Student housing near Williams-Brice hits a snag: The Jim Hamilton airport

A Columbia property owner wants to build student housing near Williams-Brice stadium, at the West end of Rosewood Drive. But they’ve hit a surprising snag: the nearby Jim Hamilton-LB Owens Airport.

The area around the airport, which is a hub for private planes carrying corporate executives and big-time USC donors, is protected. There are limits on what kinds of projects can be built in and around flight approach paths, and how tall those projects can be.

Now, airport officials are lobbying the city to reject the student housing plan as proposed in favor of maintaining the strict rules governing airport-adjacent development.

“It’s a two-fold protection,” Peter Cevallos, general manager of the Jim Hamilton airport, told The State. “It’s (to) make sure the aircraft can safely operate in and out of this airport, but it also protects the community underneath.”

Removing the property from the airport restrictions would set a “bad precedent,” said aviation lawyer John Hodge at a Columbia Council meeting this week.

Look around the Rosewood area and you’ll see plenty of housing developments just finished or in the works. So what’s different about this proposal? That’s the question general contractor Ashok Kumar, who is representing the property owner, is asking city officials.

“There’s already a property which has been rezoned,” Kumar said, referencing the former Eye of the Cat property across the street at 335 Pickens St., which was successfully rezoned and removed from the airport overlay district in 2023, despite concerns raised by residents.

The property owner, listed as Sahil of Columbia, LLC in county documents, also owns the convenience store Sunset Point next door to the property they hope to develop into three-story student apartments.

Columbia City Council Tuesday deferred a decision on Kumar’s request, but not before Mayor Daniel Rickenmann advised him to consider other development options at the site.

“You’re caught in a rock and a hard place here. So are we, unfortunately,” Rickenmann said at the meeting.

What’s holding back the student housing?

There are two key restrictions holding back the plans for the student apartments on the 1700 block of Rosewood Drive — the height of the project cannot exceed 35 feet, and generally, housing isn’t allowed.

The reason this site is particularly bound by airport rules is because it’s on the cusp of what is called the “outer approach zone” for aircraft landing at the Richland County-owned airport.

State and local aeronautics officials want to limit residential projects in those zones.

“You don’t want to put people in close proximity to aircraft,” Hodge said, adding that they can’t do anything about the existing housing in the area, but they want to limit it going forward.

Kumar told The State that he and his client are waiting to hear from the city about what could be possible for the site. They’re amenable to building smaller, going from three stories to two. Kumar also raised the question of why the Pickens Street property across the street was able to be removed from the airport district. Cevallos told The State he wasn’t with the airport at that time, but if he had been the same issue would have been raised.

Kumar’s hope is that he and his client will still be able to build housing on the site. Whether that can happen will come down to the City Council, which has the authority to remove a property from the airport overlay district. But if the city does choose to exempt the site from the airport rules, that could mean trouble with the South Carolina Aeronautics Commission.

“It’s contravening state law,” Hodge said at the Tuesday meeting, adding that putting holes in the airport overlay district could spell trouble down the line.

The state Aeronautics Commission elaborates on its concerns in a letter sent to City Council members, stating that exempting the property from the airport rules “establishes an unfavorable and legally problematic precedent” that contradicts state law.

The letter adds that while the city’s decision on this case may only affect one property, it could pave the way for even more development that would infringe on the airport’s protected space.

Cevallos said there could be a way for housing to be built on the site while keeping it bound by the airport overlay district, using an easement or other formal agreement that would still restrict the site but not outright ban the planned apartments.

“It’s not been tried and true, but that’s the kind of direction that at least would maybe close the gap between the application and the approval of it,” Cevallos said.

The Jim Hamilton airport recorded nearly 9,400 each takeoffs and landings in 2024. Just Thursday, nearly 40 flights were scheduled to fly into or out of the small general aviation airport in southeast Columbia. Those flights included private planes coming from Orlando, Spartanburg, Greenville, Savannah/Hilton Head and more, according to the flight tracking site Flight Aware.

The City Council will take up the issue again at a later meeting after consulting its legal team.

!Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct that the state Aeronautics Commission submitted a letter to Columbia City Council.

This story was originally published December 19, 2025 at 5:00 AM.