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| The following summary minutes have not been approved by Simpsonville City Council. An official copy of the minutes will be available after adopted by City Council at City Hall 118 NE Main St. Simpsonville. Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, notice of this meeting date, time, place and Agenda was posted on the bulletin board at City Hall and faxed to the newspapers, radio stations, television stations and any concerned citizens. |
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Mike Newman called the meeting to Order. The following people were present: Donnie McDowell, Carolyn Mahaffey, Roy Shelton, James Boyd, and Mike Newman. Also present was David Dyrhaug and Kevin Robinson Mr. Witkowski unable to attend due to a family illness.
Will be discussing final draft of Simpsonville Pay Day Loan Ordinance. Some discussion about the Tree Ordinance and the Simpsonville Design Overlay Districts.
Pay Day Loan Ordinance – The concept for regulating pay day-loan establishments was taken directly from Greenville . The verbiage on the draft ordinance that is lined out is considered flamatory and should be removed. Pay day-loan establishments that become non-conforming uses should be regulated similar to other non-conforming uses throughout the City. This draft ordinance will be on the agenda for the August 7 th Planning Commission meeting.
Tree Ordinance - Mr. Robinson felt best route to go would be to take what Greenville County has done with their tree ordiance, which is not complete yet. Try to tailor it to what the City has done and add a few things about the tree survey, the arborist, etc. into the verbiage of that ordinance. Took a final draft to the June voting meeting and there were items that were not acceptable to Council and they sent it back to Planning Commission. Discussed tree credits, dbh, replacement of trees that did need to be taken down, the proper over-sight for the arborist to follow through with the tree survey and putting it all in the proper order. Mr. Newman feels they should take the short cut and if it works in the County it works in Simpsonville and if the contractors know it at a county level they know and understand it at the City. Mr. Robinson doesn’t feel the update version for the County is what’s on-line at this time. Some tweaking still needs to be done on it. Thinks the ordinance need to be more of a regional consensus for the entire county. Mr. Robinson said he would like to bring it up at another council workshop a month or two down the road. Mr. Robinson will try to get a time frame as to when county will be done and Simpsonville can then get started on finalizing their ordinance.
Design Overlays - Exercises were completed earlier identifying 3 separate areas, which is an increase from the original two districts proposed. The following areas were identified on the map: Original Fairview Road area. Old Georgia Road overlay divided into two with a more urban area to it.
Section on priorities with specific criteria was identified. Safety is the number one issue – the priority of other criteria varies depending on the district. Need to break down to key areas to focus on then can go back and amend ordinance to fit the character of each one.
W Georgia Road is red on the map – transitional preservation area, an extension of downtown, or traditional mixed use design on a smaller more walkable scale should be required. Will be different from other overlay areas in that standard should reflect some of the recommendations that staff has such as preserving the old building facades. Create higher standards and require new buildings match those of the area and the downtown. Build on a smaller scale closer to the street. Orient buildings closer to the road with parking to the rear. Preserve existing trees and landscaped areas and landscape around the road. Require sidewalks and bike paths to encourage multi-modes of transportation and create more of a pedestrian oriented atmosphere. Require alternatives to detention ponds or storm water management as these are largely small lots and will be very evident from the road. Don’t want to have detention ponds all over the place. Keep and/or increase the mixed use nature of the area so it more closely resembles downtown.
The secondary portion of W. Georgia Road which is purple on the map is largely more suburban in nature. Area characterized as a zone of more intense commercial, largely undeveloped larger lots located further from the downtown than the previously described area. Preserving some tracts of larger open land ensuring connectivity, accessibility and safety for both automobile and pedestrian use and assuring that structures such as big boxes can effectively be re-used in the future. These are all high priority in this area.
Want to create higher standards for buildings than those currently seen on Fairview . Aesthetics are important but breaking down of facades on larger buildings should be more important. Compartmentalization is a unique concept where big box stores are required to put in water lines, extra sewer lines and such so the buildings can be broken down later on into smaller stores and re-used so they don’t sit there empty. Facades are typically broken down every 30-40 feet where a door or entry way can go in. Height may be an issue to take into consideration.
Place maximum percentage of allowable parking in front of the buildings and require orientations that require foot traffic and reduce store to store driving. These shouldn’t necessarily have to be built right up on front of the street. Don’t want a sea of asphalt in the front but a percentage of the parking should be to the front. Discussion on how Greenridge was developed. To encourage foot traffic need to require higher percentages of open space and clustering of the open space into pocket park type areas. Useable sizes where you could actually go and sit.
Require the development of a specified number of amenities such as arcades and sitting areas. Stuff that you can do on the outside so it’s useable space and not just vacant areas. Require internal access records and other methods of connectivity to prevent unnecessary traffic on major roads. Create a parking maximum per 1,000 sq feet instead of a minimum. They can go over the maximum if they use pervious materials so there’s less of an impact. More environmentally friendly.
Fairview Road – shows green on the map. Several different areas of development. Largely built out – suburban in nature. There are a few undeveloped tracts. Auto oriented extension of downtown with emphasis on amenities such as hotels, theaters and mixed-use semi-urban developments. Automobile accessibility in this area ranked number 2. Encourage redevelopment of several properties in this area. Don’t want Fairview Road development to spill over 385.
Instead of just placing restrictions need to create incentives where we can relax some requirements to encourage others. Encourage mixed use and higher density development. An overlay will supersede what’s currently in the zoning – might want to look into that.
Can restrict certain uses based on design of the building. Can encourage that mix-use develop in that area. Discussed the Burdette building and what was going on with that particular building. When incentives are created for design criteria, a lot of the incentives are to streamline the process. When you do something like that you need to introduce an ordinance to tweak the process.
Now at the point of starting to draft some of these recommendations up. Try to come up with some examples. Will revisit in August at a workshop. David Dyrhaug says this serves as a good general strategy of where to go. Need to work on becoming more specific and concrete of what the actual requirements and regulations would be.
Need to review the information submitted by Clemson University and Professor Bob Bainbridge. Strategies for Future Plan can be used to review for parts of this. There were great ideas in both of those submissions.
Will discuss ATM machine on Georgia Road at the hearing in August. Will work on rectifying that at that time. They will have a representative at the meeting from the bank and the developer.
Greenways – Would like to have representation at future meetings to see if we can get Greenways to come into Simpsonville or as close as possible. Discussing trying to get a green print as opposed to a blue print that shows the different options of open land, available land, easements and such that exist in and around the area and can be used to create greenways and showing options to make connections with those. Becoming quite popular in new developments. Documented evidence that they raise property values a significant amount. Also help the health of the citizens. Might be worth working into. A meeting is scheduled for August 23 rd . Proposing some kind of field trip on a bus to take members of Planning Commission and Council from Ft. Inn and Simpsonville to show them examples of Greenways, both private and public.
Meeting adjourned.
Respectfully submitted
PAMELA J. BODKINS City Clerk
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| 118 N E Main Street, Simpsonville, SC 29681 |
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