Aiken Officials Second Guess Development on Silver Bluff Road

By Don Moniak

December 12, 2022

Along with dollar and mattress stores and car washes, self-storage units are a lightning rod for complaints on Aiken social media pages. In the past month, a finished self-storage facility and the latest proposed car wash have some Aiken officials expressing second thoughts about how they have allowed development to proceed along Silver Bluff Road.

The last item on Monday night’s (December 12, 2022) Aiken City Council meeting agenda is a request from the City of Aiken Planning Commission to consider an “overlay district” for Silver Bluff Road “similar to the existing Whiskey Road Overlay District.” The discussion originated during a November 15, 2022, work session at the suggestion of commissioner Clayton Clarkson; and was subsequently mentioned during deliberations to approve the Tidal Wave car wash at the junction of Silver Bluff and Pine Log roads.

The commission did not convey the sentiment to City Council. In fact, the commission did not submit any recommendation for the November 28th First Reading of the Tidal Wave Car Wash. The same memo submitted by the Planning Department to the Planning Commission (PC) on November 8th was re-used for the November 28th meeting. (page 110 of agenda packet).

Not until the Second Reading of the Public Hearing on December 12th did a November 16th PC memo appear in Council’s hands and into the public domain. (Page 87 of Agenda Packet). It too contained no recommendation for an overlay district.

The overlay district memo from the PC (below) was sent three weeks after the November 13th discussion, and one week after City Council approved a controversial proposal to site a 60,000 square-foot shopping center in an area zoned for residential use on Silver Bluff Road; adjacent to the Village at Woodside and across the road from the Pin Oak Farms neighborhood.

An “overlay district” is an additional layer of regulatory oversight in the zoning process that allows for more oversight. It is defined by the city’s Zoning Ordinance as:

“A geographic area designated on the Official Zoning Map where certain regulations of this Ordinance apply in addition to the underlying zoning district regulations.”

Nine days before the planning commission memo, Aiken City Councilwoman Andrea Gregory articulated a possible need for an overlay district on Silver Bluff Road during the November 28th City Council meeting—but not until after voting to approve the shopping center. Gregory opened the discussion regarding the proposed Tidal Wave Car Wash facility at the intersection of Silver Bluff and Pine Log Roads by expressing misgivings over Your Storage Units Aiken; the 35-foot high, three-story, 110,000 square-foot self-storage facility at the corner of Silver Bluff and Hamilton Roads. Gregory stated:

“I have a few concerns about this potential development and I’m going to use that storage unit off of Silver Bluff. When that particular development was presented to us never in a million years did I think it was, I wish I had been more, I guess , in tune, because it’s just too close to the road, it’s gigantic. It completely changes the aesthetic of Silver Bluff which I do believe we need an overlay in Silver Bluff because we have one on Whiskey Road we do not have on Silver Bluff. “
(SEE VIDEO HERE)

Your Storage Units Aiken is located at 1573 Hamilton Drive (fomerly 517 Silver Bluff Road). In 2017 the three-acre property in unincorporated Aiken County was an unoccupied island of residential use zoned as Urban Development. When West Side One, LLC of Tennessee bought the parcel that year for $700,000 from the estate of the former owner, the property had a modest, single story brick home graced by towering loblolly pines and a stand of mature trees on the back half of the acreage.

By April, 2019, the house was gone, the land was cleared for development, and West Side One had a contract to sell the property to Storage Development, Inc., a firm with strong ties to the law office of Smith, Massey, Brodie, Guynn, and Mayes. (1)

West Side One, LLC and Storage Development Inc then worked to get the state-of-the-art, self-storage facility approved as a City of Aiken business property:

• After  West Side One, LLC applied to annex the property and have it rezoned to General Business for the buyer, the Planning Commission recommended the proposal to City Council on May 14, 2019; although no site details were presented.
• The Board of Zoning Appeals granted a zoning exception for self-storage on May 28, 2019, to petitioner Storage Development, Inc. at a meeting where more details about site plans were revealed, including a photo of the proposed facility.
• Aiken City Council approved the proposal for West Side One, LLC during readings on June 10 and 24, 2019, and were provided more details and the photo of the facility. But omitted from council’s information package were four letters from citizens regarding the project that were part of the Board of Zoning Appeals agenda packet.
  
  Doctors Susan Hamlet and Idris Sharaf, whose practice is next door on unincorporated county land known as a “donut hole,” wrote a letter of opposition to the special exception to then Planning Director Ryan Bland, stating:
  
  “The zoning ordinances are created as a component of the planning for the City of Aiken to maintain a cohesion, logical and attractive overall appearance providing General Business and other zones so that ‘like usage’ is maintained within specific zoning areas. Placing a self-storage facility at 519 Silver Bluff Road would violate the purpose of the zoning
  ordinance by unfavorably changing the appearance and integrity of Silver Bluff Road.”.
  
  That letter was offset by three letters of support from local State Farm agent Denny Michaelis, and Floyd and Green Jewelers proprietors Tom Williams and Steve Floyd; whose property is also in an unincorporated “donut hole.” (2) Floyd contended that the storage facility would “enhance” the location of their business.
  
  The proposal sailed through Aiken City Council with no discussion and no public comments. (3) Councilwoman Gregory was absent at the first reading and did not comment at the second reading. City Attorney Gary Smith was not listed as present for the first reading, and did not recuse himself from the second reading despite members of his law firm representing the project developer and owner.
  
  
  The Planned Residential Self-Storage Facility
  
  Whereas Your Storage Units Aiken is located in an established commercial corridor, another Silver Bluff self-storage facility was approved by City Council in 2018 in a residential area. Absolute Storage Management applied to build a 330 unit, 56,000 square foot self-service storage facililty within an eleven acre area previously designated for multi-family residential use.
  
  Like the proposed shopping center along Silver Bluff Road, the commercial development did not need to be designated as commercial zoning because the special Planned Residential (PR) zoning concept allows for up to five percent commercial usage in a PR zone. City Council approved Pin Oak Farms/Colleton Park as a 74-acre Planned Residential zoning unit in 2005.
  
  The caveat for adding commercial facilities to a planned residential area is that the business being approved must be intended to primarily serve the residents in the planned residential area. Absolute Management claimed the 330-unit building was “intended to serve the residents of Pin Oak Farms/Colleton Park, and other nearby residents of Planned Residential developments such as the Village at Woodside.” Even though the combined housing units for Pin Oak Farms, Colleton Park, and Village at Woodside were less than 300 at the time, the planning department, planning commission, and city council all accepted the notion that a 330-unit storage building would primarily serve about 300-400 local residents of planned residential neighborhoods.
  
  Absolute Storage presented a drawing of a rustic looking building fronting the facility, and committed to only developing 3.2 acres of the 11.8 mostly forested parcel. The final version cannot be described as rustic.

The storage facility was approved unanimously at every step. The August 14th Planning Commission meeting drew a sizable crowd, with numerous residents raising concerns about trash pickup, lighting, aesthetics and buffers, and traffic. The meeting minutes then phrased the dialogue as questions and answers and failed to name the speakers. The concerns speakers raised were not forwarded to City Council within the planning commission memo or by other means.  The proposal to convert a rural residential area into a commercial self-storage facility sailed through the approval process.

These two situations raise questions about the validity of another layer of regulation for Silver Bluff Road development:

• Why did the overlay district notion appear on the agenda only after approval of the Silver Bluff shopping center next to Village at Woodside? 
• What has a similar overlay district effort on Whiskey Road accomplished? 
• What benefit is another layer of oversight and regulation if the regulators and decision-makers suffer communication breakdowns, city staff withholds information, or key information is not requested from developers?

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Footnotes

1. Storage Development Inc. has an address of 230 Colleton Avenue, SE.  and is represented by Brad A. Bodie, a partner in the Smith, Massey, Brodie, Guynn, and Mayes law firm; whose partner includes City Attorney Gary Smith. Following final City Council approval on June 24, 2022, the sale was completed:

West Side One LLC actually sold to Storage Units of Aiken, LLC (Agent Ray Massey), which was incorporated on June 26, 2019 at the same address (230 Colony Parkway, SE) shared by law firm. 

The closing date was June 28, 2019, partner Mary Guynn was the closing lawyer, and the grantee’s address was listed at 239 Fairfield Street, which is the same property as 230 Colleton Avenue, SE.

On , 2021, the property was transferred for $1 to Storage Units Properties 1 Aiken LLC, a Delaware company based in Maitland, Florida. 

2. Tom Williams was also one of the original members of the Aiken Municipal Development Commission; he resigned after missing most of the meetings in 2021. The Commission advocated increased annexation as an integral part the city’s growth model.

(3) The June 10, 2019 meeting did have two high-profile items on the agenda, the establishment of the Aiken Municipal Development Commission and the concept plan for the old hospital/county administration building at 828 Richland Avenue, West.