Columbia farmers market gets money set aside for now-defunct convention center expansion

A plan to open a new state farmers market on Columbia’s Bluff Road will get $4 million from state coffers. The plan apparently has been in the works for the past year, despite state budget officials having no documentation on the effort.

State Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Richland, said bringing a farmers market back to Richland County makes good on a promise made years ago. He said Lexington County “stole” the market from the Columbia area when it was announced in 2007 the state market would be relocated, and a promise was made then to open a smaller market on Bluff Road.

While Rutherford helped secure state money for the project, community members say it has been a grassroots effort.

Diane Sumpter, who runs the local contracting firm DESA, Inc., has been helping to lead that charge.

“Everything is still in the talk phase,” she said, but added that roughly a year of work has gone into the farmers market proposal.

She said it started when she and other community members read an article about the Pee Dee State Farmers Market in Florence, which sees more than 700,000 visitors per year while supporting small farmers in the area. She hopes bringing a farmers market back to Richland County will do the same for small farmers in this area.

Sumpter said the market would also help bring more healthy food options to the area, which is considered a food desert.

“We saw this could really impact this area,” she said.

So far, an architect has sketched a few designs for the would-be market, which Sumpter hopes will also include a commercial kitchen.

Sumpter said she has been in contact with state lawmakers and the state Department of Agriculture, but she stressed the money has not yet been allocated for work to start. She hopes that box can be checked in the next 60 days.

Reestablishing a market in Richland County market has been a long journey that is not yet over. And it is not immediately clear who would end up operating the market, should it come to fruition.

In 2007, the state Department of Agriculture announced a collaboration with private investors to move the State Farmers Market from its longtime lot near Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia to Lexington County. The move was announced after a different plan to relocate the Columbia market to another location in Richland County — at Shop and Pineview roads, not far from the site now being considered at Bluff and Atlas roads — was scrapped because of costs.

Rutherford said he did not contact the state Department of Agriculture prior to securing the state dollars for the farmers market, but he said it will be up to that department and the city of Columbia to get the market running.

While the city of Columbia is aware of the plan, it will not be operating the market, according to a city spokesperson.

Columbia City Councilman Howard Duvall said no proposal has been presented to the council.

The state Department of Agriculture is in a similar position. Eva Moore, a spokesperson for the agriculture department, said the agency is aware of preliminary discussions to establish a new market but has not committed to help operate it.

“I think we’re just at the beginning of a very long process,” she said, adding that the department has made no formal decisions about the market and will look to state lawmakers for next steps.

The new market would be located on Bluff Road near the Atlas Road intersection on land Bible Way Church owned until November 2021. State Sen. Darrell Jackson, D-Richland, is the pastor of the church and previously drew scrutiny for state money sent to his nonprofit connected to the church.

The 8.83 acre parcel sold for about $65,000 an acre, but other land values in the area are more expensive, including two nearby properties valued at $130,000 an acre and $87,000 an acre.

Jackson and the church have no financial interest in the creation of the farmers market, Rutherford said.

Paul Mitchell, CEO of South Coast Paper and chair of Optus Bank now owns the property through New Millennium Properties LLC. He said he has invested in property several times in the past.

He purchased the Bluff Road property in November after Sumpter asked if he would be willing to invest in a general improvement project in the area, Mitchell said. At the time, the idea was to develop something to benefit residents of a new senior housing project on Atlas Road, which is also tied to Jackson’s church.

“That part of Columbia has always been deprived of infrastructure, of resources and services,” Mitchell added.

A pharmacy and a grocery store have also been proposed for the land. Mitchell said those developments are not entirely off the table, and there’s a possibility the 8-acre property could house both the market and another development.

Mitchell has not yet received any formal offers for the property, but his intention is to sell the land. He could not say how much he would sell for.

Rutherford asked for the $4 million through a budget amendment that reallocated $9 million previously set aside to expand the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center. In his amendment, Rutherford pushed to use $3 million to address flooding issues in the Belvedere neighborhood, $2 million for community enhancements along Beltline Boulevard and $4 million for Bluff and Atlas roads area improvements.

When Rutherford proposed the amendment May 11 on the state House floor as the House debated the budget for a second time, he said it was a reallocation of money spent by the state but did not mention the farmers market project.

“This simply reallocates that money from a dead project,” Rutherford said at the time.

No one on the House floor asked questions about the projects Rutherford proposed sending the money to.

Meanwhile, the Senate wanted to move all of the convention center dollars to the Columbia Congaree Commons project, which included a farmers market, a proposal pushed by state Sen. Thomas McElveen, D-Sumter, during Senate Finance Committee discussions.

When the budget conference committee, which Rutherford was a part of, finalized this year’s spending plan, the committee went with the House plan for the $9 million.

This year when the governor’s office reviewed the budget, it asked lawmakers to provide information about the earmarks in a particular section of the spending plan with member project requests.

However, because this money was a reallocation of money already appropriated last year, it wasn’t included in the section of the budget with earmarks, so Rutherford did not have to provide information to the governor’s office.

“Because this was a proviso, it wouldn’t have gotten caught up in that,” said Brian Symmes, spokesman for Gov. Henry McMaster. “With this particular unique circumstance, we wish it would have been caught up with it.”

“In every situation with the budget when you’re spending state taxpayer dollars, more transparency rather than less is always going to be the governor’s preference,” Symmes said, adding that the governor’s office is not against the farmers market.

Rutherford said he would have provided information about the farmers market project if it had been requested.

“I would have said it’s for a farmers market to go at the corner of Bluff and Atlas to replace the one that was stolen by Lexington County all those years ago,” Rutherford said.

The cost of improvements to build a farmers market is expected to be more than $4 million, Rutherford said.

“I’m simply confident they’re going to do something that should have been done a long time ago,” Rutherford said.