COLUMBIA, S.C. — A beautification project is underway to give major Capital City Roadways a facelift.
The pilot partnership between SCDOT, Richland County and Columbia started last fall. It's focusing on roadways like Huger Street, Assembly Street, Garners Ferry Road, Clemson Road, and Gervais Street.
“We're trying to improve the appearance of the city to help the overall profile for businesses and recruitment and to retain the businesses that we have," said Assistant City Manager Clinty Shealy.
Shealy said the city has allocated $1.6 million between the last two budget cycles to increase mowing, kill weeds, clean up litter, paint medians, and plant flowers along those roadways.
Shealy said 70 percent of the roads in Columbia are owned and maintained by SCDOT, making it difficult to address beautification efforts, until now.
“Sometimes by the time it takes to figure out whose weed that is, we could have addressed it already," said Shealy. He added the city has also allocated funding for gateway signage in those areas.
SCDOT mows those major roads about twice a year, Shealy said. Thanks to this funding, the city is mowing those corridors every 10 days.
Some residents are excited for a more beautiful ride.
“It’ll be a good message to the taxpayers and the people that live here that our tax dollars are going to a good place to make our city look better and make our roads smoother and safer to drive on," said James Heatly.
However, others like Jim Brown would like to see these organizations prioritize other projects.
“We gotta lot of other road problems that need a lot of attention," said Brown.
Shealy says the program could become permanent depending on the funding that's available.