Design Review Board’s Parking Garage Discussion Closed to Citizen Input, Three Months After the Board Panned Another Chesterfield Street Proposal.
by Don Moniak
The Aiken Design Review Board will hold a “work session” at 5:30 p.m. this Tuesday, March 7th, to discuss a proposal by the City of Aiken to construct a $7 million, ~57,000 square foot, 162-space, three-story parking garage next to its new City Hall Municipal Building. The proposed location is directly across the street from a proposed multi-family private residential development that was heard by the board on December 6, 2022. The DRB did not forward that proposal to a formal hearing.
123 and 129 Chesterfield Street; The Parking Garage
As reported in “Structured Parking Solution for The Lab,” one of Aiken City Council’s top priorities for 2023 is a parking garage on Chesterfield Street, next to the new Aiken Municipal Building, and replacing the current parking lot. The proposed site is across the street from the Bella Casa Restaurant and adjacent to an older home repurposed into a law office.
The primary justification for this “structured parking solution” is the proposed Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) “Workforce Development” downtown office complex. A “feasibility study” for the lab facility was announced on February 6, 2023 by K.T. Jacobs of the architectural firm McMillan Pazden and Smith. Jacobs recently confirmed the firm is working for the Aiken Corporation, and not the City of Aiken.
While the preliminary results of the Aiken Corporation-sponsored study are not due until mid-April, City of Aiken staff have fast tracked the parking garage option ahead of the feasiblity study. The first item on the agenda for Tuesday’s ( March 7, 2023) Aiken DRB work session is:
Application# CERD23- 001039: Discussion with Applicant City of Aiken concerning the application requesting approval to construct a parking structure at 123 and 129 Chesterfield St.
The memorandum to the DRB is written by an employee of both the owner and applicant. In it, city planning staff member Rebekah Seymour wrote, in part:
“The proposed project would convert an existing surface parking lot into a three- story parking structure with access provided by a driveway on Chesterfield Street. The proposed structure would include: 165 parking spaces approximately 9′ x 20′ ( See Exhibit A). The Applicants are presenting the proposed project at an early stage in the planning process in order to obtain feedback from the Board and provide an opportunity for the public to be involved, early in the project. The Applicants request that a Special- Called Work Session be scheduled on March 23 for the application to be presented to the Board. More information on the proposed project will be available at this time.”
The memo’s description of the City as an “applicant” is somewhat contradicted by the presence of city contractor Cranston Engineering as the listed applicant in the package. Cranston submitted a mere two pages of supporting documentation, Exhibit A, to the DRB:
- a rough Master Plan for the parking garage (below); and
- a narrative in which “side property setbacks” are proposed at “xx feet,” an indication of the clear haste to gain early DRB approval.
For its part, the Design Review Board is opting not only to discuss the application two weeks earlier than requested, but has also chosen to shut off public involvement beyond spectatorship——contrary to the planning department memo. The work session is scheduled for Room 315, a small meeting space where thirty people make for a very crowded room.
Three members of the current five member DRB served on the board on March 1, 2022. On that day, the Board voted to demolish both the Beckman Building at 106 Laurens Street—where three existing small businesses were tenants—and the vacant Hotel Aiken. That decision was challenged in the Blake et al vs. City of Aiken et al lawsuit, in which the DRB as a whole remains a defendant in that litigation. The demolition approval was cancelled by the Board on December 6, 2022.
The Other Side of the Street: 124 and 126 Chesterfield Street
The same current five member board held another “work session” on December 6, 2022, for a private property application at 124 and 126 Chesterfield Street, South, adjacent to the popular Casa Bella Restaurant. On the agenda was a proposal to demolish an existing single-story brick building housing a former hair salon, and replace it with a three-story residential and retail building. Applicant and property owner Thomas Bossard submitted twenty pages of supporting documentation from his architectural firm.
But the application went no further than the work session, where DRB members panned the proposal and sent the applicant home with a link to the Old Aiken Design Guidelines. That discussion on December 6th included the following dialogue:
Board Member Ben Lott: “It doesn’t look like Aiken. It sits right next to historic Casa Bella restaurant. This doesn’t feel like it is going in the direction we are trying to maintain.
Thomas Bossard; “The South Building is next door.” (referring to the small office building next door and the duplexes next to it)
Ben Lott: “That is not the direction we want to take either…This is like something that would have been built in the 70’s, not sure we are trying to repopulate downtown with buildings from the 70’s”
Chairman McDonald Law: “We are making some subjective observations” and referred to page 59 of the Old Design Guidelines.
Board Member Katy Lipscomb: “You just need to fix the windows.”
Bossard: “Are you opposed to the brick?
McDonald Law: “No, not really. But you are sitting next to a two story frame historic house.”
Bossard was then dispatched back to his architect, and has yet to return before the Board with an updated application.
Tuesday’s DRB Work Session.
According to the planning department memo, the parking garage application “may be reviewed using the Old Aiken Design Guidelines specifically Section 2.1.3. Downtown Commercial- Type: Parking” beginning on page 11.”
The Design Guidelines for parking structures also end on Page 11. Whereas the 129-page guide contains nearly ten pages regarding signs, only a half page is dedicated to “structured parking,” the technical euphemism for a parking garage. (see below)
Whereas the City of North Augusta has chosen to prominently feature parking garages in its newer downtown and Riverside Village landscapes by building three of them, the City of Aiken remains free of them. While the proposed Aiken parking garage is less than half the size of the garage across from North Augusta’s modern municipal building, it will be larger than the new 33,229 square foot, three-story City Hall municipal building.
The design guidelines have seldom been applied, and never in a block with residential use. This time the proposed site is on the same block where a proposed residential building was panned by DRB critics as having too many windows, being incongruous to an historic frame building restaurant, being too “seventies” like, and “not “looking like Aiken.”
The response of the DRB to the hastily arranged application for a parking garage on the same block will be closely watched. If the DRB opts to keep the proceeding off the city’s You Tube channel, it is likely that citizens will take video documentation into their own hands; in order to monitor the consistency of the board on this single section of a busy city block.
(Comments and questions for the Design Review Board can be submitted to staff liason Rebekah Seymour at rseymour@cityofaiken.gov. Readers of the Aiken Chronicles are invited to forward their comments to the DRB to Don Moniak at eurekascresearch@gmail.com)
