When the City of Columbia and the State of South Carolina came together to build the EdVenture Children’s Museum and the CanalFront Park, the Construction Management Division at Colliers Keenan was chosen to oversee every aspect of these projects.

This was a very complicated assignment due to the fact that a portion of the land assembled for these projects was owned by the State of South Carolina, with the remainder owned by SCE&G.

With EdVenture, the State retained ownership of the land and executed a land lease to the City of Columbia, with the process being orchestrated by Colliers Keenan. The city then took ownership from SCE&G for the remainder of the adjacent land for the CanalFront project.

As EdVenture moved forward, Colliers Keenan worked through approvals from the State and City, but due to its adjacency to the South Carolina State Museum and Columbia Canal Power Facility, approval was also needed from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and South Carolina Historic Preservation Office. Once construction began, the Colliers Keenan team worked through environmental remediation issues that resulted from former landfill and power generation uses on the site. Underground utilities ranging from electric and gas to 84” underground storm drains had to be relocated. Ultimately, all challenges were resolved and the EdVenture Children’s Museum opened on time and under budget.

With CanalFront, the challenges were much more complex. In addition to approvals from the same agencies as needed for EdVenture, permitting was also needed from the Department of Natural Resources, the US Army Corps of Engineers, SCDOT, FEMA and DHEC. After three-and-a-half years of permitting, all approvals have been granted and construction is expected to start during the second quarter of 2008.

“EdVenture was obviously a small entity when we initially began to work with Colliers Keenan. We learned a great deal from them, and they shared their expertise in areas that mattered to the construction of the museum. We all worked together in even managing the exhibit designers and fabricators. Throughout the entire process, step by step, they were a partner in our project in many ways that you don’t often see when you hire a consulting firm to perform a job. With a high profile project like EdVenture, there were numerous hoops we had to jump through as far as state and city approval and many complicated construction nuances through several phases of construction. Really, we were partners throughout the entire project and we couldn’t have done it without them.” Katherine Horne, President & CEO, EdVenture

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