Lexington Growth

[Spartan]

The State has an interesting article on the recent surge of growth along 378 in Lexington county. If you have neen through that area recently, you have probably noticed this already. The article discusses some of what is going on.

• Types of construction:
  • Residences

  • medical offices

  • shopping

  [*]15 projects are under way or set to break ground in the next year

  [*]real estate prices along the highway have increased 20 percent in 18 months.

  [*]Rising land prices have convinced some families to sell long-held land.

  [*]A sewer line expansion was completed in 1999

  [*]Saluda Point

  • 280 homes

  • to break ground in August

  [*]The state Office of Rural Health also will move its headquarters near I-20.

  [*]a deal with a shopping center is near

  [*]The growth has taken a couple of different forms.

  • Between I-26 and I-20 in West Columbia, companies are moving into vacant light industrial sites.

  • From I-20 to the town, the new projects are a mix of

• office space

• retail

• residential

[*]The county is working to make sure the development does not become a traffic bottleneck, restricting the number of parking lot access points from the road and encouraging connections between those lots.

[*]a concern was making sure the area did not become a mess of signs, advertising and other roadside clutter.

[*]The county enacted sign and landscaping ordinances to restrict roadside signs in the 1990s

[The_sandlapper]

I saw that article in todays paper. It's funny with all that's going in especially Lexington County the area often gets overlooked. I expect this area to really take off in the next ten years!

[Spartan]

There will be alot of infill in between Lexington and Cayce/West Cola. Well, there IS alot of infill already. You can't pin point any one area that is growing more than another because it is all growing so fast. I think the problem is that Lexington isn't as concentrated as Irmo or the NE, so we tend to skip over it.

[Charleston native]

Lexington is already becoming Columbia's version of Charleston's Mt. Pleasant or Summerville. It is a town that has a fast-growing suburbian population. And it is not totally dependent on the main city in the metro area and is a considerable distance away from it.

The only difference from Summerville and Mt. Pleasant is that Lexington is a county seat. With that in mind, I foresee Columbia's MSA getting a name change to Columbia-Lexington MSA.

[UrbanSoutherner]

Are there rules about the size of the place (municipal population) in relation to the main city. Does anyone know how the Census Bureau decides the hyphenated names? Like Charleston's UA is Charleston-North Charleston I believe. But North Charleston has over half as many people as Charleston and is the third largest municipality in SC. Lexington is still only a fraction of the size of Columbia in terms of municipal population. Even Mount Pleasant is around half the size of Charleston and the fifth or so largest municipality in the state now. Lexington has a significantly smaller city proper and municipal population. So, I think the name change may not happen any time soon. Also, I think a lot of multi-name MSAs actually contain separate UAs, but Lexington is an extension of Columbia's UA.

[Spartan]

Lexington is already becoming Columbia's version of Charleston's Mt. Pleasant or Summerville. It is a town that has a fast-growing suburbian population. And it is not totally dependent on the main city in the metro area and is a considerable distance away from it.

The only difference from Summerville and Mt. Pleasant is that Lexington is a county seat. With that in mind, I foresee Columbia's MSA getting a name change to Columbia-Lexington MSA.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Are there rules about the size of the place (municipal population) in relation to the main city. Does anyone know how the Census Bureau decides the hyphenated names? Like Charleston's UA is Charleston-North Charleston I believe. But North Charleston has over half as many people as Charleston and is the third largest municipality in SC. Lexington is still only a fraction of the size of Columbia in terms of municipal population. Even Mount Pleasant is around half the size of Charleston and the fifth or so largest municipality in the state now. Lexington has a significantly smaller city proper and municipal population. So, I think the name change may not happen any time soon. Also, I think a lot of multi-name MSAs actually contain separate UAs, but Lexington is an extension of Columbia's UA.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The census defines the metro area based on the primary municipality's population I believe. Once a secondary municipality or Census Defined Place (CDP) becomes large enough (like North Charleston) it can become a hyphenated metro (Charleston - North Charleston). I think the threshold is 50,000. The city has to be in the same UA to be in the hyphenation. If it had its own UA, it would be its own metro or micro area.

If North Charleston were to exceed Charleston in population, it would become the primary city (in terms of the census) and the metro's name would change to the "North Charleston - Charleston MSA.' This happened in San Francisco when San Jose surpassed it in population- it became the San Jose - San Francisco - Oakland MSA. (This was prior to the new definitions though, so this could have changed.)

The Town of Lexington would have to see a major surge in population before any name changes would happen. While Lexington's UA is a part of the greater Columbia's UA, you can see the separation that still exists between the two.

[The_sandlapper]

I could see Columbia-Sumter MSA in the near future. It would probablly already be that if there were a major interstate connecting the two cities together. I-20 should have gone from Columbia to Sumter and then to Florence. Sumter has a decent size considering its so isolated.

[Jerseyman4]

Here are some photos i have of Lexington on my US 1 trek from Cola to Augusta.

[Jerseyman4]

sorry its up that way. If someone could tell me how to do it where the whole photo shows up without clicking on it, id appreciate it.

[Spartan]

When you use UP to host images, that is how they will be displayed. It isn't changable. If you want them to be displayed in full you will need to find another host. Try something like [http://www.photobucket.com]photobucket if you dislike UP's display.

I enjoyed the pics BTW. Lexington is a nice town

[Spartan]

I have these pics of Lexington County's bureaucracy buildings. I took them with my phone so they aren't high quality.

Administration Building

Judicial Center

[Mr.Marc]

I think Lexington needs to look to Spartanburg for downtown planning. I'm currently in Spartanburg visiting for the first time. Their downtown looks pretty neat and seems to be mapped out well to allow future growth. Lexington's downtown needs to be four lanes instead of two.

I like Lexington, but it seems that most of its citizens want it to grow larger, but the town seems to want to stay in the the 20th century.

[Spartan]

I think you hit the nail on the head there. The town wants to stay smaller, but its citizens want it to grow. I don't mean Columbia-style urbanity, but into a more complete town.

Main St. Lexington just completed a rennovation putting in a median with trees as you can see above in jerseyman's 5th picture. This proces took about 2 years, and it really hurt businesses on Main St.

The problem I see is that Lexington doesn't have enough roads that can be used as a thorugh way. It has 3 main roads that carry high volumes of traffic. They had a proposal for a system of one-way roads, but that didn't pan out.

Spartanburg is better equipped to handle traffic flow becuase its downtown is much larger than Lexington's.

In order for Lexington to truely grow it will have to expand its road system some how.

I hope you are enjoying your time in Spartanburg. Downtown has grown alot in the past few years. If you're in town long enough check out some of the restaurants on and around Morgan Square. You will be one of the last to see it like it exists now. They are about to start a large rennovation.