Bluffton worries future growth will clog U.S. 278, asks county for new road to parkway
As developers continue to push Bluffton for changes to longtime agreements on how many homes can be built and where, town officials have turned to county taxpayers for help getting ahead of growth — asking them to make good on a 13-year-old promise to pay for a road that could alleviate future traffic on U.S. 278.
“We’ve got to start thinking about the next generation of people and the impact 20 years down the road,” Bluffton Mayor Lisa Sulka said at a meeting of the town’s negotiating committee last week, where she referred to U.S. 278 as “failing.”
At that same meeting, Indian Hill Associates — which owns a portion of the planned 163-acre Willow Run tract at U.S. 278 and Buckwalter Parkway — again asked the town to amend a longtime development agreement and release Indian Hill from a requirement to build a north-south connector road between U.S. 278 and Bluffton Parkway before development begins.
J. Simon Fraser, the developer’s lawyer, argued that because the construction of Bluffton Parkway Phase 5B — the long-delayed project that would straighten Bluffton Parkway and possibly alleviate congestion on U.S. 278 — has no substantial timeline, Indian Hill shouldn’t be required to pay for the construction of a connector road.
“(Bluffton Parkway Phase 5B) may never be built,” he said. “Maybe it will get built one day, but we don’t see it for the next maybe 15, 20 years. In the meantime, over the next 15 years, what do we do? There’s a real Catch 22.”
Some members of the committee are hesitant about granting the request and others seemed outright against it.
“At this point, we have to look at the total build-out of Bluffton,” Town Council member Fred Hamilton said at the meeting last week. “We can’t just look at one development to another anymore. You have to look at the whole picture. We have to plan for 20 years, 30 years now. That needs to be the new vision of leadership in Bluffton.”
The town’s negotiating committee first heard Indian Hill’s request in October and requested the developer come back with a more substantial plan of what could be built on the property.
A month later, Bluffton Town Manager Marc Orlando wrote a letter to Beaufort County Administrator Ashley Jacobs urging the county to move forward with the construction of Bluffton Parkway Phase 5B.
“We understand funds are not available to complete construction of the entire ... project, however, we also understand that there may be funds available to support a portion of this project,” the letter said.
The letter requested the county fund a two-phase portion of Phase 5B that leads to the north-south connector road.
There were two reasons for the request, the letter said: Voters want the road and the road would support the “economic growth” tied to the planned 65,000 square-foot Beaufort Memorial Hospital and Medical University of South Carolina micro-hospital near the intersection of Bluffton Parkway, Innovation Drive and Buckwalter Parkway.
Construction and opening dates for the micro-hospital, the state’s first, are still unclear.
When contacted about the letter, Jacobs said the project would require County Council approval, but that the county expects both phases of the project would cost about $6 million.
She said the county is expected to have about $4.7 million from local admissions and impact fees that could pay for the first phase.
The county’s public facilities committee could decide on the in the first phase of the project in the coming year.
“Any connecting road is important,” Sulka said.
