GREENVILLE — During the first public gathering for a luxury hotel planned for the foot of Paris Mountain, citizens encircled the developer for two hours, questioning him as private armed security guards stood nearby.
More than 400 people visited the Greenville Shrine Club and Event Center on Feb. 27 creating the first major physical representation of the passionate public reaction to the hotel since The Divine Group first proposed it a month ago.
Most attendees wore red shirts in opposition to the hotel, some emblazoned with “Save Paris Mountain.” At one point someone began chanting “no hotel." The crowd joined in for about a minute.
Developer Krut Patel said he still plans to submit a request for annexation and rezoning to Travelers Rest in March. He said his group will take the feedback from the meeting and revisit parts of the project.
The hotel would be built on a property about half a mile up Altamont Road at the northwest edge of Paris Mountain, bringing with it 150 guest rooms, event spaces with a combined 2,000-person capacity, a rooftop bar, a restaurant and resort-style amenities.
The proposal has attracted opposition from an array of groups, including Altamont residents, lovers of Paris Mountain, heavyweight environmental groups and conservative county council members. An online petition has more than 12,000 signatures.
City council would eventually decide if it should allow a hotel there, which isn’t permitted under the property’s current zoning as set by Greenville County.
Most of the eastern side of the mountain remains protected by the 1,700-acre Paris Mountain State Park, but much of the western side remains privately owned. Altamont Road is dotted with high-end single-family homes and subdivisions with gleaming gates.
At the information session, a crowd of people — mostly in red shirts — gathered outside the event center well before the scheduled start time. Once the doors opened, it took about half an hour for most people to enter. They wrote their names down on sign-in sheets that will be submitted to Travelers Rest with the annexation request.
The wide room, which typically hosts events like quinceañeras and weddings, held easels with architectural renderings, topographical drawings and site plans of the hotel project. People clustered around the images, studying them, pointing and discussing amongst themselves. Others stood in groups around the room, talking.
A large crowd gathered in one corner of the room around Patel, who stood in front of a screen showing an image of a new proposal to build a separate bike path through the property for cyclists to avoid conflicting with hotel traffic along Altamont Road. One person recorded video of the interactions on their phone for most of the meeting, holding it close to Patel’s face at times.
Some attendees were disappointed with the meeting’s format. One woman asked a representative of the development team why they were “hiding in the corner.”
They were hoping for a town hall-style event where residents would walk up to a microphone and express their feelings on the project to the developer — along with the other people in the room.
Patel said after the meeting that the format was designed to create more one-on-one conversations so he could better receive feedback from people.
They initially planned to host a public meeting at Furman University Feb. 10, but that was rescheduled, Patel said, because of capacity constraints.
They’re still hoping to submit their annexation application in the next one-to-two weeks.
“We don't have a hard, fast date,” Patel said. “There's a lot of things that we might take back to the drawing board and re-look at, and so if that means we might need a little bit more time, we're not going to rush it. We want to make sure we do it the right way.”
Ben Alier, who lives across the street from the proposed hotel site, said he would support less-intense development on the property, such as single-family homes or a few apartments. But he doesn’t support a hotel.
“It’s nature,” Alier said. “We have deer that walk through my yard. There’s barred owls. There’s bears.”
Alier said he appreciates the proposal to donate half the property to Travelers Rest to be used as a public park. But he is worried about the site’s large trees being torn down and replaced with a parking lot.
Nearby residents bashed the project for the additional traffic it would generate and the changes it would bring to a ridge at the base of the mountain. Environmental groups raised alarm over the effects the development could have on the wildlife and waterways on the property, which is close to the headwaters of the Reedy River.
The annexation, however, has drawn the most-heated discussion, with one County Council member describing the request as a “hostile takeover.”
Patel has said he wants Travelers Rest to annex the 40-acre property to boost the city’s revenue and place a less harmful building on the site compared to the hundreds of apartments allowed under the existing zoning. He has maintained that, if he isn’t able to build the hotel, he would consider building hundreds of apartments on the site.
Opponents say the annexation represents an evasion of the county’s environmentally sensitive zoning that currently covers one of the two parcels.
Follow Spencer Donovan on Twitter @sdonovan5.