Lexington Mayor Steve MacDougall, who has served as the town’s top elected official since 2013, will not seek re-election.

His current term is up this year, and his seat will be on the ballot Nov. 7, with Mayor Pro-Tem Hazel Livingston having announced her candidacy and filed for the position.

The choice represents a reversal from the last time the Chronicle spoke with MacDougall about the coming election, as he said at a July 24 Town Council meeting that he would “absolutely” be seeking another term.

MacDougall told the Chronicle that his decision to step away from the mayoral seat wasn’t motivated by Livingston’s decision to run, adding that they talked about his choice not to seek re-election before she announced her candidacy. He said that he endorses her for the office and will back her should she face a challenger.

“She's an amazing lady, and she will do a phenomenal job,” MacDougall said of Livingston, who has served as mayor pro-tem since 2004 and on council since 1998. “I have no doubt in my mind.”

The mayor said his decision was motivated by an opportunity presented to him to run for the state Senate next year and represent a newly drawn district that will include a good part of the town he has led for a decade.

“The town has never had representation from the town. It's always been people that were outside of the town,” he said of the state senators who have represented the area. “We've been represented very well by those people, but never had anybody that lived in the town that actually was a member of the Senate. So that is now an option and an opportunity, and I would love the chance to take on that role.”

MacDougall emphasized that he didn’t want to put the town through another election next year should he be elected to the state Senate and have to leave office.

The mayor’s decision not to seek another term comes after the high-profile announcement and ultimate failure of Smallwood Cove, a 93.53-acre Lake Murray resort that was intended to go in near the Dreher Shoals Dam off N Lake Drive/S.C. Highway 6 and include hotels, shopping, residential units and a marina.

The project, which was met with vehement public backlash, was heralded by the mayor at the early-May Town Council meeting during which it was announced at the biggest development the town would ever see.

MacDougall said the way the situation played out with Smallwood Cove had no impact on his decision not to run, and he went on to correct what he sees as errors in the way the project has been talked about and reported on.

For starters, he said the project isn’t necessarily dead, and the decision by the property owners to pull out from their request for annexation by the town, announcd July 19, doesn’t mean the project couldn’t come back at some point in the future. Asked if he would throw his support behind efforts to rekindle the project if elected state senator, he said, “Absolutely.”

“I’d support it 100%,” he added.

He additionally said it was “actually a concept, it was never even a project.”

“And like any concept that comes to the town, goes through a process,” he added. “And it was going through the process. It had gone to the Planning Commission. Planning Commission told them they needed to make some adjustments on it.”

“It was way too dense for the Town of Lexington and the standards that we have right now. And everyone agreed on that,” MacDougall added. “But there was so much emotion on the negative side about it that it was best to pull it back and just revisit it at another day. Because people just need to calm down about it. It’s a really good concept for that piece of property and could be amazing for the Town of Lexington and it should be in the future plans for the town.”

The mayor also indicated that the concerns of those who opposed the project were misplaced, particularly when it came to the way it would impact traffic, as “most of everything that people were complaining about could absolutely be paid for by that one project, and the good that that project would bring to the town will never, ever be matched again.”

“The people were talking about traffic and how negatively this would impact traffic — everything impacts traffic in Lexington, so there's nothing you can do or not do that does not impact traffic,” he added. “But the funds that that would generate for the town would absolutely give us the avenue to create some of the solutions that we've been trying to find.”

Looking back on his time in office, he thanked the people of Lexington for electing him “at a very transformative time.”

“We didn't have such a bright future when I got there,” said the public official who was first elected as a Town Council member in 2011. “But now the town has a very very bright future, and I see good things to continue to come to the town. There's some things still in the hopper that are coming.”

Asked if downtown revitalization was a big part of that turnaround, MacDougall emphasized that it was, putting forth the Icehouse Amphitheater that opened in 2017 as a big driver in bringing more activity to the city center.

“Without that revitalization on Main Street, we're not talking about Lexington like they're talking about it today,” the mayor said. “Lexington was a ghost town. Highway 1, Main Street was absolutely a ghost town. We did road work there and we could do the road work without even blocking off the roads at nine o'clock at night. Yeah, so absolutely vital in what transpired there in Lexington.”