New homes, apartments, shops would pay for Lexington road fix

Separate residential projects that would add 250 homes, 300 apartments, a senior living complex and a few stores could pay for fixing one of Lexington’s most congested intersections, town officials say.

Those projects are expected to rise during the next few years on a 264-acre area near River Bluff High School. The town wants to create a special tax district for the 264 acres that would generate at least $10 million in property taxes to pay for a new road that would send traffic headed east on Corley Mill Road to a new route crossing over I-20 and connecting to a side road near West Columbia.

Before the town can create the tax district, the County Council and Lexington District 1 must sign off. On Tuesday, town leaders gave details of the projects to Lexington County Council. “I feel certain these will move forward,” Mayor Steve MacDougall said of the new neighborhoods.

The road is designed to ease a bottleneck on the east edge of the rapidly growing town. Congestion is increasing where Corley Mill meets U.S. 378 a block west of I-20, with 57,000 vehicles traveling there daily, town officials said.

The tax district plan is an ambitious effort to alleviate traffic jams at one of the main entrances into the community, MacDougall said. The plan would divert money generated by the residential areas away from the county and Lexington 1 schools to pay for the road. The money would be diverted for 20 years.

Despite the potential loss of revenue, council leaders expressed support for the project because it promises to ease congestion for many commuters.

The plan appears to be a way to solve one of the county’s major traffic headaches, council chairman Todd Cullum of Cayce said.

If all goes well, the new two-lane road would open to traffic in 2022, according to the plan.

This story was originally published March 1, 2017 at 5:08 PM with the headline "New homes, apartments, shops would pay for Lexington road fix."