City knew trees were coming down, developer says

By Charles Sowell  

MAY 20, 2010 11:15 a.m. (0)

City officials knew, or should have known, that five heritage trees on the fringe of the controversial Brookside development would be coming down, David Douglas manager of Douglas Development told the Journal.

City officials issued a stop work order at the site located just off Wade Hampton Boulevard last month, charging removal of the trees violated the city’s conditional use permit.

When Natasha Larson, director of landscape architecture for Site Design the project’s engineer, submitted plans and alternatives for the project she consistently listed five trees along the perimeter of the site as needing to come down.

She presented the Journal with copies of her plans for the $6 million project that were filed with the city to support her contention.

“Did I mark the (specific) trees that were going to come down? Of course not,” she said in chagrin.

“Those trees were not going to survive the construction process,” she said, brusquely marking a copy of the site plan to highlight the removed trees. “It was a conscious decision on our part to take them out. It was either do it now, or do it later (after the trees died).”

Mayor Knox White said the city’s position has consistently been that the trees were essential to the project and must be preserved at all costs.

“Bryan Woods, our zoning administrator, said that has been his position all along,” White said.

City officials and officials for Douglas had no explanation as to how the disconnect on the fate of the trees came about, but Douglas said he felt ill-used by city officials who asked him to come in and build a low-income development to replace a series of nuisance duplexes.

Douglas said the duplex apartments were run down and the object of many neighborhood complaints and police calls.

His allegation was backed up by White.

“We asked Mr. Douglas to come in on this project. My feeling is that if there was a mistake on the city’s part it was in not holding a public hearing on the plan at that time,” White said. “The neighborhood, justifiably, was upset with the size and massing of the proposed project.”

White said city officials were so pleased to see a solution to the duplex problem that they failed to consider potential neighborhood opposition to Douglas’ plans.

“I’ve helped the city out in this kind of situation before,” Douglas said. “And I was glad to do it again with this project. But after a couple of meetings at White Oak Baptist Church it was obvious to us that things were not going well.”

Douglas said he changed plans for the $700,000 site from low income housing to housing for the elderly and cut back on the number of units.

“The zoning at the time we bought the land allowed for 20 units per acre,” he said of the six-acre site.

White said that just because the zoning allows for up to 20 units, that doesn’t mean that many units ought to be built on a site.

The city’s stop work order caught Douglas and his consultants by surprise, he said.

At some point in this whole process the city’s attitude changed from supportive to adversarial, Douglas said.

“I just want to get this thing built and get out of Greenville,” he said. “It’s left a bad taste in my mouth and, frankly, I can’t see myself doing business here again.”

White said the city has no problem getting developers to come in and despite Douglas’ problems there are several developments slated to be announced in coming months.

Contact Charles Sowell at 679-1208 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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