Jasper County’s growth is not just rapid by South Carolina standards — it’s one of the fastest-growing counties in the country. Most of that growth is in Hardeeville, which has grown from 1,500 residents in 1990 to nearly 14,000 in the U.S Census' 2024 estimate. The city adds 2,000 to 3,000 new residents each year.
And at 56 square miles, the City of Hardeeville also has a lot of ground to cover with public safety and fire service.
“We’re bursting at the seams,” said Matt Davis, the deputy city manager. “We’ve continually adding police officers, we now have four fire stations so we can have adequate response times, and we’re planning for additional ones as well. We have more people in our planning department, our finance department, our public works. We have a very strong, robust parks and recreation program.”
Those staffing needs have meant the city has needed to get creative with its existing facilities, moving people around and adding new workspaces. For example, the city converted one of the bays in its public works building into the current home of its building safety department, housing inspectors and plan examiners.
“We’ve constructed new offices, new walls, moved furniture around, all those kinds of things to keep accommodating,” Davis said. “But at some point, you reach a level where the rubber meets the road. You're going to have to do something else.”
The city worked with McMillan Pazdan Smith Architecture to create a feasibility study identifying the architectural and engineering work necessary in the coming years.
“Utilizing demographic and industry information, MPS was able to project space needs to align with community growth, infrastructure requirements and help the City of Hardeeville prioritize capital projects that will have a tremendous impact on staff retention and recruitment, services and smart growth,” said Minta Ferguson, director of planning with McMillan Pazdan Smith.
Davis said the top space priorities are a new fire station, city hall and police headquarters. The fire station is under construction, while the city is in the early investigative stages for a city hall.
He said cities must be careful not to be seen as spending exorbitant sums on something the average person may not see as valuable — a city hall, for example, needs to be designed to last a long time and reflect community character, without being “too fancy.”
He stressed the importance of hiring a professional firm that can “hit that sweet spot” for understanding the necessary size and function of a new building.
In addition to identifying and predicting space needs, the city also received a facilities condition report from MPS, with a dashboard tool it can use to monitor the city’s facilities and keep track of everything from the HVAC systems to roofs, windows, doors and interiors.
Davis recommends other cities try to project not just next year’s needs, but the next five years, “so you're not caught flat-footed and you're not, quite frankly, having your employees work in closets, because we literally had employees working in closets at one point.”
In Greenville County, Simpsonville has seen its population skyrocket in recent years. The growth brought the need to upgrade facilities, particularly the outdated police and fire department headquarters and stations, said Dianna Gracely, Simpsonville’s city administrator.
At the same time, the city hall building on Main Street – which Simpsonville purchased from Duke Energy in the 1990s, was cramped. A dual-use room on the second floor was home to both the city council chambers and court, and didn’t function well for either, she said.
“As the city has grown, we hired more staff and we had people sharing offices, and it just wasn't a great work environment,” Gracely said. “In addition, a public building was not the highest and best use of property on Main Street. So it made sense, if we were building new police department, new fire department headquarters and a new station, that we would move city hall as well.”
The city’s new Municipal Complex opened at the end of 2024 on the periphery of Simpsonville City Park, now known as Gracely Park. It’s home to the city hall, police department and a fire department and headquarters. The third building houses both county court operations and city courts.
“During the process, we also said, ‘You know, we're having to do all of the stormwater retention. It's time to redo this old park, too,’” she said. “It had cracked sidewalks, there wasn’t adequate light, the football fields were not level. It was not a great place for organized sports, much less anything else. So we took that opportunity to completely reimagine City Park as well, with a new playground, new small amphitheater for community events, tennis, pickleball, basketball, disc golf, two regulation size football fields.”
The city borrowed the funds in 2021, and used the same design team and contractor for the entire project, ensuring a cohesive look.
The move from the old city hall also created property on Main Street that will be sold, torn down and redeveloped as a mixed-use building.
“There will be about a $35 million investment. That's a nice addition to the tax rolls,” Gracely said. “And it also provides more housing downtown, which we really want to achieve, and there also will be commercial spaces for an upscale restaurant and some other retail amenities.”
Simpsonville was fortunate in funding the projects, she said, because when it borrowed in 2021, the interest rate was low – just under 2%.
She also stressed the importance of having a council committed to the project.
“Make sure all of your council is on board and understands the importance of it,
because you're going to have some members of the public who question why are you making this huge investment in these public buildings? You could have paved more roads with that money. We've heard that,” she said. “So you have to realize you're building these buildings for the next 75 to 100 years. And it's important to the community, because when you invest in yourself, it makes other people realize you're worth investing in when you have decent public facilities.”
As Charleston’s popularity and population has exploded over the past decades, that growth has spread to neighboring municipalities, including the Town of Summerville.
That population growth has meant the need to improve and expand public facilities. The town is in the pricing phase and has hired a construction manager at risk for a new public safety building to replace the 40-year-old overcrowded facility, said Chris Makowski, the town’s public information officer.
The current facility will be torn down and the new building, which will house the police and fire departments along with courts, will be built on the existing public safety building site. The new facility will include space for meeting and training areas, a large lobby space, community rooms and greenspace.
“The building will be designed with the public in mind,” he said. “We are hoping this will provide facilities for the next 20 to 25 years. It’s built for the future growth of Summerville. It’s not built for 2025, it’s built for 2045.”
Makowski said the city is hoping to see some movement on construction by the end of 2025 or early 2026, when staff members will move into temporary offices during the building process.
Goose Creek is another Lowcountry city with explosive growth, growing from a population of about 29,000 in 2000 to more than 50,000 today. New residents come with the need for new public facilities, and Goose Creek has several newly open or in the planning stages.
Among those is The Assembly at Goose Creek, a 13,500-square-foot, multi-purpose building located next to City Hall behind the Municipal Center that is expected to open at the end of 2026, said Public Information Officer Frank Johnson.
“With stunning lakefront views and beautiful green space on either side, The Assembly will be an ideal and much-needed local venue for weddings, banquets and celebrations that residents can access for generations to come,” he said.
The building also will host the monthly City Council meetings, which will allow the existing City Council chambers to be converted to needed office space in City Hall.
Other expansions include the Daning Amphitheater on the lake at the Municipal Center next to the Recreation Complex. The amphitheater seats 900 with additional green space for more than 3,000. The amphitheater has already attracted national acts to Goose Creek, while also hosting dramatic, musical and recreational events.
The city’s Central Creek Park opened two years ago, and features the county’s first inclusive playground, along with a pickleball facility, a basketball court, a walking trail and more, while two years ago, the city opened John McCants Veterans Park as a tribute to the city’s military history. A short walk from Central Creek Park is the Creek Collective which opened in late May and which provide a focal point for the city’s growing art scene.
Meanwhile, the city will break ground on a new fire station this summer.
“The reaction has been overwhelmingly positive, both in feedback we’ve received and most importantly in the use of the facilities,” Johnson said. “Central Creek Park attracts hundreds of people every day – seven days a week. Every big concert at the Amphitheater – including this year’s ‘Creekapalooza’ shows – has resulted in a waiting list for tickets. We know that The Assembly and the Creek Collective will also be a gathering spot for residents for many, many decades to come.”