Richland County, SC Special Events & Permits: Block Party Permits (2026)

Sec. 21-15 sets the process for closing any street or road in unincorporated Richland County, which covers neighborhood block parties held on a public street. The request must be in writing to the county administrator and submitted at least ten days before the requested closing date. The requesting party must designate one person as spokesperson who supervises all activities for the closure's duration and answers for the group. Once a timely request comes in, the county administrator has five days to consider it; if approved, the administrator asks the sheriff's office to actually blockade the street and the clerk of council advertises the approved closing to the public through the news media, with the cost of that advertising billed to the requesting party rather than absorbed by the county.

Closures normally cannot exceed 24 hours, though the administrator has discretion to extend that window on an event-by-event basis for a legitimate need. The code also has a safety valve for late requests: if a request comes in fewer than ten days out, the administrator can still treat it as an emergency closing if warranted and if there is enough time to arrange the sheriff's blockade, but the code puts the requester on notice that future requests must meet the standard ten-day window. This same section is the governing block-party mechanism; there is no separate residential block-party ordinance, so any group closing a county street for a private neighborhood event uses this ten-day administrator-approval process.