IRMO’S MAIN STREET “DOWNTOWN” DEBACLE

September 26, 2023

I wasn’t sure if I should put this article under local, political, or comical, but I will decide that later.

I read back in December 2022 where “Bill Danielson, Irmo Town Councilman and Mayor Pro-Tem gave a presentation to Council November 29th outlining a proposed main street in Irmo.” Where did this idea come from? 

It also reported that “town residents had suggested for years that a main street would be an attractive addition to the town.” Danielson said, “Now we have a way to make this happen and everyone wins”. Except, in my opinion, the current owners of the property he was describing in his presentation, and the other hospitality tax dollar benefactors whom all those tax dollars go to pay for this property instead of going to where they previously went, and currently are going to, at the time of his presentation.

So who truly benefits? One would be developers and investors that normally develop commercial properties. They have real estate agents and acquisition teams to handle that process, if the numbers work, land cost, infrastructure costs (i.e. roads, sewer, water), construction costs and can be developed, resold, or leased then they move forward. If these numbers don’t work, then they don’t move forward. Or if an investor buys and waits, when none of these are viable, nothing happens unless you can get someone else to spend their money (not the investors or the developers) to buy land, pay for infrastructure which would then make them the developer/investor. 

This is not the Town of Irmo’s responsibility or expertise, never was, isn’t now, never should be.

But funny things happen when elected officials have to run for re-election or higher office and they need to campaign on what they did, and can use tax dollars (hospitality, ARPA, undesignated cash funds) to spend. Then when opposition occurs from other elected officials, (may not be their idea) for the method of moving forward or not getting credit themselves, along with town residents, existing property owners, who don’t see a “win”, you get push back and make regrettable comments about “eminent domain” etc. 

That is another article about “EMINENT DOMAIN, Who said What, When and Where” and the fallacy of believing you could even use eminent domain for this purpose. Also, “where did this downtown idea originate, and what was wrong with the original idea”, besides whose idea it was.