BLYTHEWOOD – The Blythewood Town Council will hold a public hearing at 6 p.m., Monday, March 24, at the Doko Manor regarding the second and final vote on an ordinance adopting text and map amendments to the Town’s Land Development Ordinance (LDO) for all parcels and property located within the Town of Blythewood corporate limits.
“This document is important,” said Town Administrator Daniel Stines. “It contains updates that citizens should be aware of. This document has been in the works for about two years.”
The Town’s current Land Development Ordinance hasn’t been updated since 1981, 43 years ago.
“So our current ordinance has outdated terms, redundancy in zoning, districts, and standards,” Stines said. “It lacks connection to our recently updated comprehensive plan for the Town.”
During the last two years, the Town has worked to update the LDO in a number of joint meetings with council and the planning commission, as well as a workshop. The work in these meetings brought the document to a first draft.
“We reviewed all the design and architectural standards for the town, and last September
put the ordinance on the website for public consumption and comments,” Stines said. “Then we married those comments into a final draft that we ran past the Board of Architectural Review, the Board of Zoning Appeals, and the Planning Commission. The ordinance received unanimous recommendations from all board and commissions.”
Council passed first reading (vote) on Feb. 24, 2025.
At that meeting, Brian Mabry, a consultant who worked with staff for two years on the ordinance, presented a public review of the LDO.
“The information for casual use – like where to place the shed we in the yard – is in the first half of the ordinance,” Mabry said. “The second half is more technical in nature, covering development and design standards such as how parking and subdivision designs are accomplished, and procedural aspects regarding variances and zoning.”
Maybry’s review of the ordinance can be viewed at youtube.com/watch?v=J5bFKW60Ak8&t=7245s at about the two-hour mark.
A hard copy of the draft Land Development Ordinance is available for public inspection in the office of administration at Town Hall, 171 Langford Road in Blythewood, as well as online at https://online.encodeplus.com/regs/blythewood-sc/index.aspx.
For more information, call 803-754-0501.
