build their own projects. A glut of commercial real estate resulted, and Middleburg Park saw way too much competition for office rents.

Built in 1912, the Waverly Sanatorium was demolished in 1984 Photo from the book Middleburg Park by Mary Jane Reynolds and M. Burgess Mills & Associates

Simons sold out to foreign interests and moved to Lake Murray. The old sanatorium was torn down in 1984.

About 10 years later, Columbia's Jim Kitchens and his son-in-law, Burgess Mills, took hold of properties at Middleburg Park and began a second life for the complex. Their first acquisition was the large multi-tenant building at 1800 St. Julian Place.

Today the Mills and Kitchens families own seven buildings in Middleburg Park, over 230,000 square feet of leased space, and six acres of undeveloped land. That stretch of Forest Drive is between Two Notch Road and Beltline Boulevard, where the South Carolina Department of Transportation counts annual exposure as 6,825,500 vehicles a year.

Supply and demand being the order of business with the Mills and Kitchens families, Middleburg Park is sure to grow. The face of the project along Forest Drive, however, is sure to stay wooded and compatible with Forest Hills.