Off a two-lane road near Interstate 26 heading into Chapin, four well-manicured lanes jut off, leading to nothing but vacant lots.
That’s likely to change.
Plans for part of the long-gestating Brighton live-work-play development are starting to move forward, with developers working with Chapin to approve and annex the project that would bring 398 homes to the town of nearly 2,000 along the shores of Lake Murray. The plans also include various spots for businesses along with a walking trail.
But the work part of the equation isn’t there yet, as the attached Chapin Business & Technology Park continues to sit vacant six years after being completed, with Lexington County having spent more than $16 million on the business as of 2020 and continuing to pay to maintain and light the space, and its elaborate sign and fountain, at a cost of nearly $200,000 last year.
A small group of citizens was in attendance as Chapin’s Planning Commission offered feedback to developers earlier this month, relegated to watching via video from a satellite space due to A/C issues in the meeting room. The audience murmured among themselves during the afternoon meeting, anxious about how such a large development could impact traffic and other issues.
Austin Monts is the director of land acquisition for Mungo Homes, the developer behind the residential addition. He said he believes the town is ready for the project.
“This will attract, obviously, new folks,” Monts said, adding that also being able to “keep some people there in the town would be the goal.”
He added that this is part of why the development is set to offer four different residential options at varying price points. Work would begin on all four options simultaneously, but that work will have to wait a bit, as the developers don’t plan to start the likely year-long engineering process until the annexation and approval process with the town is complete.
What’s coming
The plans for the project’s roughly 162 acres include two large swaths of single-family homes on 43 and 56 acres. The project’s remaining eight homes would be installed above businesses on an acre and a half. The proposal also calls for assisted living for residents 55 and older on nine acres.
Nicholle Burroughs, Chapin’s town administrator, said the project presents a worthwhile opportunity.
“I think it’s less about more population and more about the opportunity that well designed, well thought-through projects can potentially bring in recruiting commercial entities and recreational opportunities that don’t currently exist in our market,” she said, calling the proposed development a village neighborhood. “You can have varying price points, you can have alternative options, you can have it intermix with recreational opportunities. And you can have it as destination commercial entities, where people want to go spend time, people enjoy spending an afternoon.”
What the business component of Mungo’s mixed-use proposal will look like remains up in the air, as there are many permitted uses proposed for the multiple business parcels allotted along Columbia Avenue and just off of it. As to what could fill in the downstairs portions of the hybrid residential and business area, Monts said options such as insurance offices and salons would fit the size of spaces.
Two businesses are already coming to Brighton, an indoor storage facility and a Prisma Health office, and Palmetto Bone and Joint has already moved in across from the high school. Burroughs noted that the storage facility will be “the one and only” as that use is no longer permitted, adding that it’s “a beautiful concept, a beautiful design.”
Monts said part of why the timing is right to get going with the residential component of Brighton, for which space was left when the technology park opened in 2018, is the coming work to widen and enhance Columbia Avenue. Developers noted that turn lanes will be added at Brighton’s main entrance. Burroughs said the last she heard, the Columbia Avenue widening project is set to begin next summer, led by the S.C. Department of Transportation.
Ensuring that Brighton development plans and the Columbia Avenue widening will account for increased traffic and emphasize walkability — with Chapin High School sitting across the street from the proposed residential areas — were among the priorities expressed by the Planning Commission.
“We’ve had multiple different designs that we’ve worked on,” Monts said. “But now, as far as getting closer to the completion of the road widening, it would seem with DOT there at the front of the community off of Chapin Avenue, that us going in conjunction with that would hopefully line up. So it felt like this was a good time to go ahead and move forward.”
Empty technology park
Garrett Dragano, hired last year to oversee Lexington County’s economic development department and its three business and industrial parks, said he hopes the coming Columbia Avenue improvements, along with ongoing work to upgrade the Columbia Avenue exit of I-26 wrapping up in the near future, will also help attract tenants to the Chapin technology park.
“It’s no secret that we have a lot of traffic around Lexington County,” Dragano said. “So whenever prospects are looking, they have to consider ingress and egress for not only their employees, but obviously if we’re talking about commercial and industrial users and things like that, they’re going to have trucks that come in and out and so they have to consider those things. That last mile (coming off I-26), getting those trucks in and out, that’s obviously a big deal, that’s their business.”
Lexington County has had more success attracting tenants to its other parks. The Saxe Gotha Industrial Park off Interstate 77 near West Columbia and Cayce is anchored by big businesses in Amazon, Nephron Pharmaceuticals and Chick-fil-A Supply, and the Batesburg-Leesville Industrial Park is home to a Fisher Tank Company facility among other tenants.
Dragano said the 220-acre Chapin park remaining empty isn’t because it’s a lower priority.
“I’ve had some positive conversations in the past couple of weeks regarding some things out there,” he said.
Dragano added that part of what makes finding tenants for the Chapin park difficult is the kind of space it offers isn’t as desirable as it was when planning for the park started.
“The park when it was built to be a business technology park was more geared towards your sort of, not that it would specifically only be this, but just as an example, corporate office headquarters. And, of course, this was all pre-COVID when it was done,” he said. “Since COVID has happened, across the country and everywhere, we’ve seen a decrease in office space and, and utilization of corporate headquarters offices. Remote working and hybrid working is a popular thing now these days. And so the need for it hasn’t been as high.”
Dragano said the county continues to strategize ways it can sell the Chapin park, including recently investing $1.25 million for site preparation of a parcel close to I-26 to make it easier for a potential tenant to move in and start using the space. He noted this upgrade won’t come at the taxpayer’s expense, as the funds were received via the state’s settlement with the U.S. Department of Energy over plutonium stored at the Savannah River Site near Aiken and Augusta.
While the residential development at Brighton was envisioned to have a symbiotic relationship with employers in the technology park, Monts didn’t seem overly concerned about moving forward while the park remains empty, speculating that adding the residential component will help business in the area.
Dragano echoed this sentiment.
“People want to be in places where they can live, work and play,” he said. “So to be able to have a business park adjacent to affordable and available housing and business, places to eat, restaurants, salons, places to shop at, things like that, kind of provides that community and helps us market the park.”
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