SUMTER, S.C. — Sumter City and County’s joint planning department has released the 2023 Year-End Report, showing how the area is being developed.
“Sumter is growing,” resident Ophelia Robinson shared. “It’s excellent. It's a great place to live.”
She has lived in Sumter County for more than two decades and says she recognizes how it has grown during that time.
“You can even look at our downtown. I mean it's growing bit by bit and companies are growing every business is growing. So it’s just great,” resident Shakeel Robinson explained.
Shakeel Robinson was born and raised in the area and now has a construction business, SAR Construction, which he says has seen growth in demand for housing since it started.
“It’s growing so fast and all the companies are doing their best to just help supply this,” he detailed.
Robinson goes to the Sumter City-County Planning Department for permitting, meeting with people like Senior Planner Kyle Kelly.
“It’s valuable, valuable data,” Kelly remarked about the 77-page 2023 report. “That report is a kind of a compilation of all of the site plant commercial development projects, the residential development trends, the building permits that have been filed, and it's hard data. It tells us the story of okay, how many houses have been built in that year or at least you know, how many permits have been applied for? What is the value of that work? That tells us sometimes more concretely what's happening in the community beyond sometimes the demographic data sets that sometimes don't tell the full story.”
The report shows a summary of building activity over the past 10 years, outlining the residential units built and the value of construction over the years. The data shows that single family units year over year has been fairly consistent, while multi-family apartment projects caused some jumps in the data.
The report also outlines the major subdivision activity profiles, highlighting areas that are just starting construction and some that are nearly complete.
In addition to housing, the report also outlines how the department is focusing on transportation improvements, such as the Connect 378 project to improve Robert E. Graham Freeway.
“We collect all the data that we can: traffic counts, safety incidents, and everything that's associated with that corridor in order to determine what can we do to improve it,” Kelly shared about the US 378 Robert Graham Corridor Engineering Feasibility and Design Study. “The real catalyst for that project has been the safety issues particularly some fatalities, some pedestrians that have been killed while trying to cross from the north side of where the bypass is to the south side.”
Kelly says his team has spent the past year working with a consultant to design “some alternative concepts” for what could happen to the roadway. A public meeting is being held to collect input from community members on March 14 from 5 to 7 p.m.
The report also details work Kelly’s department has made concerning the Sumter Urban Area Transportation Study and a Long Range Transportation Study.
“We have to look out at least 20 years and look at what are the future needs?” Kelly explained. “What are the things that we need to do as a community to address the future transportation challenges that we're going to face? And so that gives us a roadmap and it gives us an inventory of things that can be done as the opportunity presents or as the resources are available to address bike and pedestrian needs, roadway challenges, freight challenges, transit needs, kind of everything associated with surface transportation.”
It’s all to serve residents like Ophelia Robinson, whether they’re driving, biking or walking.
“It’s very important to get out and walk,” she shared. “I just came from the library. I parked my car and started walking around here now to get something to eat and drink. I love to walk.”
To view that report, you can visit SumterCountySC.org.