By admin 
After a spate of recent development proposals in one Midlands town, officials are considering putting in place stronger restrictions on developers.
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A proposal being considered by Irmo Town Council would require that once a proposal is rejected by the town council, a developer would have to wait 12 months before it can be re-submitted to the town.
“The idea is if they keep pushing the same design, they will wear you down and get to ‘yes,’” Deputy Administrator Nicholle Burroughs said in presenting the proposal to a council meeting Tuesday.
A planned development on the same site could only be reconsidered within a year if it is a substantially different project. Whether it meets that determination would be at the discretion of the town’s zoning administrator. The revised plan would then have to start over with a review by the Irmo Planning Commission before it could come back to the council.
The town of 12,000 near Lake Murray has been at the forefront of new development in the Columbia area, and has recently seen proposals for everything from new apartments to storage units seek to locate in town.
The town council in May rejected a planned 300-unit development that would have gone into an undeveloped lot on Shady Grove Road, citing neighborhood concerns about the impact development would have in the area.
Mayor Bill Danielson referenced that project when he questioned the new policy at a meeting on Tuesday.
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“They’ve pulled that,” the mayor said. “If someone comes in with another contract for 300 homes, what are we going on? Density?”
Burroughs said the proposed ordinance would lay out the criteria for reconsidering a denied project, including a change in zoning classification, land use, density or design. The reasons for a previous rejection would also be considered.
“If during [council] discussion that you wanted another entrance or more single-family, it would have to do that,” Burroughs said.
A waiting period for resubmission has always been how the town operated, Burroughs said. The 12-month waiting period was the basis for a resident’s lawsuit against the town’s considered approval of the planned 500-home Water Walk development in 2024, when developers introduced changes after the proposal was rejected by the Irmo Planning Commission but before it had been considered by the town council.
That lawsuit was ultimately dismissed, but because it failed to include the Water Walk developers in the complaint. The town contended the original review period had not been completed because the council had not weighed in on the plans.
The proposed ordinance would make the policy explicit, Burroughs said, and give Irmo one more tool to try to control growth in the future.
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