200 Columbia homes could soon slot in between this neighborhood and the river

A nearly 107-acre subdivision with 208 homes could be coming to Columbia’s riverfront.

The proposed Riverbend at Broad development would sit just off of Mountain Drive, near the Earlewood and Eau Claire neighborhoods north of downtown. The Columbia Planning Commission approved a preliminary plat review of the project on July 10.

The property is just south of Interstate 20 and is located between the Broad River and a series of largely residential streets west of Monticello Road.

Contender Property Holdings, LLC, owns the property and is listed as the applicant on planning documents. It is part of the Greenville-based development firm Contender America.

A sketch plan for the site shows an “amenity center” and two entrances, including a main entrance road called River Bend Road and a gravel emergency road, which would connect to an existing gravel drive.

A traffic study from 2024 determined that the subdivision would add just over 2,000 daily commuters to the area’s roads. That study accounted for a slightly higher number of homes than the planning documents, listing 211 lots. It concluded that the proposed subdivision would not cause significant traffic issues in the area.

The state Department of Transportation doesn’t list daily traffic estimates online for Mountain Drive, but it lists 3,900 as the number of vehicles that travel down nearby cross street Clement Road.

No exact timeline for the subdivision’s construction is included in the city documents.