Hundreds of homes to replace Lexington YMCA

Lexington’s YMCA, which recently announced it will close in late December, will be replaced by a residential development with hundreds of homes.

Development company LandTech has under contract the 160-acre property on which the YMCA sits, and plans to close on the deal by the end of 2019, president Kevin Steelman said.

“We did want to make sure we gave the Y plenty of time to finish, wind down any of their programming that they had going on right now,” he said. “It’s not like we’re going to break ground right away.”

But the YMCA off of Old Orangeburg Road had been seeking other options for several years, according to Steelman. Declining membership led volunteers and staff to determine the decades-old institution could “no longer sustain operations.” The Lexington YMCA was founded in 1955.

“We are deeply saddened for the need to close our Lexington branch,” said Bill Price, who heads the YMCA of Columbia.

Steelman said LandTech is finalizing designs and brainstorming names for the new community, and construction of the 450 to 480 homes would begin in early 2020 just down the road from Red Bank Elementary School. The project will take several years to complete, he said.

LandTech is a major developer of residential communities, with six projects in the works in Lexington County alone, and another breaking ground soon on Corley Mill Road, across from River Bluff High School, Steelman said. The company was also behind Lake Carolina, a sprawling 3,500-home development in northeast Columbia.

The upcoming residential development on the YMCA lot will join LandTech’s other communities in the area: Lake Francis on Ramblin Road and Cannon Springs near White Knoll High School. Steelman said the development would contain homes for sale “at a number of different price points.”

As for the horses housed in the YMCA’s equestrian facility, Steelman said LandTech will allow them to stay on the property until they find new homes.