Signs of progress between Irmo and Lexington

Over 10 years ago, the plans for doubling the Lake Murray Dam were firming up. They were to include doubling the traffic lanes and heading for final design details and construction cost estimates. Caught between downtown Lexington and downtown Irmo, both booming, it didn’t take a traffic engineer to see the inadequacies of tight two–lane Lake Murray Boulevard.

In 1996, 26–year–old Andre Bauer saw the eventualities as an opportunity. He paid top dollar for a quarter–acre parcel facing Lake Murray Boulevard for just over 200 linear feet. The purchased property was at the halfway point between the Lake Murray Boulevard intersection with St. Andrews Road and the Lake Murray Dam.

Lt. Governor Andre Bauer The address was 1921 Lake Murray Boulevard. Two buildings shared the same address and the same retail advantages facing Lake Murray Boulevard. One building, the larger of the two, had 2,000 square feet of interior space, formerly used for small–scale manufacturing.

The other, a small house, had its own charm and its own purposes. For years, this house was the sales office for Palmetto Motors. But once Bauer became lieutenant governor, he became a press inquiry magnet. A lieutenant governor rents real estate to a small–time used car dealer. “Shady shenanigans abound!” the reporters could have shared with their editors.

Formerly a successful tenant of 1921 Lake Murray Boulevard The press reporters’ FOI Act demands to the state highway department were driving the department to the point they asked Bauer to shut down the automobile business. He did, and the house became a photography shop.

Both buildings had full exposure and frontage and parking on Lake Murray Boulevard. They were income–producing properties.

Andre Bauer’s income producing property before DOT forced a move Down the street closer to the dam was Auto– Marine Upholstery, a seat cover and carpet installation shop known for quality detail in its interior finishes. The shop did a brisk business in convertible tops.

The front yard of Auto–Marine Upholstery fronted on Lake Murray Boulevard, but the building was set far enough back, leaving plenty of raw real estate for access and parking and a sliver for the SC Department of Transportation condemnation.

Auto–Marine Upholstery sold and stayed for the boom. The DOT came calling a couple years ago and moved to condemn and acquire street frontage from both Bauer and Auto– Marine Upholstery. Lake Murray Boulevard had to widen, double its lanes to accommodate the boom in traffic between downtown Irmo and downtown Lexington.

Bauer balked, as did Auto–Marine Upholstery, at the DOT’s initial purchase price offer. In another year a reassessment for tax purposes was expected and maybe a county appraisal closer to real value.

Auto–Marine Upholstery held out till the next step appeared to be missing any higher price. But Auto–Marine Upholstery couldn’t lose. It was getting fair appraised value to give up some dirt out front so traffic could double, greatly enhancing exposure and boosting value.

But Bauer could lose, and lose big. Facing the real possibility of a jury trial to settle the matter, Bauer held out. One price–hiking principle working for Bauer was the opportunity cost tied to loss of business rental income. Another was the loss of over 200 feet of frontage on Lake Murray Boulevard.

The DOT bought from Auto–Marine Upholstery 15–20 feet adjacent to and parallel to the existing Lake Murray Boulevard, leaving intact a somewhat shorter front yard but a full business operation facing what was to become a busy four–lane thoroughfare. Auto–Marine was still there after the DOT takeover out front, and Auto–Marine was looking forward to what was sure to become a doubling of traffic and a doubling of drive–by exposure.

The dimensions of the DOT acquisition along Bauer’s elongated quarter–acre essentially rendered worthless what little property he had remaining. Both income producing buildings had to go. The 2,000–square–foot industrial structure had to be demolished, and the house had to move to another site.

Bauer paid $53,000 in 1996 for the later condemned string of real estate and its two buildings, and he settled with the DOT for $130,000 in 2004. He lost all income generating potential on a busy four–lane highway halfway between downtown Irmo and Auto–Marine Upholstery next to the Lake Murray Dam.

Having accepted $130,000 for real estate he bought for $53,000 nine years before, Bauer then heard from the county and its new appraisal for what little land was left in Bauer’s hands: $47,000. Take that value of the land left, unusable and unoccupied, and the county appeared to agree with DOT’s purchase price.

What retail opportunities did Bauer lose by being pushed off his real estate just before the full four–lane expansion was coming through? What if Lake Murray Boulevard were widened on the far side from Bauer’s property, leaving him sitting pretty facing the four lanes of traffic?

Look at the retail developments on the existing four–lane stretches of the same road near Irmo and near Lexington. Other than over the dam itself, all of the four–lane highway, once continuous between the two downtowns, should develop as a matching retail and commercial extension in each direction. Photo by John Temple Ligon