How much longer will fans have to wait for Williams-Brice sidewalks?
For seven weekends each fall, nearly 80,000 fans descend on Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia. For thousands of those Gamecock fans, their only way to the University of South Carolina’s stadium has involved a dangerous trek along four- to six-lane roads where nothing separates them from the rush of traffic.
Lawmakers and fans have long been concerned about the dangerous conditions for pedestrians on stretches of Rosewood Drive and George Rogers Boulevard near the stadium.
“I’m always appalled when I’m leaving a game and see pedestrians having no sidewalk to walk on,” said state Rep. Seth Rose, D-Richland.
Last year, following reports by The State, the South Carolina Department of Transportation announced that plans were moving forward to add sidewalks to the busy road.
There has been little news since it was reported that the project would be completed by the end of 2026. But tailgaters will have to wait a little longer. The project is scheduled to begin in early 2027 and is anticipated to be completed by the fall of the same year, according to a spokesperson from the state Department of Transportation.
The estimated total project cost is $5,351,000, according to a spokesperson for the Federal Highway Administration. The federal agency, which is part of the Department of Transportation, is providing roughly $4.8 million in funding for the project, according to the spokesperson. It is currently unclear where the rest of the funding will be coming from.
The project will see a ten-foot wide sidewalk constructed on one side of Rosewood Drive adjacent to the state fairgrounds, said Hannah Robinson, a state transportation department spokesperson.
The new path will ensure that there is a sidewalk that runs all the way from the Assembly Street intersection to the Bluff Road intersection. Currently, there is a sidewalk that runs roughly half the length of that stretch of the six-lane Rosewood Drive next to the fairgrounds.
Initial plans proposed by the Department of Transportation also included building sidewalks all the way around George Rogers Boulevard, which wraps around the other side of the fairgrounds and leads to the entrance of Williams-Brice Stadium. However, there was not enough money to build a sidewalk on both sides of Rosewood Drive or all the way around the stadium, Rose said.
When contacted, the state Department of Transportation did not provide the cost of the project. The Federal Highway Administration, which administers the Highway Safety Improvement Program, did not respond to multiple attempts to contact them.
The project is part of a broader push to improve safety along the busy Assembly Street corridor.
“Making Columbia more walkable and bikeable is a passion of mine and we’ve had huge success,” Rose said.