Bluff Road is under construction. But what about eclipse crowds? Football crowds?

As many as 4,000 drivers who go to the State Fairgrounds’ tailgate event later this month to watch the solar eclipse will have to negotiate a stretch of Bluff Road that’s undergoing a major renovation.

The four- to five-lane thoroughfare has been narrowed to two lanes along the blocks that abut the fairground as part of a $5 million road renovation project.

That short stretch of a widened Bluff is set to reopen by the end of August, well before the Sept. 16 University of South Carolina football team’s home season opener, project officials said.

Football games bring a crush of vehicles to Bluff and Shop roads carrying many of the 80,000-plus fans who usually fill Williams-Brice Stadium. Many tailgate on fairgrounds property.

But the eclipse tailgating watch party will draw thousands before Bluff is fully restored with a center turn lane, new wide sidewalks and other amenities.

Folks who buy a single-day parking pass for the Aug. 21 celestial show will enter the sprawling parking lot from George Rogers Boulevard, fair director Gary Goodman said Wednesday.

But “the Highway Patrol has told us that all traffic will have to exit ... down Bluff and Shop roads,” Goodman said. So far, 1,100 of the 4,000 available parking spaces have been sold for the event sponsored jointly by the fair association and WLTX television station.

Visitors are expected to explode the metropolitan Columbia area’s estimated population of 700,000 to as much as double that on Aug. 21 because the capital city will have among the longest windows of total darkness of all cities on the East Coast.

With the Gamecocks vs. the Kentucky Wildcats clash in mind, “The project is on schedule,” said Tony Edwards, Richland County’s interim transportation director. A ribbon-cutting ceremony is set for Sept. 12.

Brian King, who oversees the project, said drivers likely will have access to the renovated stretch by Aug. 31. “For all intents and purposes, all five lanes will be available to the public at the end of August,” King said.

The blocks of Bluff Road between George Rogers Boulevard and Rosewood Drive will for the first time have underground utility lines, new traffic lights with pedestrian crosswalk buttons and 17 LED streetlights to be installed by city workers. An additional seven traditional bulb streetlights will brighten Rosewood Drive, said Columbia public works director Robert Anderson.

Trees are to be added along the sidewalks in the fall by the city, Anderson said. It has not been decided what kind or how many.

The renovation project is being paid for largely from proceeds of the county’s transportation penny sales tax.

Football fans and fairgoers have long wanted sidewalks on both sides of that block of Bluff. The stretch of sidewalk along the fairgrounds will be 10 feet wide, while the sidewalk on the opposite side of Bluff will be 8 feet, Edwards said.

Drivers have been negotiating the construction work since January, when a two-lane section of Bluff in front of Olympia School was snarled by work on drainage pipes, which were replaced before work began in earnest on the fairgrounds block.

This story was originally published August 2, 2017 at 5:40 PM with the headline "Bluff Road is under construction. But what about eclipse crowds? Football crowds?."