I found Charleston County's version of the existing Folly Road Overlay District online. As I had explained before, it was passed by County Council less than a month after the Town's incorporation referendum on June 20, 2006.
The Town began operation about six weeks after County passed this overlay, on August 30, 2006. Relations between the new Town and Charleston County were not good, and all county services were cut off immediately.
The Town then reestablished the Comprehensive Plan and Zoning and Land Use Regulation Ordinance that had applied in the Town in 2004. There was no Folly Road Overlay District in the Town's Ordinance either in 2004 or from 2006 to 2011. As I explained before, the Town's zoning of the area between Rafael Lane and Battery Island Drive was consistent with the current base zoning. Most of it was single family residential, with a density of three units per acre. Nine parcels were Community Commercial.
What does the text of the County's Folly Road Overlay District actually say? I found it on the County's Website. Here is all of Chapter 5 of the County's Zoning and Land Use Regulation Ordinance. There are a number of different overlay districts. I copied the Folly Road section here. (It starts at the bottom of the first page.) I could see nowhere that it states that any part of the Overlay was to be rezoned to Commercial Transitional. (I expect the County will update their online version soon.)
What about the map? There is also a map on the County website. I copied what was there. Here it is:
Notice that there is nothing about zoning districts. Also, the colors are a bit off, since the Town is the light gray and the City is the darker gray and the key has them reversed. The proposed neighborhood preservation area is shown as being in the Town. If you look at the maps associated with the other overlay districts, they are all color-coded for zoning.
At the Public Hearing Tuesday night, something like the following map was presented:
I received this map from Charleston County Planning by email (Thanks!) However, this version of the map, unlike the one presented at the meeting, includes the building outlines from 2012. It also shows all of the area to be zoned Commerical Transitional. Clearly, it was not prepared back in 2006. Oddly, the version presented at the meeting didn't include the buildings from 2012.
Perhaps this is the 2006 version? Or did it just leave off the distracting 2012 building outlines?
The most interesting map was one that included the 2006 version of the entire Folly Road Overlay District. I didn't receive a copy of that one from Charleston County planning. This is a photo I took of the map that was at the meeting.
That is a bit hard to read. Here is a closeup:
One interesting aspect of the map is that what is now the "South Village" portion of the overlay in the Town, which is mostly zoned office residential, was apparently rezoned by the 2006 overlay to Commercial Transitional as well. I am very surprised that this rezoning in 2006 occurred with no outcry from the residents on Bradford Avenue. (Of course, I find it hard to believe that what were then past and future Town Council members, Parris Williams and Cubby Wilder, would have remained silent if they had known about such a mass commercial rezoning between Rafael Lane and Battery Island Road.)
While this map shows the Town as unincorporated, it was clearly constructed sometime after 2012, because the City of Charleston is shown as having jurisdiction over parcels that it only annexed in the spring of 2012, right before the Town was reincorporated for the fourth (and final) time.
When exactly was this map prepared?
Why does the map currently included on the website as part of the County's Zoning and Subdivision Ordinance show no new zoning, and then just recently we have maps showing areas in the Town and in the unincorporated area zoned as Commercial Transitional? Did County Council make this decision in 2006?
While the text of the Overlay is pretty uncontroversial and says nothing about new zoning, rezoning these areas to Commercial Transitional would have been very controversial.
Does anyone remember public meetings? Did anyone go to the public hearing? Think back..2006. The James Island Alliance for Self-Government was campaigning for a yes vote on the referendum... We won.... Campaign for Mayor and Council....
Public hearings to rezone Folly Road from Residential to Commercial Transitional? Maybe no one cared because they figured the Town would soon have jurisdiction over all of the territory.
Or was the decision to zone most of the overlay Commercial Transitional made more recently? When? And by whom? And why?
Of course, what difference would it have made? We now see how County Council responds to the local community. The new overlay district passed by Council makes the entire area neighborhood commercial.
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