At first, the BZA didn’t have enough members for a quorum. The room was packed and there was an overflow crowd sent to another floor for video viewing.
City staff tried calling, desperate for at least one more BZA member to arrive. Unfortunately, another member never showed up and there were not enough members of the board to hear the Brookside case (one of the BZA members had to recuse himself since he worked on Brookside Gardens). Consequently, all the folks who showed up to speak and hear about Brookside Gardens have to come back another day.
This was subpar public service. Let’s hope that the Mayor and City Council members who were in attendance take note and appropriate action.
However, the BZA did have enough members to consider the Waffle House case since the recused member had no waffle affiliation. The BZA decided to try the 24 hour waffles on a trial basis. The conditions were that there be two security guards on the premises from Thursday thru Saturday post-midnight and that the BZA will get a 6 & 12 month updates from city staff on how things are going at the Waffle House.
Here is the article from the Greenville News.
Months of tension filled a public hearing Thursday in which a city panel ultimately decided in front of Waffle House’s president to put his new Stone Avenue location on trial, giving it a year to prove that 24-hour operations won’t harm neighbors.
We’ll see….
