 Welcome to the October 2021 Board of Zoning Appeals meeting members, staff and guests. We ask for your patience during this hybrid meeting. Multiple staff members are behind the scenes to make sure all applicants and citizens are able to communicate with the board at the appropriate times. The applicants are participating in person. The public is able to participate in person or via virtual options. The public may stream the meetings through City TV accessed at youtube.com slash user slash Columbia SC government. The public may submit letters and statements via email to COC board meeting at columbiasc.gov leading up to and or during the meeting as the account will be monitored during the meeting. Email's letters will be read into the record by staff. The public may participate via phone by calling 1-855-925-2801 and when prompted please enter meeting code 2323. Those participating by phone will receive three options. Star one will allow you to listen. Star two allows you to record a voice message that will be read into the record. Please make sure to speak clearly and leave your name and the case information so we know which case you're calling about. And star three will allow a participant to be placed in a queue to speak live when prompted. At any time while listening on the call you can hit the star in your chosen option. We do ask that you wait until your specific case is called before you hit star three. You can also stream the meeting at publicinfo.com slash COC BOZA-OCT 2021. And if you're participating by phone while also streaming the meeting on your computer please just make sure to mute the audio on your computer to avoid any feedback issues. And also to note there's just a large audio delay between Zoom and the live recording so you may notice us pause a couple of times it's just to allow the audio to catch up. And I'll do roll call. Mr. Dinkins. Here. Mr. Gregory. Here. Mr. Primus. Here. Ms. Finner. Here. Mr. Gignard is absent and Ms. McIntosh. Here. We have a quorum. Applicants with requests before the Board of Zoning Appeals are allotted a presentation time of 10 minutes. This time should include but is not limited to an overview of the project, case history, and any pertinent meetings held regarding the request. This time also includes all persons presenting information on behalf of the applicants such as attorneys, engineers, and architects. This time limit does not include any questions asked by the Board of Zoning Appeals or staff regarding the request. Any member of the general public may address the Board in intervals of three minutes or five minutes if by a spokesperson for an established body or for a group of three or more. The applicant will then have five minutes for a bubble. The Board reserves the right to amend these procedures on a case by case basis. All right. Those of you who plan to speak must be sworn. If you are here as an applicant or here to speak in any case, please stand at this time and raise your right hand. All right. Do you affirm or attest that the testimony you will give today is the truth and nothing but the truth? Thank you. And before I get going with the consent agenda, just a few housekeeping matters. I wanted to just reiterate that case 2021-0091, which is a special exception on Elmwood Avenue to establish a school that has been deferred to next month. So that will not be heard today. And case five and six, which is 2021-0086 and 2021-0087 for 1206 Mount Vernon and 2214 Harper Street. Those were withdrawn by the applicant prior to the meeting, so those won't be heard today either. And the Board uses the consent agenda to approve non-controversial or routine matters by a single motion in vote. If a member of the Board or the general public wishes to discuss an item on the consent agenda, that item is removed and then placed on the regular. The Board then approves the remaining consent agenda items. And I will review the consent agenda. We do have one member of the Board who is recused from case number two. So when we vote on the consent agenda, you'll just need to make sure to split the votes. Rachel, does it advise to also recuse myself from that? Okay. So that would mean we would not have a quorum for case number two. Can you explain exactly what that? Without a quorum to vote on a case, we need to have a quorum. So we would not be able to vote on that matter. It would get pushed to the next month to ensure that there's a quorum. The first item is the approval of the September 2nd, 2021 minutes. In case 2021-0088 for 802 G streets will have to be deferred to next month due to lack of quorum. The next matter is case number three, which is 2021-0089. This is for 3421 North Main Street. This is a special exception to expand the footprint of an existing residential care campus. And to note, this is not expanding bed count or increasing resident count. There's just to add a new structure on the campus. And case number four is 4701 James Street. This is a special exception to permit a beauty salon and a residence as a home occupation. And if anyone wishes to speak on a case or remove a case from the consent agenda prior to the board vote, please let us know now. And we will pause to give time for audio to catch up just for any public comment. Can you approach the podium, ma'am? And please state your name for the record. My name is Pat Meyer. 3421 North Main I'm concerned with. And the reason I'm concerned is because it appears that each year they are expanding and that's not a whole big lot to expand on. We won't get into all that now, but we'll remove that item from the consent agenda and you'll have your chance and we'll go through the normal procedure. So thank you very much. Thank you. Yes, it'll go on the regular agenda. All right, so we will move that one to after case eight on the agenda. Do we have any emails or callers? All right, and there's no callers or emails. So that for the consent agenda, you all will be voting on the approval of the minutes and 4701 James Street. So item number one and item number four. Okay. I'd like to ask for a motion for the consent agenda, please. I move that we approve subject to staff comments and as amended. Second. Okay, we have a motion to second. All of the favor, please say aye. All right. Any opposed? Okay, motion passed. All right. And at this point, we will move into a period of executive session if the board chooses to do so. We do. I'd like to make a motion that we move into executive session. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. All right. Any opposed? Okay. All right. And you all will just go to the conference room. Okay. I'd like to make a motion to resume a normal board meeting. We're going to come out of executive session and I'd like to note for the record that no action was taken during our executive session. Can I get a second? Second. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. All right. Any opposed? No, which is a request for a rehearing for case 2021-0084, which was for 1511 Gregg Street, which came before you in the last meeting. I just want to go over the rehearing process from our rules and procedures that should a request for a rehearing be placed on the agenda. The party requesting the rehearing shall be notified to appear before the board. Testimony is allowed only by leave of the board if necessary for the limited purpose of developing an understanding of the nature of the request. If the motion to grant a rehearing is approved, the case shall be put on the calendar for a hearing at the next meeting and will be posted and re-advertised. I just wanted to make that clear. I think there might be some people in the audience today who wanted to speak on this matter from the public. There's not going to be any public input for this. That would be if a rehearing was granted. And I think we had someone on the phone line for the same reason. So I just wanted to state that public input isn't taken for a request such as this. Thank you very much. Well, we have a, these happen every now and then. So this is a request for a rehearing. So would the applicants like to approach or we received, we received your letter. So I don't know. I just, it's pretty clear to us, but don't know. Would you like an opportunity approach for a couple of minutes or would you like for us just to proceed? Okay. And before you begin, let me reiterate what Rachel said. So this is a request for a rehearing. So this is, this is not what we want to give you a couple of minutes to describe to us why you do think there should be a rehearing, but this is not to go over what you think, you know, an error that we may have made or issues why you think the request should have been granted. That is not what you're giving the opportunity to speak on. Okay. All right. And state your name. Well, I want to thank you for the opportunity to even request reconsideration for a rehearing. And I think after the hearing in September. And would you state your name for the record? Oh, I'm sorry, Julie Ann Avan. Okay. Thank you. Okay. We are asking to present new evidence and evidence of an error or mutual mistake that affected the outcome. And that's what we'd like to do. Right. And that's what we, in a new hearing. That's, and exactly today, what we want to hear is what the new evidence is for the rehearing. Nothing to do with the mistake we may have made. I'm sorry. I didn't understand what you said. Yeah, just please want to just make sure you understand what we're asking is once you describe for a couple of minutes what the new evidence is that you're presenting to us. That's the goal here, not to go over a possible mistake. Just so you're clear. So the reasons we're asking for it? Yes. Okay. You know, we feel that there was a conflict of interest with one of the board members. Okay. But that. No, you don't want me to. No, we can't have that. And it's not that I don't want to. That's not, the request for a rehearing may only be granted if you present evidence that could not have recently been presented before you approach. Is there evidence? Yeah. What is it that you're? Yes, new evidence. Correct. That could not have been reasonably withheld. So any air that we may have made of conflict of interest, although that may be important to your case moving forward. That's not that can't be discussed today. That's not okay. I'm really sorry. I'm having a very hard time understanding. I'm going to ask if I may. It's hard to speak with mask on. I'll take it off for a second so we can talk. Okay. Yeah, sure. Steve. And Mr. Ham, you came in after we sworn the members, correct? You have not been sworn. Yes, I came in from a meeting. Right. So you have not been sworn. Yes, please do. Please raise your right hand. Of course. Yeah. Do you attest that the testimony you give today is the truth and nothing but truth. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. Trying to listen very carefully to you, Mr. Chairman. We are number one for purposes of your record and your procedures are the letter that we filed was intended to outline the materials that we were not aware of at the time of the hearing on September the 2nd. And again, I heard you carefully. So I'm attempting to argue the strength or weakness of anything, but that is a material issue to us. And again, I'm trying to be responsive. I'm not raising the conflict issue. But we do, we do believe that it is part of the original hearing. And again, I want to be very, very respectful of this zoning board. I'm a former state agency head. I've been in state government. I've been in private practice. And as a citizen of my community, I want to thank all of you for your service. So our standing here is not intended to try to cast aspersions on the good faith efforts. But number one, we think that the the what we believe to be substantially similar exception granted in previous years, which we weren't aware of how closely identical it was. We did not know about it. And in good faith thought we had checked everything. But anyway, we missed it. That would be one of the basis. And without getting into any details, we would we would be at the new hearing presenting evidence on the application of the criteria that apply to this exception that we we don't believe were correctly applied. I think I can say that in the combination of those. And again, I'm chairman, I am really, I want to be entirely respectful to each and every one of you. We raised in our letter concerns about certain statements in the record that we believe in actor applied inaccurate standards, and called into question in standards that apply. And we would intend in the new hearing sir to address those quickly, point those out. But we very strongly believe that the record that is now in front of you, it is unfortunate the way that it sits. We think it's in this board interest in the community's interest to revisit it, eliminate some of the extraneous issues that may be somewhat emotional. We don't want to get into that here. And we believe a providing disinformation, one of which was the exemption that been previously approved, we believe is we would use anybody but argue was substantially similar. I think I need to stop there because you're I'm trying not to do and that's okay. There's a difference between if you think we made an error, and we do request and that's, you know, that's a different matter. And that's okay, you let her outline that and certainly entitled opinion. We do believe that some errors were made. Again, I don't believe they were intentional. We think there was some misunderstanding. But unfortunately, those misunderstandings have a tremendously negative impact on the program that understood and there's avenues. There's avenues. You know, if you disagree with our opinion, there are avenues that they can pursue, which it sounds like I do. But I guess I do have a question regarding the new material that you know that you're presenting here that you know, these the matter of the 2013 case is I mean, it's public record in this. You can find it on our website easily. So I guess I would just dispute the applicant's claim that that's new evidence. I mean, it's a matter of record. You're the chairman. I respect the position that you're announcing. I would say with all great respect, you're underlying transcript extraordinarily troubling regarding the application of the terms of the exceptions. And again, I'm trying to avoid this very and you may you may be correct. But if so, that's not grounds to request a new hearing. That would be an appeal request. And while I respectfully disagree, I'm well aware that you and this board make that final decision. We are because we think that a racially discriminatory basis was established in the record, which is as a potential to be offensive in our community. And again, I'm not I'm trying to be so careful, Mr. Chairman. We think that that is right. I think what you're saying, I mean, just talk where this where does this leave us? You go? Well, that's, that's tough. So you go to court. Because that would have to be our next. So we're wanting to avoid that. We're worried that we have acquired the underlying property. It very advantageous situation. And if we have to go to court, we're going to lose both the funding and the property that we're trying to protect. So whether that's a standard that you apply, I don't argue to that. But we simply ask that a neutral reading of the underlying record ought to cause this fine board with you fine citizens. I think the South Carolina Supreme Court says that there are abilities to make certain equitable decisions to make sure that decisions are made consistent with existing statutory construction. We don't think that happened here. We think that I'd say I have no argument to anything that you said. And we believe that given the opportunity, we could clarify the record. This board would have a new transcript that would be devoid of certain references. And we simply respectfully request that mercy be given the opportunity to make those new presentations. We think it would be beneficial to the community, would be beneficial to the citizens that mercy serves. And if you all do not have that opportunity, and this is not your responsibility. So let me say we're very concerned because of the delays in the judicial process. We will lose out on a major opportunity for a program that benefits youth in Columbia. So I think that's all I ought to say, Mr. Chairman. I do hope each of you views my comments. Yeah, I think you're crystal clear. I certainly fully understand exactly. And I live up to you good people. We certainly helped you. We think you have well, thank you for the ability to do it. Okay. All right. Well, thank you for your testimony. Thank you very helpful. So at this point, I would like to ask one member of the board to address one item that was briefly brought up. So you could you issue a brief statement, please. Sure. I think it's relevant because should the board decide to have a rehearing, I would not recuse myself in the future. Because my firm and we personally have no financial interest in this application. So that's one of her to speak briefly to the conflict of interest paragraph that appeared in the letter. Okay, well, we've heard from the applicants, there is no public input for this matter. That's just a procedural thing. And we're really not going to have any board discussion because we had an executive session, although no, no, no action was taken. But at this point, I would like to ask for a motion to either approve or deny the request for the rehearing from a member of the board. I move that we deny the request for a rehearing on the basis that there has been no new information that could not have been presented reasonably presented at the hearing. None of that has been presented to us at this time. Okay, we have a motion. Do we have a second? We have a motion and a second. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. All right. Anyone oppose? Aye. Okay. Thank you very much. All right, Mr. Chairman, we will move on to the regular agenda. We will use the following outline. Staff will introduce the case. Applicant will have 10 minutes to make a presentation. The board may ask questions during or after that presentation. And the public will be allowed to participate via email voicemail or phone comment. The applicant will have time for a rebuttal if necessary and then action by the board. As I had mentioned previously, item number five and six withdrew and item number seven deferred. So we are on to item number eight, which is 2021-0092. This is for 2324 two-notch road. It's a special exception to permit a convenience store. I believe the applicant is present and she is welcome to come to the podium. Hello, how are you doing today? Good afternoon. Please state your name. My name is Sabrina Hammons and I am here in regards to the special exception for my convenience store. The store was previously a store before the exception was needed. The previous owners obviously did not abide by the rules and regulations of submitting their application for their business license. So it lapsed, which led me to do a special exception today. This is my first time opening up a store. So I'm very new at this. I've gone through a lot of different roadblocks and I'm here today to try to go past this one. For the actual neighborhood, I just feel like the convenience store that I want to possess is going to be good for the neighborhood, only because before it has had some problems. So I've came in and I've cleaned it up as much as I can. I've repainted. I redid all the glass, the broken glass. I made the scenery look nice. I actually spent some money and time into making the community store better for the community. They were used to it being what it was and when I came in, I decided it needed a new look and a new person because no one knew me. They just knew all the previous owners and they represented that store as the previous owners or the previous store. So now I'm here just asking you guys for an exception to let you know that I do plan to abide by all the rules with keeping the ordering down also trash. I've ordered all the receptacles for the store. I have four bins. They wouldn't give me a big one because of the space that I have for the store is small but I did make sure they gave me the most that I could get just to keep the trash down. I have blowers. I have an employee that I make sure will blow the driveway and the surrounding area of the store to keep the trash. I also ordered the cigarette butt receptacles to keep down that type of trash as well as planted little flowers just to make it look better. As opposed to the crime prevention, I did reach out to one of the police, Mr. Bell, with joining any actions with keeping crime down around the area lately for the last month and a half because that's when I purchased the store. I've seen tremendous change. A lot of people seem tremendous change. It's gotten a lot of people come up to me and just tell me how great I've done to the store and I mean it makes me feel good because I am a woman and I've just put a lot of pride into trying to make this a better place for the community to come and shop and be welcome and feel at home. I did name it BYF which stands for build your family because I'm all about family and outreach. That's pretty much what I'm trying to do. Just give back and let everyone welcome in that neighborhood know that they have a clean, safe environment to come shop where they don't have to feel scared or don't want to stop there because there's people standing outside the store or anything like that. So very good. Very good presentation. I thought your application was thorough. I think you did a good job answering the criteria that were used that were asked to vote this request on. Looks like you've done your homework. Thank you. Which is important. Do any members of the board have any questions for our applicant? Very good. Okay with any members of the public like to speak on this matter? I haven't seen any emails come in but we'll pause just for a minute to see if any calls just to let the audio catch up. It doesn't look like anyone's on the line. Okay I wouldn't imagine there's going to be any but do we have any board discussion? All right simple enough like to ask for a motion. Yeah I'd like to make a motion that we approve this special exception request subject to the staff comments and application. Second. We have a motion in a second. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right very good. Good luck with your story. All right and we will go back to item number three which was removed from the consent agenda. This is case 2021-0089 for 3421 North Main Street. If the applicant wants to approach the podium I will get back to that case on the slideshow here. Thank you. Because this was on the consent agenda I have not sworn in nor have several other folks. Thank you. Anyone who wishes to speak on this matter please stand and raise your right hand. Okay do you swear that the testimony that you will give us today is the truth and nothing but the truth? I do. Thank you. Please say your name. Wonderful. My name is John Powell. I am with Seed Architecture and representing Providence Home which is the property currently on your screen. Providence Home was granted a special exception a number of years ago to expand a number of beds that it serves. Providence Home is a residential care facility on North Main Street. Recently the Providence Home as an entity purchased an additional parcel adjacent to them and contiguous to the campus and so with that parcel the Providence Home would like to build a chapel. This is not a request for additional beds. This is not a request for additional parking. There is no intended additional people coming and going from the property. This is primarily to serve the men who live here and engage in the services here. The staff and others who are already part of the Providence Home workings and ministry. Providence Home has received a great deal of support from community members. The city, the county, greatly encouraged by the work they're doing. Rob Settle is the executive director. He can answer questions as well about what Providence Home does and is in the community. I also have with me Tom Britt who's the civil engineer on the project. He worked closely with me in organizing the campus so that we're not overlapping property lines or any other setbacks. What we're asking for is not a special exception for the building per se but actually the integration of this new parcel that was purchased a little over a year ago into the existing special exception for the overall property. Rachel can correct me if I'm not accurate in that but hopefully that's a brief enough explanation. Again there's no intended impact on traffic flow or on additional beds in this facility. It's really simply to enhance the campus life. They already have chapel services but it's in an existing building. It's not well suited for that purpose and so this is to provide a service on that campus that's already going on but in a better way. So is this a new building? It would be a new building. So in the heart of what you're looking at there's a sort of a reddish dash. On Main Street there are already two buildings that front Main Street. There are already two buildings that front the the rear street. I'm trying to Elmhurst. There's another one that faces another street. This is going to be actually in the middle. So the front the quote unquote front of the chapel building is actually going to face into the center of the campus. It will hardly be visible at all from Main Street. It will hardly be visible from Elmhurst in the back. You can see it there. It's the building that's furthest south and actually all the lines you see between the property line and that chapel building are all the various setbacks and clearances. You can see from that the building is almost 40 feet off of that other property line. So there's an intentionality about keeping this within the existing campus infrastructure. So the goal is not to present a major challenge to you or project before the board but we would appreciate you are granting this expansion to the special exemption that was granted a number of years ago for the campus. Okay. If you have any particular questions for either Rob Settle or Tom Brett they're certainly available to answer questions but keep this brief. I'm glad to turn it back over to the board. Since it's on the regular agenda I just have one question. Are you demoing any buildings and or is this just strictly new construction? This is strictly new construction. So once upon a time there was a storage shed that was roughly in this location that was taken out previously. There's an existing concrete pad that is remaining that we would be pulling up but no there are no buildings presently there that we would have to tear down in order to build this. Okay. Thank you. It's incorporating that parcel but also just the new construction on there too. It's just an expansion of the campus basically to incorporate that new parcel. Tell me I've misspoke. I apologize. Please clarify. Correct me where I'm wrong. So it is just expanding the campus. So you're right that it's adding in that new parcel but it's also referencing just the construction of the new building on the campus. So both parts are relevant. Yeah. So and I also just want to note that the location of the proposed building is completely outside of the North Main design district that's on the front half of the parcel that faces North Main and then as you get back towards Elmhurst the design district does not expand all the way. It is. It's right next to it. Yeah. Any other questions from the board? All right. Thank you. Certainly. Thank you. All right. Are there any members from the public who would like to speak on this matter? As I stated before my name is Pat Meyer. The reason I think Providence House said one thing but they have a lot of people that's just constantly in the street and I live in that area. In the beginning when it was the it used to be a really nice place but too many people in the street and I believe it was to give them permission to do to build a chapel. They said that they want to build a community activity community for for community center. Now it's a chapel because on the sign says that it was going to be an activity center and now they said they want this is going to be a chapel. So what are they actually going to build and will there be more parcel? Well, I mean I think it's pretty clear. They're building a chapel and I just want to clarify that's the zoning district. The zoning districts the community activity center and corridor so that might be where that confusion came in because it's definitely was out there. Yeah, the sign had that zoning district on there and that's where my confusion comes because if you're going to build an activity center that creates more problems than anything and before they used to I don't know whether they still do or not but before they used to have the service it was a nice place and I'm just wondering will they be expanding out more and more because the residential care facility is supposed to be we're not supposed to have another one over there and that we're at about a year ago they had something built now they want something else built and that it seemed like each year is keep expanding and they they made it I'll ask the zoning administrator if they do will they not have to be back in front of the board? Yes, any expansion would bring them back before so this is this is only for the chapel and anything in the future would be back in front of us. Okay, because I think that you know once you start building one thing the next thing like a year before you build a building for something else now you want a chapel now what are you going to build more and if they inquire more land in there for that residential care community it's going to be all over the place so what about bringing in new business in that area new business don't want to be by a residential care facility and so I'm just looking for the future understood thank you for your testimony thank you okay do we have any other members who would like to member excuse me members of the public who'd like to speak good evening my name is Janine Elson I'm a member of the hard park Kenan Terrace neighborhood association um the Providence home have been located at this location for over 40 years and we as the community have not had any complaints formal complaints that come before us and we in favor of the zoning or the exception that they're requesting my president my vice president and the community leaders all in favor thank you thank you for your testimony thank you would anyone else from the public like to speak on this matter okay here you know Rachel do we have anyone on the line or any emails or letters no emails we don't have any callers on the line okay well at this point then we'll move into board discussion so I'll I'll start you know seems pretty straightforward to me they're not expanding it's one thing if you're talking about adding more residents or more beds but here they've required a little more land so they want to put a chapel in the middle of the facility I really don't have any questions or complaints here yeah I would I would agree I think it's pretty straightforward all right well easy enough at this point then like to ask for a motion make a motion that we approve this special exception request subject to staff comments second we have a motion to second all those in favor please say aye aye all right anyone oppose all right motion passes thank you good luck oh I just wanted to Jean already knows but I just wanted to let you all know um this is my last meeting with you all um but I'm I'm leaving the city as of October 26th so I just wanted to say it's been a joy working with you all so and I'll keep you all posted as I just gave my notice a few days ago so it's new we're figuring stuff out I will keep you all posted and make sure that you all are in good hands and I can confirm a new member was just appointed on Tuesday so I will get with him and get him situated and Jean you can join us we'll get him situated before I leave you all that'd be great but I just wanted to let you all well Rachel I'm sure that the city really is going to miss you I've worked with a few zoning administrators and I can tell you you've done a phenomenal job thank you um they were lucky to have you for as many years as they did so let's hope the new zoning administrators is thorough and um as good at their job as you are hopefully hope so we'll see gonna miss you Rachel so but thank you all but other than that there is no other business well that's a pretty big one all right do we have a motion to adjourn so moved okay motion second all of the favor please say aye all right all right very good