Blythewood, South Carolina: Population, Growth, and the Scout Motors Plant Changing It

Where Blythewood Sits

Blythewood sits in Richland County, on the northeastern edge of the Columbia, SC metropolitan area, with I-77 running along its western side. The incorporated town covers 10.63 square miles. Workers here report a mean commute of 31.4 minutes, longer than the U.S. average, consistent with a town whose jobs base still sits mostly in Columbia rather than locally. Census Bureau QuickFacts

Is Blythewood part of Columbia, SC?No. It’s an independently incorporated town inside the Columbia metropolitan area, not a Columbia neighborhood or annexed district, with its own town government and town hall.

Population: From 2,034 to Over 7,000 in Fifteen Years

The town’s Census-certified population roughly tripled between 2010 and 2020, then grew by more than half again by 2025.

Source: Census Bureau QuickFacts. Land area barely changed across those fifteen years while population more than tripled, which is the arithmetic behind local conversations about school crowding and traffic on Blythewood Road.

Anyone comparing population figures for “Blythewood” across different websites will find numbers that don’t agree, and the reason is that they describe three different geographies. The incorporated town had 7,233 residents in 2025. The Blythewood county subdivision (CCD), the wider Census-tracked area that includes the surrounding unincorporated Richland County community and shares the town’s ZIP code and school district, had about 44,380 residents in the 2020–2024 American Community Survey. Census Reporter, Blythewood CCD The ZIP code 29016 area, tracked by private data vendors rather than the Census Bureau directly, is cited anywhere from about 16,000 to over 30,000 people depending on the vendor and vintage, because ZIP boundaries don’t align with any Census geography and each vendor updates on its own schedule. When a source doesn’t specify which of these three it means, the number is close to meaningless for comparison.

Which ZIP code is Blythewood, SC?Primarily 29016, with a small portion of the surrounding area extending into 29130 near the Fairfield County line.

The Scout Motors Plant Changing Blythewood’s Trajectory

Scout Motors, an independent company backed by Volkswagen, selected the Blythewood Industrial Site off I-77 in 2023 after South Carolina offered a $1.3 billion incentive package. Post and Courier The $2 billion plant occupies 1,100 acres of a roughly 1,600-acre site and is projected to create more than 4,000 permanent jobs, producing up to 200,000 electric and hybrid vehicles a year, about 40 an hour, at full capacity. SC Governor’s office

In September 2025, Scout Motors added a further $300 million Supplier Park on the same site, a logistics hub expected to support roughly 1,000 additional supplier jobs delivering parts and batteries to the assembly line. Scout Motors company blog

As of February 2026, construction was nearing completion and the company had opened applications for its first 200 to 400 assembly-line workers, training them at an on-site center ahead of the targeted end-of-2026 production start. SC Daily Gazette The town’s population growth already runs ahead of the plant’s completion, which is worth keeping in mind when reading the housing figures below: current income and home-value numbers reflect a market that has been pricing in this project for three years, not one still waiting for it to arrive.

Why is Blythewood in the news lately?Mostly because of the Scout Motors plant, one of the largest economic development projects in South Carolina history, with vehicle production targeted for late 2026.

Housing, Income, and What the Numbers Say About Affordability

Blythewood’s median household income was $94,167 and its median home value was $384,600 in the 2020–2024 American Community Survey, both measured for the incorporated town. Census Bureau QuickFacts

Source: Census Reporter, Blythewood town and Census Reporter, Blythewood CCD, both drawing on the same 2020–2024 ACS vintage. The incorporated town runs about $25,000 above the CCD around it and the state on median household income, and its median age sits nearly nine years older than the CCD around it, a pattern consistent with an established, higher-income core inside a younger, still-filling-in suburban ring.

At the median, a mortgaged household in Blythewood pays $2,421 a month, or about $29,000 a year. Against the $94,167 median household income, that works out to roughly 31% of income going to housing, just above the 30% share that HUD has used since 1981 as the line for “cost burdened.” HUD USER Owner-occupied households make up 81.8% of the town, so this ratio describes most residents, not a small slice of them.

Some general demographic profiles for “Blythewood” online mix in county- or state-level statistics, such as election results or homelessness counts, under a page titled for the town. Those figures describe Richland County or South Carolina, not the roughly 7,200 people who live inside Blythewood’s town limits, and shouldn’t be read as town-specific.

Schools in Blythewood

Nine Richland School District Two schools carry a Blythewood, SC 29016 mailing address, covering elementary through high school.

Source: Richland School District Two. Two comprehensive high schools serving one ZIP code is unusual for a town this size and reflects how much of the surrounding CCD, not just the incorporated town, the district actually covers.

A Short History: From Doko to Blythewood

The settlement that became Blythewood started as Doko, a stop on the Charlotte and South Carolina Railroad completed in 1852; Union forces destroyed the line in February 1865. The town rebuilt, renamed itself Blythewood around 1877 after the Blythewood Female Institute, and incorporated on December 24, 1879. Advisory Council on Historic Preservation Its oldest surviving building, the Hoffman House, dates to about 1855, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986, and now serves as Blythewood’s town hall. SC Department of Archives and History