Columbia County’s planning and zoning staff offered a review of developments last year, during the Planning Commission’s first meeting of 2025, on Thursday.
The county processed some 56 variance requests and 79 rezoning requests in 2024, with revisions or changes in conditions representing 38% of the latter.
The county approved 80% of these requests last year—which staff noted was “fairly typical”—disapproved 16% and 5% were withdrawn.
Staff tracked that 378 new residential units received zoning approval, which is 78% of the single-family units which were the subject of requests last year. The planning department began tracking single-family attached units for the annual report, and during Thursday’s meeting cited examples in the Branch Springs and Tillery Park developments.
“Those are the two-unit buildings that are on their own individual lots, so they don’t neatly fit into the definition for a town home, which is three or more units per code,” explained planner Danielle Montgomery. “But they’re also not a duplex because they are on their own individual lots. So we classified those separately as single-family attached, and are starting to track those as part of this report.”
Staff also noted that the county had approved preliminary plats for 518 new residential lots to be under construction, and final plats for 500 new residential currently ready to sell, a slight boost from the numbers in 2022 and 2023.
The staff’s update on multi-family developments noted the completion of the Premier apartments in Evans Town Center, adding some 300 apartment units to the county’s inventory, as well as the completion of several townhome projects like those in Royal Oaks and Canton Park.
Skyler Andrews is a reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
