Do student rentals threaten these historic homes? Why Richland County could step in
For decades, residents in the Columbia-area neighborhood of Olympia have watched historic homes be razed or renovated for student housing or other rental properties.
But Richland County leaders could soon intervene, potentially pausing all new construction in the neighborhood, as well as all demolitions, rezoning efforts and major rehab projects.
The move would halt any major changes in the district, but only temporarily while the county develops permanent guidelines for future projects in the area.
Whether the effort has enough support from Richland County Council members remains to be seen. A motion to draft an ordinance establishing the construction pause, called a moratorium, passed in a 7-4 vote. The council still needs to hold a public hearing for the move and take three public votes before the moratorium would become official.
The long-term goal, residents who have been asking for this intervention say, would be to protect the neighborhoods remaining historic assets against demolition by developers looking to build student housing.
In government parlance, the protection tool at hand is called a neighborhood character overlay.
The overlay would impose rules on renovations to historic structures, limit the demolition of those structures and require new construction to look similar to the historic architecture true to the neighborhood's past.
The overlay would not prevent the demolition of non-historic buildings, nor would it prevent the construction of things like apartments and duplexes where zoning already allows for it.
The Mill Villages as a whole have been dramatically reshaped from their early days when they were home to cotton mill workers and their families. The mills stayed active for almost 100 years, but by 1996 they had all been closed.
A decade later, the Olympia and Granby Mills were both turned into student apartments, opening the floodgates for the area to become a hotbed for student rentals. As the university has grown, so too have the number of renters.
The University of South Carolina's Columbia campus, located just to the east of the Mill District, grew from an enrollment of roughly 25,500 students in 1996 — the year of the final mill closure — to 33,700 students in 2016. A record 38,300 students enrolled at the Columbia campus for the Fall 2024 semester.
'We are excited for the overlay,' said Viola Hendley, a longtime Olympia resident and member of the Mill District Alliance, which advocates for preservation of the three mill villages Olympia, Granby and Whaley. Hendley has said she is not against student rentals but they should not come at the cost of protecting the 125-year-old neighborhood.
The county council would have to approve the building and demolition moratorium first, and then begin working on the guidelines for the neighborhood overlay. A public hearing will also need to be scheduled for the ordinance establishing the moratorium.
Hendley said she hopes the county makes its decision soon. The Granby and Whaley neighborhoods adjacent to Olympia both have historic preservation overlays. The difference is that Granby and Whaley are within Columbia city limits, but most of Olympia falls just outside of those bounds in unincorporated Richland County. The county hasn't had the framework to help until recently.
'In the meantime, we've lost a good number of historic homes,' Hendley said.
But in 2024, the county passed a new land development code that carved out a way to protect historic elements in districts like Olympia. If approved, the Olympia overlay would be the county's first attempt at establishing such protections.
Hendley and others in the Olympia area hope that the county's intervention can help preserve the historic structures that still remain.
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