Spero's Pete's Original Too had been closed for the night for only a short time before the freak rainstorm settled in, dropping as much as six inches of rain over Greenville within a matter of a few hours.
That night in August 2014, two people lost their lives a few miles away as they were swept into a drainage pipe, Interstate 85 was temporarily shut down, and businesses and homes were destroyed.
At Spero Conits' restaurant at the corner of East Stone Avenue and East North Street, the rising floodwaters from Richland Creek extinguished pilot flames in gas appliances, causing a natural gas leak that ignited into an explosion.
At the time, the owner vowed to rebuild and assumed he would be able.
Four years later, the land is merely a parking lot — but it hasn't sat vacant without a fight.
More: 6 Greenville areas that prone to flooding
Today Conits and the city of Greenville are engaged in an extended legal battle that has moved from city hall to federal court, where a judge has ordered that the two sides enter into mediation by May before proceeding before a jury.
Recently, Conits told The Greenville News that he has no alternate plan beyond opening another restaurant.
"I lost income," he said. "I lost my customers. I lost the only thing I know how to do. I am a restaurant man, always have been."
At issue is a city law that prohibits new construction in areas designated by the federal government as a floodway, which sets tougher standards for new buildings than a floodplain.
The problem is, when Conits remodeled an old 1950s building to open the restaurant in 2008, the property wasn't within that flooding designation. Only after the rain event did the Federal Emergency Management Agency revise its map used for insurance purposes.
In a lawsuit filed this past summer, Conits argues that the city is using the property for the purpose of turning it into a public floodway and has violated the U.S. Constitution by not allowing him full use of his privately owned property without compensation.
The city, however, argues that its rules prohibiting reconstruction in a floodway don't amount to taking under the Constitutional provisions of eminent domain, which is commonly used to compensate landowners when property is made public for projects such as widening of roadways.
When contacted by The News, City Attorney Mike Pitts said that the city disputes the notion that its stormwater regulations impacted the property to such an extent that Conits "should be compensated as if the city had condemned his land."
"Mr. Conits is a valued member of the Greenville business community," Pitts said, "and, like every other citizen, he has the right to have his claims decided in a court of law."
Attempts to rebuild denied
The week of the flood, Conits had planned to throw a 100th birthday party for his father, John S. Conits, the late and longtime Greenville restaurateur who opened the original Pete's restaurant on Pendleton Street in the West End.
Instead, the walls near the drive-through menu board were blown out and lay in ruin.
Days after the flood, the younger Conits spoke to The News about how he had had plans to expand at Pete's Too because of a growing lunch crowd, and he expressed his desire to rebuild and "work closely with the city officials and make sure we do everything to code and we get a fresh start."
"I don't want to leave that corner," Conits said at the time. "That neighborhood and that little junction has just been so good for me. It would take wild horses to pull me out of there."
By November 2016, however, the city's building code division denied Conits' building permit application.
At one point, Conits said he hired architects to design a new restaurant building, and the renderings were submitted to the city but were denied.
"We made adjustments to the drawing that the city wanted," he said, "but in the end it still was turned down."
In May 2017, Conits took the permit denial to the Board of Zoning Appeals and failed.
This past April, the board's decision went before a state circuit judge, who ruled that the denial was in keeping with the city's stormwater ordinance.
A change in the law
Just days after the flood, City Council approved an amendment to its stormwater ordinance, which had already been in the works, that shifted some properties in the city from a floodplain into a floodway.
The change effectively made any rebuilding on the Pete's Too property illegal.
This past April, at the same time a judge denied Conits' appeal, the city moved legislatively to change its stormwater regulations in a way that would allow Conits to reconstruct his restaurant.
The amendment passed in April and provided an exception to allow owners in the event of a flood to rebuild commercial structures that were built in compliance with stormwater regulations at the time.
The structure would have to be used to resume business operation, couldn't have a larger impact on stormwater drainage than the previous building and the request to rebuild made within five years of the incident.
The change, however, wouldn't allow anything other than a replacement for the original building.
The new stipulation, Conits said, would allow him to rebuild only one more time if the building were destroyed again.
"No bank will ever loan money for that kind of investment," he said. "The stipulations are too strict, and it kills the marketability of my property. In the end, I trust the city will make the right decision, either buy the land or take me out of the floodway, which hinders me from building anything."
- Follow Eric on Facebook and Twitter @cericconnor.
Where are they now? This is part of a series during the holidays in which The Greenville News and Anderson Independent Mail are taking time to update some of our most well-read stories of the past year, and some other stories that our readers regularly ask about.
https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/2018/12/26/speros-petes-original-greenville-court-battle-rages-years-later-flooding-rain/2331580002/ 2018-12-26 13:40:00Z
0 Comments:
Post a Comment