Blog

WINNSBORO (Nov. 13, 2015) – While County Council approved at their Oct. 12 meeting a leaner, meaner recreation plan that included combining resources to construct a community center to serve districts 2 and 3, internal divisions over where, exactly, to place that facility have since put Council members at odds with their leadership, sources told The Voice last week.

“She (Chairwoman Carolyn Robinson, District 2) originally came up with the proposal to put it (a community center) in Mitford,” District 3 Councilman Walter Larry Stewart confirmed Tuesday. “Then for some reason at the last minute she wants to move it 8-9 miles down the road toward Lake Wateree.”

During Monday night’s Council meeting, a member of the Mitford Community Club proposed erecting the center just off Highway 200 on the site of the old Mitford Community School, which the club has owned since 1950. The Club converted the school into a community center shortly after purchasing it from the County, and leases portions of the property back to the County for the Mitford Volunteer Fire Department and a County mini park, each for $1 a year. The property sits on the boundary between districts 2 and 3.

“We have over 2,100 citizens living within a 5-mile radius of this point (the old school),” Carol Turner told Council Monday. “Yet the only problem comes because of the way things (voting districts) had to be divided. This community is divided, and as you know there’s just not enough money to do everything for everybody. Neighbors living across the road are competing for services, which is unnecessary.

“If it is possible to build a community center at this location to serve all of these citizens of Mitford, the Community Club, which still owns the property, potentially could make it very economically feasible in a lease agreement to build,” Turner concluded. “For citizens services, for logical location and for fiscal feasibility, the community center needs to be placed right here at the old Mitford School site.”

Councilman Billy Smith (District 7) noted that the Oct. 12 vote to build a facility to serve the two districts was “contingent upon finding a location,” and asked Stewart if Turner’s presentation indicated that the County was closer to finding that location.

“We’ve got the location,” Stewart answered, “and they said they would lease it to us very economically. We need something there where we can hold community meetings, family reunions, programs for our seniors, after-school programs for our kids, summer programs for our kids. We’ve got roughly 2,000 people up there within a 5-mile radius on that boundary where we’re looking at putting this facility.”

Minutes from the Oct. 12 meeting, however, state that the community building is “contingent upon purchase of land,” not lease of land. The minutes also make no specific mention of placing the facility in the Mitford community.

Robinson was absent from Monday’s Council meeting for reported medical reasons and Stewart said the Chairwoman also failed to show at a community meeting in Mitford last week. Phone calls to Robinson were not returned at press time.

Interim County Administrator Milton Pope, in his report to Council Monday, said County staff should have the official documentation for the recreation projects finalized this week. The only thing Council had left to decide, Pope told The Voice Tuesday, was the physical location of the districts 2 and 3 community center. Should the Chairwoman persist in her push to locate the facility closer to Lake Wateree, Stewart said there was a backup plan.

“I am 99 percent certain this center is going to get built (in Mitford),” Stewart said. “I have $500,000 that was allocated to my district. Two other council members have money they did not use. If she (Robinson) pulls her money, I have been assured they will put their money in.”

 

COLUMBIA (Nov. 12, 2015) – For the second time in six months, the Richland County Planning Commission voted last week on whether to recommend commercial zoning for a property on Rimer Pond Road. After hearing from many residents on the road who spoke in opposition to the rezoning, followed by a heated 45-minute debate by its own members, the sharply divided Commission returned a split (4-4) vote on Nov. 4 that translated into no recommendation at all being sent to County Council concerning the rezoning.

The focus of the vote is a 5.23-acre parcel, located at the intersection of Rimer Pond Road and Longtown Road West/Round Top Church Road, that is for sale for commercial use by Hugh Palmer for $1,830,500, or $350,000 per acre. But that sale is dependent on the property being rezoned from its current Residential Medium Density (RSMD) zoning to Rural Commercial (RC) zoning. Of significant concern to residents who oppose the rezoning is the fact that Palmer’s son, Patrick Palmer, is the longtime Chairman of the Richland County Planning Commission, which is charged with making a recommendation on the rezoning to County Council. By law, Patrick Palmer was required to recuse himself from all discussions and voting on the rezoning.

The residents protesting the Palmer family’s continued efforts to rezone the property against the wishes of the neighborhood have expressed concern about the influence that Patrick Palmer’s position on the Commission might wield. That fire was fanned last week when Hugh Palmer, the applicant, was called on by the vice chairman, David Tuttle, to present the closing argument for the rezoning after those protesting the rezoning had finished speaking. It is usual practice, according to one Commissioner, for applicants before the Commission for a rezoning issue to be called first to speak. No one other than the applicant spoke in favor of the rezoning.

Residents speaking against the rezoning rested their case primarily on the effect commercial zoning could have on already increasing traffic congestion in the area and the domino effect it could have on future zoning of other properties in the area.

“If this property is rezoned commercial,” said Rimer Pond Road resident Trey Hair, “the domino effect down the road will eventually destroy our rural area.”

Others spoke to the increasing traffic that they say now regularly grinds to a standstill, slowing both commuters and school buses for long distances on the two-lane roads.

“My son at Blythewood High School texted me at 9:05 a.m. this morning and said the bus was not yet at school,” LongCreek Plantation resident Angela Finch said. “The traffic in this area is complete gridlock much of the time. Please don’t let this happen to our community.”

“We are not talking about a high intensity of traffic (on Rimer Pond Road),” said Commissioner Christopher Anderson, who favored the commercial zoning request. “There might be heavy traffic around the schools twice a day.”

Referring to a 2014 Annual Average Daily Trips (AADT) traffic count by the S.C. Department of Transportation (DOT), Anderson said the road has a “level A” traffic count.

The County’s planning staff also recommended commercial rezoning based in part on that traffic count, which staff members said was conducted in 2014 at Station No. 705 on Rimer Pond Road and at Station No. 713 on Longtown Road East.

But when contacted by The Voice as to exactly when and where on the road those counts were conducted, Angela Hance, Assistant Chief of Road Data Services in the Traffic Engineering Department of DOT, replied in an email that there were no actual traffic count numbers, just an estimate.

“The count at Station No. 705 was conducted between May and October 2014, when Rimer Pond Road was closed for repairs and, therefore, we did not use the data collected,” Hance said.

Hance said DOT instead estimated an AADT of 3,500 trips for 2014, 200 less than the actual count of 3,700 in 2013. Hance said the 2014 count taken on Longtown Road East was an actual count, but she did not say when it was taken. The Voice followed up for that information but had not received it at press time.

In his appeal to the Planning Commissioners, Hugh Palmer said he wanted the parcel rezoned for commercial use because a cell tower and an access road on the property made it unsuitable for residential use.

“This piece of property really has no residential value,” Hugh Palmer said. “No one will want eventually to live there from a residential perspective with these limitations.”

Rimer Pond Road resident Ken Queen said the Palmers came before Council in 2008 asking to have that same 5.23 acres and an adjoining 26 acres rezoned from RU to RSMD for the purpose of residential use.

“They were given the zoning they asked for,” Queen said. “They have now sold 26 acres of the property for residential development. They asked for RSMD zoning on this property and now they need to live with it.”

Commissioner Heather Cairns agreed that while the cell tower may impact the parcel’s usefulness, “that doesn’t mean the whole area should have commercial zoning put upon it because of that limitation.”

Both Cairns and Commissioner Beverly Frierson pointed out that the County’s zoning district summary describing the purpose of Rural Commercial zoning is flawed and not applicable to the Rimer Pond Road/LongCreek Plantation area.

That summary states that RC zoning is designed for areas within Richland County where residents of the more isolated agricultural and rural residential districts and residents located beyond the limits of service of the municipalities can receive convenience merchandising and services.

“Even in this description,” Cairns said, “it refers to isolated areas and this is not an isolated area.”

“This is not an area where another convenience is needed,” Frierson said. “This area is not beyond the limits of services of a municipality. This is not an area where we need to put more traffic, more congestion or a strip mall-type development.”

Anderson said he couldn’t understand why the Commission was having a difficult time approving commercial rezoning.

“It fits like a glove to the Comp Plan (the County’s 2014 Comprehensive Land Use Plan),” Anderson said, noting the Comp Plan recommends that commercial zoning in rural areas should be limited to intersections. “Here we have a traffic light and an intersection. I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around a denial on this.”

“I have a hard time saying that because two roads intersect and there’s a traffic light, that we should look at this as a place to stick commercial,” Cairns said. “Are we to expect every intersection should become commercial? It seems wrong to go into a totally residential area and establish commercial development.”

While Anderson continued to argue that the Comp Plan designated that the Rimer Pond Road intersection is exactly where commercial zoning should be established, LongCreek Plantation resident Jerry Rega reminded the Commission that the Comp Plan had actually designated ‘activity centers’ at certain intersections in the County specifically for commercial land use.

“This area is not in one of those designated ‘activity centers,’” Rega said. “Within five minutes of this area, there are three strip malls with a 50 percent vacancy,” he added. “So we’re talking about another strip mall in an area with an already low occupancy rate?”

“We’ve been coming down here for 25 years, consistently telling you we want our area to remain rural,” said Michael Watts who lives off of Rimer Pond Road. “We’re here again asking you to look out for us. This is a beautiful rural area, and we have all the conveniences we need within five minutes.”

David Poole, a LongCreek Plantation resident, said the Palmers would be the only ones to benefit from the property being rezoned commercial. He said it would not benefit the residents who live around it.

Although the zoning level that the Palmers are requesting allows such intense uses as service stations and grocery stores, Patrick Palmer told residents last spring that he envisioned such businesses as a Papa John’s, a dry cleaners and a dance studio as end users. But in October, he told three residents he met with about the rezoning that he did not know what businesses would go in there, that he had not had any offers.

After failing to garner enough support from the Planning Commission and Council last summer for their bid to establish the first commercial zoning on Rimer Pond Road, the Palmers withdrew their application in September just hours before it was to be voted on by Council. Had Council voted against the application, it could not, by statute, have come back before them for another year.

Next stop for the rezoning application and those opposing it is a public hearing to be held by Council at 7 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 24, at the Council Chambers at Hampton and Harding streets in Columbia. It will be the first of three votes Council will take on the issue and the only one of the three meetings where the public is allowed to speak.

Those who want to speak for or against the rezoning must arrive a few minutes early to place their names on the sign-in sheet. An agenda and information packet about the rezoning can be obtained by emailing Suzie Haynes at haynessu@rcgov.us or call her at 803-576-2176.

 

 

‘Will of the People’ Supersedes Ordinances

BLYTHEWOOD (Nov. 12, 2015) – What was expected to be a short, one-agenda-item Planning Commission meeting Monday evening ended with 1) a scramble by Town officials to first calm, then eject a member of the audience who became emotional while protesting a proposed affordable housing project in the Town Center District, and 2) a senior development manager threatening to bring a legal action against the Town after the Commission voted against approving a site plan for the proposed housing project.

The purpose of the regular monthly meeting was to consider a group development site plan approval for The Pointe, a 56-unit apartment campus planned for downtown Blythewood on 4 acres fronting on Highway 21 behind the Langford-Nord House. The developer of the project is Prestwick Companies of Atlanta, represented by Mark Bincz, Vice President of Engineering with Site Design, Inc. of Greenville and Jody Tucker , CEO of Prestwick.

During the public comment section at the beginning of the meeting, five members of the community spoke against the project which, according to the company, is affordable housing but not Section 8 housing.

“It’s clear that our roadways cannot handle increased traffic and why current zoning would even permit, let alone encourage it, defies all logic,” resident Cynthia Shull told the Commission. “According to the 2015 Congestion Management Plan on the SCDOT’s (Department of Transportation) website, the section of road that would be immediately impacted by the addition of the 56 apartments currently has a grade of ‘E’ (on an A-F scale), which indicates the roadway is significantly congested,” she said. “Adding 56 apartments would only exacerbate this problem.”

Residents: Traffic is the Problem

Danielle Andes and Irene Shepard also spoke about the negative impact of the development on traffic in the town.

Janice Miller spoke passionately and at length about the negatives the development would have on the town’s traffic and pedestrian safety, especially children. She said the Town laws and ordinances should be reviewed to limit this sort of development.

“My main concern,” Miller said, “is multi-family housing on Main Street in the Town Center District. Just because it’s zoned for R-5 housing doesn’t mean we have to develop it for R-5 housing. We need planned development here. We need to do what’s best for Blythewood. We need to go back and amend our zoning ordinances. Go back to our Master Plan.”

Planning Commission Chairman Malcolm Gordge pressed on to discuss concerns brought forward from the October meeting about traffic, storm water management and an incidental question about the qualifications for people obtaining housing at The Pointe.

DOT: Traffic is Fine

Addressing the question about traffic congestion, Binsz told Commissioners that the he had met with representatives of DOT who, he said, made a visual inspection of the site and were OK with the driveway location onto Main Street.

“DOT said a traffic study would not be required and that traffic on the road is currently about 3,600 cars a day, much less than the road can handle,” Binsz said. “DOT is not requiring turn lanes, or improvements of any kind.”

Town Planner Michael Criss read an email from Carol Hamlin, an engineer with DOT that stated, “With regard to potential turn lane improvements along Main Street, we have considered the existing traffic patterns and the scale of the current proposed 56-unit apartment development. It does not appear that any significant delay or safety concerns will be generated by this development.”

Commissioner Ernestine Rogers questioned when, exactly, the visual inspection of the traffic was made. Binsz said he thought it was at peak time of day.

Commissioner Don Sanders spoke up, thanking those who came to speak out on the proposed development.

“You make some excellent comments, but the only statement that was made that I don’t agree with is: ‘You all are just sitting there making decisions that don’t affect you and don’t bother you.’

The Will of the People

That’s incorrect,” Sanders said. “I’m here for one reason only. To look out for the Town of Blythewood and its best interest. Having said that, I know that zoning changes. Traffic changes. But one thing that does not change is the will of the people. And the will of the people was heard loud and clear here tonight. I’d like to make a motion for denial of approval of the site plan and call for a vote on this,” Sanders said.

After a long pause, Gordge said he wasn’t sure whether the Commission was in a position to deny the project and said he would like legal guidance. Gordge asked what the grounds would be for denial.

“Not being an attorney,” Sanders said, “I would say grounds would be the will of the people.”

Tucker rushed to the podium.

“I understand what the Town of Blythewood has planned. It planned (the zoning of) this property well before I got here. You created the ordinance. I didn’t. You can’t look at me as the bad guy. These folks have great comments,” Tucker continued, “and they’re not wrong. But we’ve done nothing wrong. Our project should not be penalized for (the zoning) you planned previously. Going forward you can change your zoning and put overlays in. You can change things. But Greenville tried to change it on us in the middle of us submitting permits. What happened? They went to a lawsuit and it didn’t work out for Greenville.”

Tucker reviewed the company’s various projects (around the country) and said the Mayor of Greenville eventually became a big supporter of the project after it was finished.

Mayor Ross Supports Project

“Mayor Ross of Blythewood wrote a letter of support for this project,” Tucker said. In that letter, Ross said ‘we are committed to working with non-profits and the private sector and support diversified workforce multi-family housing options.’

“You can’t turn us down for something that was done before we got here,” Tucker told the Commission. “We’re willing to work with you to make this happen. I’m asking you to make a decision on what’s right and what the law says.”

Commissioner Buddy Price said he wanted to clarify the Commission’s duties.

“We are to determine if this project and any other projects that come before us meet the criteria established for us,” Price said. “Meet those requirements; that’s what we’re here to determine. Not whether it’s appropriate (for the project) to be there or not.”

At that point Miller, who had spoken against the project earlier, began chastising Price and Gordge specifically and the Commission in general to the point that several Commissioners first asked her to be seated, then to leave.

“You are here for the Town of Blythewood,” Miller shouted back a number of times as she was leaving the meeting room. After leaving and then returning, Miller said, “Thank you Mr. Gordge and Mr. Price for not serving Blythewood,” before leaving a final time.

Town Administrator Gary Parker advised the board, “If the project meets storm water, traffic and other requirements, then you would have no basis for denial.”

“The will of the people overrides any zoning, any time,” Sanders insisted, “and I will vote against anything that’s not the will of the people because this is what’s good for the Town.”

Referring to the developer’s representatives, Sanders said, “These are not bad people. Greenville is a great town and everything is done correctly there, but the people in the Town of Blythewood have said ‘no’ and I’ll vote ‘no’.”

The audience applauded and the Commissioners voted 3-2 to deny approval of the site plan, with Gordge and Price voting against denial.

Re-vote Next Month?

Turner told The Voice after the meeting that the developer would probably ask to meet with the Blythewood Mayor and the Town’s attorney about the matter.

“The City needs to let us know if that was a valid vote,” Tucker said. “If it wasn’t, then we’ll be back at the December Planning Commission meeting for another vote under the terms of what the law allows versus the will of the people. We met all the requirements.”

Tucker said he had no interest in seeking legal remedy.

“I’m interested in the Town of Blythewood following its ordinances and voting based on what they’ve already approved,” Tucker said.

The Planning Commission will meet at 6 p.m., Monday, Dec. 7 at the Manor.