Irmo isn’t necessarily champing at the bit to bring more land into the town of nearly 12,000 near Lake Murray, but leaders feel the municipality needs to be ready to grow anyway.
As it works through the process to establish a new comprehensive plan that will guide the town through 2035, Irmo is considering a future land-use map to strategize how more than 6,000 surrounding acres could be added to the town limits, which currently contain less than 5,000 acres.
The breadth of the map doesn’t mean that Irmo will annex all, or any, of the land it is studying, said Doug Polen, the assistant town administrator overseeing the comprehensive planning process, but it will allow Irmo to be ready should opportunities for responsible growth present themselves.
Polen, who said he’s been a land planner on and off for 25 years, explained that it’s not typical in his experience for a town to push so far outside its borders with its future land use map.
“But it needs to be typical,” he said. “Especially in a town like ours, we don’t have a ton of vacant land inside the town limits. But it’s not unreasonable to think that, say, three, four years from now, or next week or next year, somebody’s going to want to come in who’s adjacent to town. And they might want to develop a residential subdivision or a Target — who knows what. And if you don’t have in your comp(prehensive) plan some idea of what you’d like to see in that area, there’s really no basis for that decision-making other than, ‘Oh, this sounds like a good idea, let’s go do it.’”
Polen noted that state law prohibits municipalities from forcing annexation, adding that even if it didn’t, Irmo doesn’t have as much motivation for that sort of maneuver as others. It doesn’t charge residents a property tax and thus doesn’t get the same boost in tax base from expanding its borders.
‘If the town doesn’t grow, we’re gonna die’
Irmo Mayor Bill Danielson said there’s no need for residents in the town or surrounding areas to be alarmed that Irmo is pushing to aggressively grow, offering assurance that the town won’t annex all the property included in the plan in the next 10 years. But it’s important that Irmo does grow during that time.
“If the town doesn’t grow, we’re gonna die. It’s real simple,” Danielson said. “We have to have a plan with which we want to make sure that we’re open to folks who do want to be annexed in, but we’re not going out there and annexing property in that people don’t want to have come in.”
The mayor noted that the town hasn’t looked to push growth in recent years, and while he isn’t looking to open the floodgates, he said it’s time to fill in unincorporated holes within the town’s imprint and to incorporate more territory outside its limits. He pointed to the areas to the north along Broad River Road heading toward Ballentine as being rich with possibility.
“People talk about the wild growth in Irmo, and since I’ve been on council we’ve approved one subdivision with 66 homes in the town. And I’ve been on council five years,” Danielson said. “We’re not building residential homes, we’re not building apartments, we’re not building townhomes. We’re not building anywhere near enough to have people living and supporting our businesses.”
He added that growth in the town has remained stagnant for decades, with just under 11,000 people living in Irmo in 1998.
But growth is happening all around Irmo. The town is currently considering a plan to bring a combined 550 houses, townhomes and senior-living units to an unused spot on the shore of Lake Murray along a two-lane road.
Such activity in the surrounding areas will continue, and developments can build right on Irmo’s doorstep in Lexington and Richland counties without their permission. Having a plan for the 6,000 acres around it would allow the town to be ready to annex new developments and retain some control over how they would look.
Carving out an identity
Irmo is actively trying to carve out a distinct identity for itself among the suburban sprawl west of Columbia.
A new town clock was installed last month along the railroad that runs through the town along St. Andrews Road, paid for by donations, and the town has been pushing new concerts and festivals to better take advantage of Irmo Community Park, best known as the site for the annual Okra Strut celebration.
Having an expansive plan for future growth will help Irmo continue to frame its identity, Polen said, pointing to St. Andrews Road, where people drive in and out of Irmo as they go down that corridor.
“We know that people think they’re in Irmo, even if they aren’t,” he said. “We … want to have a uniform quality aesthetic that people can say, ‘Man, this is a pretty town, I like it here.’”
The mayor echoed this sentiment.
“If they’re in the town limits, we then can control what is going in there,” Danielson said. “We could put the onus on them to develop it like we want, to make it look like we want. We can create additional buffering if it’s required, landscaping, there are a handful of things that we can do that will turn the corner, which will make things more aesthetically appealing and will have that small-town charm.”
He added that he doesn’t care for Irmo’s nickname as the “Gateway to Lake Murray.” He wants the town itself to be a destination.
“Every time I hear the “Gateway to Lake Murray, I just get ill,” Danielson said. “We want to be known as Irmo. That’s what we’re trying to do, we’re trying to build that separate identity.”
While Irmo has been slow to grow, it has outgrown its Town Hall. It hopes to build a new one in the same area as the police department and a separate municipal building that houses its council chambers.
The town has secured about $2 million in federal funding and $1 million in state funding to help with the project, which Polen said is set to cost no more than $5 million.
“Our Town Hall is full,” Mayor Danielson said. “There is no room for another employee. Our police department is full. We desperately need more space.”
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