City of Cayce

South Carolina

Comprehensive Plan

Land Use Element Update 2003

BACKGROUND:

Early in 2002, The City of Cayce realized that in order to grow and thrive in a orderly fashion certain items should be readdressed. One of the most critical items was and still is the updating of its Comprehensive Plan, specifically the Land Use Element. As with all municipalities within South Carolina that have zoning, State mandated comprehensive planning went into effect in 1999. The plan that was adopted by the City was and is for the most part still adequate for the daily needs of the City.

The areas of concern that are being addressed within this update mainly deal with expansion of the existing City limits and its effect on that plan. Our present plan mainly deals with the existing land mass bounded by the external boundaries of the City. It does not take into account areas outside of these boundaries except to show them as “potential annexations”. Under State Law whenever a municipality annexes any property, it must also assign a zoning designation to that property. The Law also states that zoning must be in compliance with an Approved Comprehensive Plan. If it is not, the Plan must be modified or changed to reflect this “proposed” zoning PRIOR to actually designating the zoning.

As you can see, this could become a very laborious process, every time you wish to annex any property outside of the scope of your Plan, you must update it. In an effort to address this, the updated Comprehensive Plan Land Use Element has been changed or modified in the following manner:

1-     Areas that are “potential annexations” are shown.

2-     Proposed land use for these areas has also been projected.

3-     The proposed land use categories have been modified to reflect a greater range of uses within any given area.

4-     In keeping with this simplification of land use categories, all properties within the existing city limits have been shown as Residential, Commercial or Industrial.

The details and rational behind each of these items are contained within the update and are subject to modification, change or elimination as the city council desires.

PROPOSED LAND USE:

The proposed land use as shown is a departure from the plan as adopted on April 30, 1999. The adopted plan goes into too much detail as to the various land use categories. While on the face on it would appear to be a good thing it actually limits any zoning or rezoning unless in strict compliance to that Plan. The ability of the Planning Commission, the City Council and the General Public to have any meaningful input on zoning changes therefore is severely limited. This departure results is a significant “new look” for the areas that were already addressed in our existing Comprehensive Plan. All residential whether it is single family, patio homes or multifamily developments are all shown as residential, yellow. All commercial uses, office and institutional, general commercial and highway commercial are all shown commercial, red. All other manufacturing and industrial uses are shown as industrial, gray.

Some areas have been shown with more than one type of use planned. That is multiple uses for the same area, this has been done to afford the City the utmost in flexibility whether in conjunction with newly annexed property or rezoning of property already within its jurisdiction.

Some areas that should be singled out are:

1-The area bounded by Frink Street on the east, the railroad on the west and Old Dunbar Road on the north-this was designated as single family on the existing comprehensive plan and this plan shows either commercial, residential or industrial.

2- The west side of Twelfth Street Extension from I-77 to the railroad north of Taylor Road- this was shown on the existing comprehensive plan as PUD, which is not a zoning designation per sec, now shown as either commercial or residential.

3- The largest area by far is generally south of the existing City south of I-77 and on both sides of I-26, this area contains existing single-family uses, commercial and industrial uses and multi-family housing. Accordingly this has been shown permitting all three of these types of uses depending on the circumstances and Planning Commission recommendations and City Council approval.