This episode of Simple Civics: Greenville County is brought to you by Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, providing free books to children zero to five throughout Greenville County. To sign up, visit greenvillefirststeps.org/freebooks.
Ever wonder why downtown Greenville feels so remarkably walkable and inviting? It is not a happy accident; it is the direct result of highly intentional urban design. In this episode, architect and Design Review Board (DRB) member Meg Terry reveals the hidden frameworks that keep our city's aesthetic so special and explains how you can actively influence its future.
Meg walks us through the expanding boundaries of downtown Greenville - from Unity Park to the village of West Greenville - and explains how the city uses a form-based development code to maintain its warm, pedestrian-first vibe. She pulls back the curtain on the Certificate of Appropriateness process, showing why the supposedly slow pace of local government is actually a vital tool for improving complex developments like the recent "Baby Bi-Lo" revitalization. You will get an insider's look at how MXSD zoning dictates everything from building heights to street-level masonry, leaving you to wonder how upcoming neighborhood projects will physically alter your next walk down Main Street.
If you enjoyed learning about our city's urban design, please leave a review and share this episode with a fellow Greenville resident!
Episode Resources:
Episode with Councilwoman Dorothy Dowe about city boards and commissions
Episode with County Councilwoman Liz Seman about county boards and commissions
Defining Downtown's Design Aesthetic
Katy Smith:
Have you ever been in downtown Greenville and found that you can walk Main Street from Fluor Field to the Hyatt without getting bored or tired? I'm sure that's because you're physically fit and you have a great attention span, but it's also because of the urban design of our beautiful downtown.
Keeping that design special is the charge of the City of Greenville's Design Review Board. I'm Katy Smith with Greater Good Greenville, and on this episode of Simple Civics Greenville County, I talk with Meg Terry, who currently serves on the Design Review Board.
She is well qualified, having previously been a member and chair of the city's planning commission and having served on the DRB once before that. She's also the principal and chief marketing officer for DP3 Architects. Meg loves this community and has lived in Greenville for 25 years.
She covers the design principles that make downtown special, the role of the DRB, and some examples of the DRB at work. Take a listen so you can experience our downtown with a different lens and possibly raise your hand to serve on the Design Review Board or any of our city's many other boards and commissions.
Katy Smith:
Meg Terry, thank you so much for joining us today to talk about the Design Review Board and its important role in helping downtown continue to look like the beautiful place we all love. I really appreciate you being here.
Meg Terry:
Absolutely. Glad to do it.
Katy Smith:
Let's start with some basics. Overall, the Design Review Board, or the DRB as you call it for short, is about keeping the City of Greenville's downtown the beautiful place that so many residents and visitors love.
I think those of us who aren't architects or design professionals are going on vibes when we talk about what we love about downtown and have a "we know it when we see it" attitude.
Since you are an architect and someone with deep expertise in design and planning in the city of Greenville, can you use some more official terminology and descriptors for what it is that we love and what it is the DRB is here to preserve?
Meg Terry:
When we're looking at different projects that come through an application form for the Design Review Board, it is a vibe. But those things happen because of the scale of these buildings and how that gets broken down at the street level or wherever it might be within the city, and how that context is appropriately articulated through the architecture.
What the guidelines and the development code have done well is give that language to the designers so they understand what the expectation of that scale looks like. That keeps that downtown feeling warm and welcoming. It's not overwhelming when you walk down the street.
The vehicle becomes secondary to the pedestrian a lot of the time. When it comes down to it, it is a bit of an opinion-based review board, but it also is set in its guidelines. We make sure the projects that come through are meeting those guidelines and the expectation of the city.
The Boundaries of the Downtown District
Katy Smith:
Let's talk about what even is downtown. I bet if we brought out a map and asked residents to draw a marker around what they define as it, we'd see some variation. But I suspect you have a very specific set of boundaries for downtown per the DRB.
Meg Terry:
We do. Before the zoning code was changed a few years ago and the entire city was rezoned, there was the C4, which was essentially the central business district.
That sat between what we would call the four-lane boundaries: Academy and Church, down to where the ball field at Fluor Field is. That was the C4 boundary and what was applicable to Design Review Board review.
When the development code got codified a few years ago, that also included an expansion of that boundary. The downtown district became zoned MXSD and the boundary moved past this Academy-Church Street circle.
It now encompasses Unity Park. It goes all the way down Pendleton into the village of West Greenville. It moves up East North Street a little bit down towards the arena district, through toward the Law Enforcement Center.
It created a bigger boundary for what the development code and the guidelines would cover. It's been an interesting addition because all those different places have their own personality. Making sure that gets carried through as those develop in the future is why that got pulled into the DRB purview.
Understanding Zoning and Development Codes
Katy Smith:
We have not done an in-depth enough episode on what zoning and zoning codes are. Could you touch for a second on what is zoning and specifically what an MXSD zoning code means?
Meg Terry:
Every property within the city is zoned per the development code standard of that particular zoning class, whether it be residential, commercial, or high-density commercial.
Within the Design Review Board limits, MXSD is a downtown storefront type zoning. You could also have MX2 or MX4, and those are going to sit more on the Laurens Road corridor.
There's a business district that would sit on Haywood Road. The zoning districts define how high a building can be, how far it's set back off the road, and what the requirements are for how that is articulated against the public way.
It defines the parameters. We have a form-based development code, which means it's very prescriptive in the dimensionality of how you develop buildings on that particular site.
Katy Smith:
I can imagine that. For my house, I'm sure it is zoned some kind of residential and says that it can only be so many stories and has to be so far back from the street. For downtown, there's a whole different experience about what kind of door it would have or how tall it is against the sidewalk.
Meg Terry:
And the amount of glass it might have for articulation. There's this pedestrian experience as they're walking. It would be bad to walk down Main Street and see a big blank wall of masonry. Being thoughtful about how that gets articulated in the pedestrian zone is what that starts to talk to you about.
Updating Design Guidelines for Public and Private Realms
Katy Smith:
We love downtown and what is defined as downtown is now bigger. Each area has its own unique character, but that doesn't stay that way by accident. Can you talk more about those downtown design guidelines that help preserve and enhance what we've loved about those places?
Meg Terry:
We're actually in the process of updating the downtown design guidelines. Because of the expansion, the current guidelines don't speak to things like Unity Park, Pendleton Street, or the village.
We are trying to create synergy between what we love about downtown and how we carry that through to the next development node, which follows GVL 2040. It all stems off that node concept and trying to carry that through the development code to the guidelines.
That language has to be a consistent thread and intention from start to finish. The current design guidelines are broken down into a public and private realm setup. That may be how the vehicle is treated in a parking lot, if there's landscaping required, or the intention of shielding cars from the pedestrian walking by.
It also has to do with utilities. If there's a transformer sitting on the street, you don't necessarily want to walk by it. We are being thoughtful about how the utility of a city gets handled. It comes down to lighting, landscape furnishing, and how we are experiencing the public realm.
When we are reviewing these for DRB, the staff is great about breaking it down. Each of those has a section for each type of requirement. The staff analyzes if that project meets those requirements as you're reviewing it for the Design Review Board and ultimately denial or approval.
The Process of Seeking a Certificate of Appropriateness
Katy Smith:
For listeners, Meg referenced GVL 2040, which was our comprehensive plan that led into our Greenville Development Code. We have done an episode with Shannon Lavrin, who's now the City Manager. We can put that in the show notes so you can listen back to that history.
Let's talk about the Design Review Board and its specific role in making sure things built or renovated in this overlay district comply with the guidelines. Tell us about how you do your job.
Meg Terry:
It starts with whomever is applying for the Certificate of Appropriateness. That's the end game of the Design Review Board and the applicant. We want to get you to the point of a Certificate of Appropriateness so you can continue with your permitting and construction.
At the end of your project, staff will inspect that everything we approved as the Design Review Board was completed as approved. Then you get your occupancy for the building.
It starts with the applicant meeting with staff and presenting. Our staff in the city is extremely open and wanting to make sure anybody understands the process. Not every city is like that. Sometimes that staff is very closed off and authoritative, and that is not at all the way the city operates.
Reaching out to them saying, "I've got a project, can we meet?" will get you ready to be informally reviewed. What's cool about the Design Review Board is that we're able to have a two-member informal review with the applicants to talk about the project in depth and understand the goals.
From there, it goes to a project preview meeting, or PPM. It's the replacement for a neighborhood meeting and it happens once a month. It puts all the projects from Planning Commission and DRB together so the public can come to one place at one set time.
The public can see what's coming up on the agendas and have a comment with the applicant and staff in a controlled environment. With neighborhood meetings, sometimes it's hard to find a place to meet or it's at a weird time. This gives everybody a level playing field.
PPM happens 60 days prior to your Design Review Board agenda. If we go to PPM in January, we go to the Design Review Board in March. We get the staff report about a week prior to our meeting, which is a public hearing. We review that to form our opinion on if it meets the guidelines or where we see improvement taking place.
Staff presents at the meeting, and the applicant has a chance to speak. Then it's open to public comment. Anybody in opposition is able to speak for three minutes and convey their point of view.
The board takes that into consideration as we deliberate. Usually, it's decided there. If not, it gets deferred, which means more information is required before we're able to approve it.
People don't always realize that is an option. If a project gets denied, you have to wait 12 months to reapply. We don't want people to have to do that if they're close. We just need a little more time to resolve things.
Katy Smith:
That's helpful. We have talked about how government is slow and how that's often said as an indictment. But in many cases, it is appropriately slow.
This is an expensive endeavor for someone to plan to build or renovate a building, and they deserve a thorough consideration of it. But the neighborhood needs a chance to say, "Wait a minute, what's going on?"
What you described shows the strength of an appropriately slow process that is there to serve everybody—to not necessarily outright reject, but give people time to make a change.
Meg Terry:
That's right. These projects can be complex. There are a lot of moving parts between public-private partnerships or infrastructure engineering. It takes time to process those things, and the city's done a nice job of setting that up in a way that's friendly.
Recent Projects and Revitalization Examples
Katy Smith:
Meg, what are some interesting or exciting projects that you've seen come before the DRB lately?
Meg Terry:
There are two very different projects happening catty-corner to each other. One is a revitalization of what we lovingly deem the "Baby Bi-Lo."
Katy Smith:
Okay, so for those of you guys who aren't longtime city residents, the Baby Bi-Lo that Meg is referring to was a smaller Bi-Lo grocery store than the norm. And it was in a shopping center that is still located at the corner of West Park Avenue and North Main Street. It backs up to Academy Street. So that plaza is still there, although the Bi-Lo is no longer.
Meg Terry:
It's a good use of the building stock we have to bring it back to life.
It's a difficult site, and a lot of people looked at redeveloping it in different ways, but revitalizing and renovating it became the goal. That's what they're doing.
On the opposite side, you've got quite a large multi-tenant housing project that's been through a lot of scrutiny. They have neighbors that are interested in that project and they've engaged them, which is what this process intends to do.
They are having those conversations so the neighbors know what's happening and understand that it's impactful to everybody surrounding the site. That project came through DRB first for massing, talking about height and how it sits on the site.
Recently, it came back for its architecture and landscape approvals. It will definitely change the landscape of that area, but that's what GVL 2040 and the development code prescribed for that corridor.
With the revitalization of the old Bi-Lo site and this, it's going to create a different synergy around that area and the park. Watching that happen at the same time and how both of those sites tackled it in different ways has been interesting.
Serving on City Boards and Commissions
Katy Smith:
You're clearly the right person to serve on the DRB. How are folks chosen to serve along with you?
Meg Terry:
The population that lives here is not huge, but you do have to be a city resident to serve on boards and commissions. In the past, they've been thoughtful about the teams they put together.
We have two other architects on the Design Review Board, an interior designer, and an urban planner. We've got a great breadth of knowledge from different perspectives. Somebody could have a totally different experience or knowledge base that helps give me perspective on things.
That's the same thing with the Planning Commission. It's great to have an attorney, a developer, a land planner, or a civil engineer. They are smart about who they put together to create those committees.
Anybody can apply. What's cool about the city is they have a ton of boards and commissions where no matter your skill set, you can find a nice niche. Whether it's Arts in Public Places, the Board of Zoning Appeals, or the Airport Commission, there are a lot of different talents needed.
Katy Smith:
We've done an episode in the past with Councilwoman Dorothy Dowe about boards and commissions. We've also done one on county boards and commissions with County Councilwoman Liz Seman.
We can link both of those in the show notes and encourage people to take a look. You can put your name in the hopper at any time with the City of Greenville. As opportunities come up, they have your resume at the ready. It's a fabulous way to serve.
Meg Terry:
Even if you apply and don't get on a board or commission, they always have task forces they're pulling together, whether for studying the Swamp Rabbit Trail or neighborhood plans. They pull from those applicants to fill those committees. It's a good way to serve.
Katy Smith:
Well, Meg, you have served in so many ways in the City of Greenville in both this public capacity and professionally. I thank you for the many ways that you've made your mark here and appreciate you being with us today.
Meg Terry:
It was fun.
Credits
Simple Civics: Greenville County is Produced by Podcast Studio X.
A Greater Good Greenville project.
