Saving Beaumont Mill

By Charles Sowell  

DECEMBER 3, 2010 2:45 p.m. (0)

Spartanburg’s only historic neighborhood is Hampton Heights and that’s unusual for a city of its size in South Carolina, said Mike Bedenbaugh, executive director of the Palmetto Trust for Historic Preservation.

Supporters of plans to add the Beaumont Mill village to the city’s historic roster hope to change that when Spartanburg City Council again takes up the issue next year.

They say designating Beaumont as a historic neighborhood will go a long way toward saving the once close-knit community from degenerating into a wasteland of rental properties controlled by absentee landlords.

Council took the unusual step of voting to reconsider the historic designation last month in a convoluted parliamentary procedure that required two votes. One vote was to reconsider the proposal and the second, which had to be in the form of a motion by a council member voting against the original move.

Council turned down the proposal in April, but community supporters continued their push, sparking last month’s vote.

The Beaumont proposal should come up before council sometime after Jan. 1.

Neighboring Greenville has seven historic districts within the city limits. Greenville has an estimated population of 61,000 to Spartanburg’s 40,000, but that doesn’t explain the vast discrepancy in the numbers of historic neighborhoods.

Anderson with an estimated population of less than 30,000 has five historic neighborhoods.

People involved with historic preservation hate to say it, but a lack of community interest seems to be the driving force in Spartanburg behind the dearth of historic neighborhoods.

Heather Morrow, executive director of the Preservation Trust of Spartanburg, said community interest has to drive an application for historic neighborhood status.

“They must gather a certain number of property owners support for the plan and then have to petition the city’s Architectural Design and Historic Review Board (HARB),” she said. “If HARB approves it, then the proposal moves on to city council.”

Former Spartanburg Mayor Bill Barnet, long a supporter of the historic designation, said the Beaumont plan is a way to save one of the city’s best communities.

The neighborhood is split by Pine Street today with the old Beaumont Mill standing largely unused.

Ron Pool, a member of the neighborhood association and a resident of Beaumont since the late 1940s, sees the designation as a way to save a place he loves and give the city an enhanced gateway along Pine Street.

“Pine Street wasn’t there during the heyday of the mill,” Poole said. “It was a close-knit community back then (when he first moved there). The streets were mostly hard-packed clay. We had our own store and people knew each other.”

Linda P. Bilanchone, a past president of Preservation Trust of Spartanburg and one of the early organizers in the drive to designate Beaumont, said there are considerable advantages to the historic neighborhood designation in preserving property values and the look and feel of a neighborhood.

There are some drawbacks, too, in that property owners face certain restrictions on what they can do to with exterior of properties in a historic neighborhood.

Opponents of those kinds of restrictions carried the day back in April when city council voted down the original proposal. Backers of the plan were not allowed to speak at that meeting.

Mayor Junie White said the proposal will get a thorough airing when it comes back before council.

“These neighborhood historic designations are different from placement on the National Register of Historic Places,” said Bedenbaugh. “The local designation is one of the most democratic affairs that I know of, the national designation requires a lot more hoops on the state and local levels.”

Joshua Henderson, a planner with the city of Spartanburg, said neighborhood designation plans differ from city to city, but the basic theme is consistent.

A group petitions the local historic board, which reviews the neighborhood to see if it meets specifications. In the case of Beaumont, the neighborhood didn’t meet specs for a national designation, but did qualify for local designation.

That is the opposite of the situation presented by Hampton Heights, which got national historic status before getting the city designation.

Once Beaumont was approved by HARB and sent to city council the neighborhood came under the purview of HARB on changes to the exteriors of buildings.

That sparked new opposition in the Beaumont area that culminated in council’s April vote to reject the plan.

Currently there are preliminary moves afoot that could see the South Converse neighborhood seeking local historic status, Morrow and Henderson said.