There Are More than Two Choices to Protect Paris Mountain

Safeguarding Paris Mountain from reckless and environmentally destructive development remains a top priority for Greenville County residents.

As we learn more about the Inn at Altamont project that soon is expected to be submitted to the city of Travelers Rest, one talking point from developer Krut Patel of the Divine Group and other hotel supporters is this: If plans to construct a hotel fall through, they might instead build nearly 800 apartments on the site.

This has many anxiously wondering which of the two choices — a new hotel or apartments — would be worse.

This is an age-old tactic used by developers who want nothing more than to maximize their own profit. When the public mobilizes to oppose harmful development projects, the developer often then presents another, even more destructive idea and then asks the public to pick between them. The developer’s goal is to make the public consider an option worse than the first so that the public gravitates toward the original plan.

As we examine the situation unfolding on Paris Mountain, we should not be caught off guard by the Divine Group using this page from the playbook. In truth, there are more than two options before us.

We do not have to choose the lesser of two evils but instead should choose what is best for Paris Mountain. It's one of Greenville’s most precious and iconic places and deserves more than a hotel or hundreds of apartments. It deserves protection.

The apartment plan put forth by Patel and the Divine Group is not even legally, technically, or practically feasible. There are two parcels that make up the developer’s proposal. The first lot, touching Altamont Road, is where the hotel, event space, restaurant, and other components of the Inn at Altamont would stand. This 18.7-acre parcel is included in Greenville County’s Environmentally Sensitive District–Paris Mountain (ESD-PM) zoning district, which does not allow commercial development and only allows single-family homes at a density of 1.10 units per acre.

The second lot, touching Old Buncombe Road, is the parcel that the developer plans to donate to Travelers Rest for a new park. This 19.5-acre parcel is zoned as R-M20, which does not allow commercial development but allows multifamily residential at a maximum density of 20 units per acre.

Neither parcel alone could hold the volume of apartments that the Divine Group has said it could construct. The Altamont Road parcel, as long as it remains within the ESD-PM zoning district, will be protected from overly dense development. The Old Buncombe Road parcel, on the other hand, may be developable in theory but very likely not in practice. It has very steep slopes, deep ravines, and several Reedy River headwater streams running through it. This terrain does not lend itself to development, especially with all the layers of permitting and protections involved for its stormwater management.

Despite the impediments to the development of hundreds of apartments on each parcel, the Divine Group says it can combine the two properties and exploit an antiquated “loophole” in the ESD-PM zoning classification. It says it could combine these properties and use vehicular access down the mountainous terrain from Old Buncombe Road, essentially removing the one parcel from the ESD-PM zoning district and subjecting it to higher density development.

That claim relies on a legally unsound and never-before-used loophole that was removed when Greenville County Council enacted its Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) last year. Now that the UDO is being revisited, County Council is currently considering a text amendment to its zoning ordinance that would remove this language once and for all, preventing developers from believing they can circumvent the protections afforded to Paris Mountain.

Moreover, establishing vehicular access through Old Buncombe Road would certainly be no small feat. The narrow strip of the Old Buncombe Road parcel that connects the road to the rest of the property is diagonally sloped and incredibly steep, with gullies and rough terrain unsuitable for the only road into and out of a large-scale residential development. Further, the steep slopes, streams, ravines, riparian buffers, septic requirements, stormwater protections, roadside buffers, and other development conditions make the construction of hundreds of apartments on these combined parcels all the more impossible.

Simply put, the so-called backup plan of building hundreds of apartments is an empty threat, strategically deployed to pressure the public into accepting the Inn at Altamont project.

This scare tactic is meant to manipulate residents into supporting a plan they otherwise would reject. It's a reprehensible ploy, and the record deserves to be set straight on how feasible building hundreds of apartments on these parcels truly is.

Paris Mountain is too precious, too unique, and too irreplaceable to be sacrificed for reckless development. We must see through these deceptive tactics and continue advocating for responsible land use that prioritizes conservation, sustainability, and the long-term well-being of our community.

Emily S. Poole is a staff attorney with the South Carolina Environmental Law Project in Greenville.