69-unit housing development set for busy Midlands road years after it was first announced
.jpg "Plans for the planned Faith Hill development in West Columbia")
Developers want to put nearly 70 housing units on a vacant 10 acre plot just off of Platt Springs Road in West Columbia. The planned townhome subdivision is more than two years in the making.
Sandwiched between Highway 321 and Platt Springs Road, the empty wooded area across from Faith Lutheran Church is set to be the site for the Faith Hill development and its 1,500 square-foot townhomes. The plans include 36 buildings in total, with a total of 69 housing units.
After the city’s planning commission unanimously approved developers’ plans Nov. 25, work has begun to clear the land, place water and sewer lines and prepare the area for housing to be built.
The development still needs to get engineering approval from both the city of West Columbia and Lexington County.
Home-building company Hurricane Builders, which has constructed 11 subdivisions in and around Columbia, will build the townhomes.
“I would expect by the end of next year, there are homes close to being move-in ready. It won’t be until the end of 2025 or the first of 2026,” Scott Morrison, a developer with the project, said.
The townhomes are going in along a busy road in Platt Springs. The thoroughfare flows from Red Bank through Springdale and by the Columbia Metropolitan Airport and ends near Charleston Highway and Highway 1 in West Columbia’s Triangle City neighborhood, close to where the development plans to build, making the road key to connecting many rural parts of the county to downtown Columbia. Per data from the S.C. Department of Transportation, an average of 10,500 vehicles each day traverse the stretch of Platt Springs Road where Faith Hill is slated to be added.
Since the subdivision only holds around 70 units, a traffic impact study for the area wasn’t conducted, according to Morrison.
The units are also intended to be “attainable,” he added, saying that the goal was for them to be affordable for the average person. In West Columbia, the median household income was around $52,000 in 2022.
The plans would bring more homes to a growing county — Lexington’s population is projected to increase by 8%, or around 25,000 people within the next decade. At least 400 homes are under construction in West Columbia, according to research from New Home Source.
The subdivision joins others that have been announced for West Columbia in recent months. The city recently gave approval for 55 single-family homes to be built on a plot on Comanchee Trail. And plans have moved forward on a major redevelopment project for the Capitol Square shopping center across from the House of Raeford chicken plant; a four-story living complex with 224 multi-family units is set for that area.
This story was originally published December 10, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
