As North Augusta heads into a high stakes public hearing on April 1, the meat of the matter – a changed development plan for Riverside Village – was aired before City Council March 25 after gaining a half-hearted recommendation by North Augusta’s planning commission the week prior.
That hesitance among commissioners, shared by many citizens, stemmed from the anticipated parking and traffic concerns that could arise from a project that yields 25% more housing than it was initially designed to hold.
The main trouble? Per citizens’ comments last week, it’s the 170 apartments proposed for “Parcel K,” the property next to the Crowne Plaza parking deck and closest to Hammonds Ferry.
If changes to the Master Development Agreement for Riverside Village get approved, one of the first builds would be 170 multi-family units on this parcel, next to the hotel parking deck and across from the Ironwood Apartments.
But the change for Parcel K, to those 170 apartments, isn’t a big change from the 168 units of senior living originally intended for the property.
Though somewhat of a catch-all, “senior living,” according to city administrator Jim Clifford, would have manifested not as assisted living or a nursing home but as age-restricted independent living – more akin to the market-rate apartments now being proposed – this due to certain acreage and siting requirements of the other two designations.
North Augusta City Council members who’ve been involved with Riverside Village from the beginning – Pat Carpenter, David McGhee and Eric Presnell – affirmed this understanding.
Still, officials say they get it, the wariness over parking and traffic.
“I would put the fault on us that we have not proven the parking down there, so when you see extra development coming in you automatically assume that ‘It’s not going well down there right now – how do we trust that it will go well in the future?’ But I think that’s what the council is committed to,” Councilwoman Jenafer McCauley said.
“We share some of the concerns with the parking and certainly recognize the need, because we're not actively enforcing a lot of the parking requirements that are in there now, to step that up and mitigate that as part of the Village,” said Councilman Kevin Toole. “That was something we knew we were going to have to do regardless of what was being built.”
City Council already approved, on March 18, a revised parking agreement for the Village that is intended to support the proposed changes to the development plan at Riverside Village.
City officials say they're aware of the need to better enforce parking at Riverside Village, regardless of what else gets built there.
So, parking enforcement is on the radar.
Clifford mentioned numerous options for mitigating parking and traffic congestion – including towing or temporarily immobilizing (booting) vehicles; and for event nights, investing in the city’s trolleys as means of pushing the parking outside the Village.
“We know that’s coming. And yes, we’ve got to work sooner rather than later,” Councilman Presnell said. “If this [revised development plan] is passed, I say start the next day.”
One other proposed change to the development plan is feeding into the extra housing for the Village in a big way: the absence of any office space.
Some 70,000 square feet of professional office space was originally intended for “Parcel C,” next to the stadium parking deck. Now, this property is proposed for four stories of multi-family housing above ground-floor retail.
“The market for Class A office space is non-existent at this point,” North Augusta City Councilman Kevin Toole said.
But market changes have made office space a difficult sell.
“The market for Class A office space is non-existent at this point,” said Councilman Toole.
Toole, who is also vice president and chief lending officer with SRP Federal Credit Union, said moving forward with office space as part of the plan “would have been irresponsible to begin with.”
“I don't know that we would ever find a developer that, one, got financing for that type of project but, two, would have had any appetite to build it,” he said.
None of the 14,000 square feet already built into the clubhouse at SRP Park has ever been leased in the past six-plus years. Even without office space in the mix, developers are asking for a $1.45 million financial break in pursuing the project.
