Letter to the City: Attorney criticizes P&Z positions on Grindstone development

Columbia attorney Craig Van Matre recently wrote a letter to city officials criticizing the Planning & Zoning Commission’s decision to reject Red Oak Investment Company’s application to rezone property on the south side of Grindstone Parkway, across from the Walmart Supercenter, to Planned Commercial.
Van Matre represents THF Red Oak Development, which owns the site of the Kohl’s department store on the north side of Grindstone Parkway, and THF Grindstone Plaza Development, which owns the adjacent Grindstone Plaza Shopping Center anchored by the Walmart Supercenter. Attorney Bruce Beckett represented a separate company with a similar name, Red Oak Investment Co., in connection with the application.
Van Matre wrote that his clients and the Red Oak Investment Company, which are partners in a Transportation Development District, have reached a cost-sharing arrangement so the stoplight can be installed at the intersection.
Van Matre contends that during the hearing, P&Z members misconstrued the relationship between his clients and Red Oak Investment Co. and improperly interpreted a development agreement regarding Grindstone Parkway.
But the strongest assertions came at the conclusion of his letter of March 15 to Planning Director Tim Teddy. Here is the last section of Van Matre’s letter with his headline:

Perversion of Zoning Process

What follows… is certainly not necessary to adequately and clearly state my clients’ position on the issues. Nor is what follows necessary to correct the misapprehension of the pertinent facts involved. However, I believe that the Planning and Zoning Commission needs to understand its proper role and proper focus in considering rezoning applications brought before it, and the lack of justification for its decision in the Red Oak Investment Company application provokes the following comment.
It is my understanding that the application was denied because the commissioners did not want a traffic light at the Grindstone Plaza Drive/Grindstone Parkway intersection. That is a traffic issue and not a zoning issue. The only issue properly before the Planning and Zoning Commission on the evening of March 4, 2010, was whether the zoning category or classification of Red Oak Investment Company’s real estate should be changed.
Several of the commissioners stated that a commercial zoning for the Red Oak Investment tract was proper but that they did not want to grant that zoning for fear that would hasten the date when a stoplight was installed on Grindstone Parkway, a state highway.
In my opinion, that type of reasoning is both dangerous and improper in the extreme. It is like saying that it would be justifiable to withhold police or fire protection from a location in an effort to prevent its development. It is like refusing to grant a building permit for a new house because of fear that the new occupants will have school-aged children who will burden a school in the neighborhood.
There was no evidence before the Commission to the effect that some impermissible effect on traffic would be created because of the development of the Red Oak Investment Company’s tract. Instead, the commissioners substituted their own personal preferences with respect to traffic flow on a state highway for what should have been their proper analysis of the Red Oak application.
It is important for people to understand the rule of law in this country. Governmental bodies have limited jurisdiction over others when they act within the course and scope of that limited jurisdiction.
The Planning and Zoning Commission is not a policy-making body where new rules and considerations can be imposed upon other citizens at the whim and caprice of the Commission. The City Council announces the criteria that will be utilized in assigning land use classifications. Nothing in the City’s Ordinances states that a rezoning application can be denied solely because it might cause a traffic light somewhere adjacent to that property to become necessary.
The commissioners’ belief that their personal travel time down Grindstone Parkway somehow trumps a property owner’s right to the highest and best use of its land is both breathtaking and perverse.
Sincerely,
Craig Van Matre
Van Matre, Harrison and Hollis P.C.