Aiken County Planning Commission postpones consideration of zoning proposal in the Valley

Dede Biles, Aiken Standard, S.C.
·3 min read

Jun. 19—Following a sometimes-heated public hearing, the Aiken County Planning Commission postponed consideration Thursday of a proposed zoning change for a large swath of land in the Horse Creek Valley.

The panel, which met at the Aiken County Government Center, is scheduled to discuss the matter again during its July 15 meeting.

The potentially affected area is roughly in and around Graniteville.

It is approximately 2,460 acres in size, has 1,190 parcels of land in it and includes property along Addie Road, Crystal Springs Road, Duncan Road, Sudlow Lake Road, Sudlow Lane and Williamson Drive.

The zoning for those parcels currently is Rural Development, or RUD.

Under the proposal, some pieces of property would be reclassified as Residential Conservation, or RC, and some would be reclassified as Residential Multifamily Development, or RD.

RC and RD zoning are more restrictive than RUD zoning.

"The Planning Commission was asked by the County Council member (Danny Feagin) for the majority of the area to take a look at whether or not zoning changes were appropriate based on some recent commercial development in the area," said County Chief Development Officer and Assistant Administrator Joel Duke. "The concern was that commercial uses were allowed by right under the current RUD zoning, but that much of the area had been developed over the last several decades as residential."

Originally the area under consideration for rezoning was more than 4,000 acres, but the Planning Commission "narrowed it down" during a previous meeting, according to Duke.

More than 60 people attended Thursday's Planning Commission meeting. Nineteen people expressed their opinions or asked questions during the public hearing about the Horse Creek Valley rezoning proposal.

Three of them addressed the Planning Commission twice.

Most of those who had strong beliefs said that they didn't want their land to be reclassified.

Wallace Cash asked the Planning Commission to "omit" his nearly 8-acre tract on Sudlow Lake Road "from this whole shebang."

He said that he has a shop one the property that is a "commercial business" that "subsidizes my retirement."

A cellphone tower also is located on the land.

"I don't know who wanted to start this," Cash said. "I don't know if it was an individual or the Planning Commission or (County) Council. But there is nobody that is happy about this."

Cash became so angry and talked so loudly that Planning Commission Vice Chair Liz Stewart, who was the acting chair for Thursday's meeting, interrupted his rant to ask him to "please keep your comments very civil."

A woman who spoke in favor of rezoning said that even though she is a fan of stores such as T.J. Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods, she doesn't want them located "across the street" from her home.

Also during Thursday's meeting, an Aiken County staff member was available to collect specific information from attendees who didn't want their property rezoned.

Included in the motion to postpone consideration of the reclassification proposal that the Planning Commission approved was a request to the County Planning and Development Department to study the rezoning proposal further.

"What the staff is going to do is take all this information that was gathered and all this input and use it to basically draw another map," Stewart said. "They are going to bring it back to us in July, and then we (Planning Commission members) are going to discuss it and tweak it if we need to. Then it will come back in August for another public hearing (during a Planning Commission meeting)."

In issues involving rezoning, the Planning Commission makes a recommendation to County Council, which must approve any reclassification for it to take effect.