When Chris Williams moved to Irmo as a fourth-grader in the early 1990s, Harbison Boulevard sat largely undeveloped — a vast swath of woodlands that developers saw as prime real estate.
Almost three decades later, when Williams brought Roy’s Grille, his restaurant that gained popularity as a diner inside of an Exxon gas station near downtown Lexington, to a new location in Irmo, the area had changed significantly.
“I remember playing basketball and where Bower Parkway is [now], it was all woods and there was a creek that ran through it that people would go fishing in,” Williams told The State, standing in the kitchen of his barbecue restaurant as puffs of white air billowed from the smoker outside…