What’s Happening With The Mountain Creek Area Plan?
Happy August, everyone! Somehow, we’ve flown through June and July, and the start of school has returned. While the break from school may be coming to an end for many, the heat still endures, so take it easy out there.
Last week I had the opportunity to sit down with some Pebble Creek Steering Committee members working on the Mountain Creek Area Plan. This ambitious project is working to create a zoning overlay over the Mountain Creek area to better control development in this border area between the rural character of Northern Greenville County and the central dense strip that follows Wade Hampton Blvd.
Understandably, there’s been a lot of frustration in this area over the past few months as development after development that the residents oppose has gone through, some with court orders to proceed.
The way I’ve found most helpful to think about the planning bodies involved in this process is first and foremost as rule makers and then decision-makers. In the role of rule maker, the process works something like this:
If the body has made a rule about something before, that rule prevails, most of the time, regardless of the situation's specifics.
If the situation could fit into a couple of different rules, the body decides which rule should prevail and then follows the steps laid out in the rule.
If there is no clearly established rule, the body looks at what similar circumstances they are already dealing with and works to create a new rule to cover the unique situation. This could also mean modifying an existing law to avoid making more rules.
These heuristics are generally a way of laying out the rule of law and stare decisis. As time passes, the number of unique situations should decrease. There are only so many particular circumstances. The end state is ideally predictable and consistent standards for property owners.
Another limitation in planning processes is the guidelines set out by the State of South Carolina. At the federal level, the states create the federal government through the United states constitution. At the local level, the States also create the cities and counties and set the guidelines for local government to function within through the state constitution. In the case of county planning, the state has an entire title devoted to conducting planning departments. County governments only get leeway inside those parameters.
All of this comes out to planning bodies who ideally are not on a pedestal making one-off decisions but thoughtful individuals who consistently and conservatively apply the regulations before them and learn from the precedent the body has already established. Only within that framework are decisions made, most of the time on edge cases where clear rules and precedents are not readily available.
Exercises like the Mountain Creek Area Plan fit within both these areas by taking advantage of the state-created zoning tool called an “‘overlay zone’ or a zone which imposes a set of requirements or relaxes a set of requirements imposed by the underlying zoning district when there is a special public interest in a particular geographic area that does not coincide with the underlying zone boundaries.” (SC Title 6, Article 5, Section 6-29-720 C-5).
Residents have not had much success getting one-off circumstances denied because, generally, a developer is familiar with the current zoning rules and knows how to craft projects that technically fit the requirements. When governing bodies vote against their own rules, lawsuits happen. To change outcomes, updating the area's zoning regulations to serve better the “public interest” expressed by the property owners is a critical step in the right direction.
I’m excited about this effort in the Pebble Creek/Mountain Creek area and will work to share more information about upcoming events as it’s shared with us. We’ve asked to be kept up-to-date about this project, and we look forward to helping empower citizens to take control of these processes in helpful and respectful ways!
