 All right, let's go ahead and get started. I hope everyone's doing well. Today is the October 5th, 2023, City of Columbia Board of Zoning Appeals. My name's John Gregory, Chair for the Board and will be serving Chair for today's meeting. At this time, I wanna introduce other members of the Board, Davis Whittle to the my far left, Celia McIntosh, Catherine Finner, Marcellus Promise, and Charard Duvall to my far right. I also wanna recognize staff and thank them for all their help, Hope Hasty Zoning Administrator, Erica Hyen, Deputy Zoning Administrator, and Sky Robinson Barnes, Land Use Board Coordinator. So the Board is charged with hearing applications for special exceptions, variances, and administrative appeals. All testimony is recorded for the record and anyone wishing to speak will need to be sworn in and come to the podium to speak. No testimony can be taken from the floor. When you come to the podium, please state your name and speak clearly into the microphone because this meeting is being recorded. Applicants with cases before the Board are allotted a presentation time of 10 minutes. This time also includes all persons presenting information on behalf of the applicant. This time limit does not include any questions asked by the Board or staff regarding the case. Any member of the public may address the Board in intervals of three minutes or five minutes if by a spokesperson for a body of three or more, which doesn't look to be the case today, but the applicant will then have five minutes for rebuttal. The Board reserves the right to amend these limits on a case-by-case basis. So at this time we'll swear those in who are gonna be presenting and those of you who plan to speak must be sworn if you're here as an applicant or are here to speak in any case, please stand at this time and raise your right hand. Thank you all. Do you affirm or test that the testimony you will give today is the truth and nothing but the truth? All right, great, thank you. At this time I'll turn the meeting over to Ms. Hastie. Good afternoon. We'll start with the consent agenda and we just have one item, which is the approval of minutes from the September 7th Board meeting. Okay, can we get a motion? Move to approve the consent agenda. All right, we have a motion, do we have a second? Second. All right, motion in the second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, the motion is approved. Thank you. All right, moving on to the regular agenda, we have only one item today and it's case 20230028V, 3030 North Main Street and it's a variance request to the maximum Sun height standard. And we do have the applicant here this afternoon to present his request. Okay, great. Yes, sir, we all plead, yeah, please come to the podium. Thank you very much. I'm Hal Turner. I'm the son of the guy who wrote the application. Actually, he's my son, I got it backwards. My wife is Carolette Cromer Turner and she and her family have owned Cromer's Peanuts and operated it for 88 years in Columbia. And we're here today to seek a variance that we were granted about three years ago for a sign to be erected at 17 feet 10 inches. And I'm going to yield to Reed Rungy who is our manager who's going to cover the points with you very briefly, but essentially we have a visibility problem because of the road construction that effectively raised the road and Lord Cromer's relative to the road as well as the overgrowth of the state supported greenway beside us which has served to block the visibility as you come across Main Street. So at this point, I will end my comments unless you have any questions. The only thing I can tell you, I was the guy that used to clean the monkey pens at Dutch square. So, Reed. Thank you guys. My name is Reed Rungy. Firstly, thank you obviously for taking time out of your busy days today to listen to us. So obviously as most of you may know, Cromer's has been a staple here for 80 years. The sign that we're meeting about today is from the 50s. It's followed us to every location. Sorry, gotta shake these jitters. This is the first time I've been in this setting. One of the main issues that we're having is the concern that the 17 feet, in the past three years, we've been able to observe the outgoing traffic and the traffic going through our lot. We get a lot of commercial work trucks and vans and we are concerned that the 17 feet will not be quite enough for the clearance. The sign is originally 20 feet, which means we wouldn't have to augment it at all. We would basically leave it as is. And we are fairly confident based on the information that we've been given by flagship signs who will be working on the restoration of the sign that the 20 feet that we are asking for will be plenty. And to Mr. Halterner's point, we are seeing some visibility issues. As you can see on this picture that those woods and brush have grown significantly over the past couple of years. And customers, quite frankly, just have a hard time finding us. And we believe that this sign essentially will be that spotlight that guides customers to us and it will bring much deserved traffic to the North Main Area. And that's pretty much all I have. If you guys have any additional questions, I mean, Mr. Hal here would be glad to answer them. Before you sit down, does anyone from the board have any questions? Yeah. How you doing today? Good, good. The location of the sign, I was a little bit, it wasn't all the way clear to me. Is it gonna be attached to the building as it previously was on the older building? Or is it gonna be on a pole standalone sign in front of the building? It will be on a pole. So if you're able, I saw that last picture, I could actually give a good example of where it would be. So right here, that tree kind of under where you see chromars on the sign, it's gonna be to the right of that where those bushes are, is where this would go. Where those four bushes are right there behind that little skinny tree? Yes, sir, yes, sir. It would be right in front of the- Sort of under the sea. Yes, yes, it would be right in front of that tree on the far right. And it would stand, you know, from that, we initially wanted to have it on the building, but because of the awnings and the trees adjacent to the business, it just, it wouldn't have worked out. It wouldn't have given us the visibility that we were needing. And we feel like this would be the best place to put it. So, okay, I can see it clearly now. Okay, I get it. I get it. Okay. I'm a little confused and I guess I was thinking you might be more towards the corner of the building. And the reason being, when that tree has leaves and grows up, it might actually block your sign. We did test it. We kind of drove down and, you know, from each side, if you're driving down the hill or up, it will give perfect visibility of the sign. Yeah, I see. Okay. I wish, I actually, I saw an email thread and I thought there was a picture that would give like kind of a mock up. I apologize, I would have brought it right there. I see. This one makes sense to me. Okay, I see. Yeah, that one right there. I see. Yeah. We're, and then I can see where he's carrying the trucks. Are you gonna have it perpendicular to the street or more parallel with the street? More parallel. Okay. Yes, sir. I don't have any other. May I add a point? Yeah. Yes, sir. Understanding that that property to the right of our building is part of the greenway and will be connecting ultimately rails to trails. So hopefully it's our expectation that that will be cleared by the state of South Carolina. And we are likely going to invest in some, just on our own, clearing it, having some landscape just to make it a little bit more attractive in there. Yeah, that's great. Thank you. Any other questions for the applicant? All right, thank you very much. All right, at this time, would anyone in the audience? I don't see any, but I'm gonna ask the question. Anyone else to speak on this case? Okay. All right, so we don't need to have y'all return up. So we're gonna, at this time, testimony's closed and we'll just move into board discussion. So you only resolve. You wanted a motion, I believe? Yeah, let's just do it. Yeah, if y'all are ready. I think that's what you wanted, right? All right, sure. Can I ask a question to Ms. Hastie? Yeah. So my question is, I saw the email that was sent out by Erica with the original 2018 ruling for the 176 sign. I saw that earlier. My question was, and then I didn't quite get it from that when you sent that paperwork. Why was the sign rule put in place in the first place for that particular area side of town? What were they trying to do with reducing sign? Do y'all know what that was? I think just due to that being in the North Main Corridor, that North Main Overlay, and they wanted more of a pedestrian scale of signs and things like that, not as much visual clutter up high in the air, so that's the reason, I believe. Okay, that's just important for me to understand. Like, I mean, I like the idea of the sign, but I'm like, what was the purpose of the rule? And now that I understand that, and I see the new sidewalks and everything that's over there, I get it now. Okay, that makes sense. Does that make sense to y'all? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Good question. Thank you, Shor. Do we want to have a motion? I move that we approve subject to staff comments. Second. Motion and a second. No, no. Is there a discussion on the motion? Yeah, so we were, yeah, Shor, you weren't here when we had the, we were gonna do the motion and the second and then move into board discussion to discuss the motion. Oh, okay. Let's officially move into board discussion and we'll discuss the motion if there is anything to discuss. I guess the only thing that I can see was that the question is in number four, it would effectively prohibit or unreasonably restrict the utilization of the property. I mean, I don't think it'll unreasonably restrict the utilization of the property. I'm having a little trouble with that. That said, I think it is counter weighed by number five, which says that it's for the public good. And I can see that people not screeching to, pulling across things to try to pull into Cromers to get them some peanuts or whatever is probably a counter balancing good. That's why I asked the question of exactly where it was placed because my concern was that it was much closer to the street and would become part of that visual clutter. If you've seen historic photos of, you know, Assembly North Main, it was, you know, just that classic horrible mess of signs, but this being more associated with the building and it's felt a lot, a lot better about it. Agreed. Yeah, those are good points. I'm good. Any other comments? Okay. No other board discussion. So we have a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, the motion's approved. Thank y'all very much. Thank you. Thank y'all. Move to adjourn. Y'all can take it. We know where y'all are. Yeah, yeah. Thanks, it's really good. All right. All right. We have a motion to adjourn. Move to adjourn. Motion and do we have a second? Second. All right. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion's approved.