Despite minor changes, a developer?s plan still threatens the historical and natural landscape of the historic Woodlawn Manor.
The revisions made by Ron Brasher, of Brasher Design in Columbia, for a 74,000-square-foot office building included:
» Moving the entrance from the Columbia Association land to the county land;
» Reducing the height of the part of the office building near the manor from three to two stories.
All of the 21 trees, 150 to 250 years of age, still will be cut down under the revised plan.
“The new plan is better than the original, but it?s totally unacceptable to me,” said Bill Miller, a member of the Columbia Association?s Woodlawn Slave Quarters Task Force and a former caretaker at the Woodlawn Manor.
“It should be moved away from the historic structure, and it?s still grossly out of scale.”
Originally, the association offered land to Brasher for an entrance in exchange for $15,000 and a water and sewer hookup for the adjacent Woodlawn slave quarters.
“When negotiations broke down with Columbia Association, an alternative route was investigated,” said James M. Irvin, director of the Department of Public Works.
At this point, the public works department agreed to allow Brasher to use county land.
“That?s the public question: What?s a local government doing making it easy for a guy to destroy this site? It?s terrible for the site; it?s really unnecessary,” Miller said.
Brasher declined to comment.
The Woodlawn Manor is one of two Columbia locations on the National Registry of Historic Places.
