More than 50 townhomes proposed for site near Midlands riverwalk. Here’s where they’d go
More than 50 new townhomes could be coming to a space along the Saluda River in West Columbia where an obsolete industrial warehouse sits.
Developers want to put the Trailhead Townhomes development on 3 acres sandwiched between U.S. 378/Sunset Blvd. and the Saluda River, right off of Jarvis Klapman Blvd. The city of West Columbia is in the process of rezoning the land for the project and its planning commission unanimously agreed to recommend the measure to city council at a Jan. 27 meeting.
“We feel like this project beautifies the city and gives the public extremely efficient and better access to the river,” Dustin Johns, the townhomes’ developer, told The State.
Johns said the plan is for each of the 52 townhome units to have four parking spaces and to make the public parking that already exists for the northern-most entrance to West Columbia Riverwalk more accessible by adding a road off of Sunset Boulevard that leads directly into the parking lot.
“There’s not a lot of activity there and it feels a little bit isolated so it’ll be nice to put eyes on public spaces there and I think that will encourage more people to use it,” West Columbia City Councilman David Moye said.
The development, which would also include retail space, is set to go to the west of the House of Raeford chicken plant, which has been squished between the Congaree River and Sunset Boulevard near the Gervais Street Bridge since 1998.
If approved by city council, the new townhomes would put the chicken plant between it and an upcoming massive 224-unit multi-family housing development set for the former Capitol Square shopping center. It’d also be not far from another housing development that was announced last year and slashed from its original 90 townhomes to 55 single-family houses because of traffic concerns.
The city held a joint public hearing Monday night, where West Columbia’s city council and planning commission heard about the project and hear input from the community. Three speakers from the nearby neighborhood spoke in opposition of the project, citing concerns about traffic and littering.
“I think it’s going to put more stress on those streets and on that system than it can take,” Carl Roberts, a resident of the neighborhood, said during the public hearing.
But Johns, the developer, said traffic shouldn’t be an issue with this development because the hope is to add a new road off of Sunset Boulevard to provide direct access.
According to the most recent traffic counts provided by the state Department of Transportation, 15,400 cars pass through that stretch of Sunset each day, which sits just off an exit from the Jarvis Klapman Boulevard bridge that connects to downtown Columbia. At present, the riverwalk entrance there and the streets around it can be directly accessed by cars only via a stoplight at North Lucas Street and Sunset Boulevard.
This story was originally published January 27, 2025 at 3:01 PM.
