City Council candidates debate ‘neighborhood integrity’

City Council candidate Belinda Gergel uses her restored 1920s home in Pendleton Street’s historic University Hill neighborhood as a campaign promise.

One of her opponents, Brian Boyer, has his own restored home on Shandon’s Monroe Street — a 1940s triplex converted into a four-bedroom house that preserves the craftsman-style architecture, which, in Boyer’s words, is the “tell-tale sign of Shandon.”

In a district that includes five historic neighborhoods and four others included in the city’s interim measures — provisions that give temporary protection to neighborhoods seeking historic designation — the candidates for City Council’s District 3 seat are trying to one-up each other with their commitment to “neighborhood integrity.”

Touting their restored houses is just part of that battle.

Lost amid the boasting is a third candidate, Reed Swearingen, a math teacher turned real estate investor who prefers to emphasize his lessons learned from living in other cities, rather than his renovated 1952 home in the Forest Hills neighborhood.

Because veteran District 3 Councilwoman Anne Sinclair is not seeking re-election, voters on April 1 will elect a new representative for the first time in 20 years. The decision will help shape the future of their neighborhoods.

“The new homes that are being built are much larger than their neighbors’ and they are affecting existing homeowners’ property values,” said Beth Bilderback, president of the Hollywood-Rose Hill Neighborhood Association, one of the neighborhoods included in the city’s interim measures ordinance. “We really need to work (with builders). We have an opportunity with this election to begin to do that.”

From the start, Gergel has made her campaign about neighborhood protection. She held a news conference to announce her candidacy at the Inn at USC, which she took credit for helping preserve.

Gergel has tried to portray Boyer, a home builder, as a candidate tied to the interests of big developers. She sent Boyer and Swearingen a letter last month, challenging them to post a list of their campaign contributors online — a list that includes several local developers who support Boyer.

“That letter was not directed at me,” said Swearingen, who is running a mostly self-funded campaign and does not accept contributions of more than $250.

Gergel has turned down invitations to take part in endorsement interviews by a joint committee of real estate agents and home builders — an endorsement that Boyer sought. So far, the group has not endorsed a candidate.

One of the groups represented on that committee is the SC Builders PAC, a statewide political action committee that includes the Home Builders Association of Greater Columbia.

The political action committee donated $1,000 to Boyer’s campaign last year, the most allowed under state law.

“They have been very active in the discussion about the interim measures, and they took a position I felt was not in the best interest of the city,” Gergel said of the Home Builders Association. “I felt it was important to be independent, and I did not think that seeking their endorsement was a good thing to be doing as a City Council candidate.”

Boyer, a home builder, said he would be “extremely embarrassed” if the group didn’t endorse him.

“That would mean they probably don’t respect me,” Boyer said. “They know that I’m independent.”

Boyer said he wants to guide development in District 3, but not hinder it. He uses his home as an example.

He bought it in 2006 when it was a water-damaged triplex filled with renters sandwiched between two well-kept homes on Monroe Street.

Boyer added a garage apartment in the back and spent two years knocking down walls, changing the vinyl siding and adding an upstairs master bedroom. He was careful to keep the craftsman columns on the front porch that so many of his neighbors have.

“The last thing you want to do is to provide red tape that would have kept me from turning an eyesore into a jewel,” he said. “Some of my opponents have proposed things that I think really would have done that if left unchecked.”

Boyer was referring to an effort last year by Gergel and some neighborhood groups to enact a six-month ban on builders’ subdividing lots or tearing down homes more than 50 years old.

Some home builders equated the proposal with a moratorium on downtown home building.

“I don’t understand the opposition to the preservation of community character,” Gergel said, “because it always works to strengthen a city.”

Gergel’s 5,500-square-foot Pendleton Street home was built in 1920. She and her husband bought the house from a friend, Robert Lewis, for $699,000 in 2001.

The Gergels added a den in the back of the house, converted an upstairs porch to a bedroom, redid the kitchen and took out some trees in the backyard to put in a pool.

The outside of the house and the first few rooms were left untouched.

“We came in respecting both the outside and inside of the house,” Gergel said, pointing out the original windows, floors and thermostat. “I feel rooted in the life of the city through my house and through my street.”

Gergel said she isn’t anti-development, adding that her father was a developer. But she said she hasn’t had much contact with home builders during her campaign. Gergel said she tried to contact the Home Builders Association last year but never heard back from them.

“We weren’t really enthused with discussing a possible moratorium on future growth in the city,” said Earl McCleod, the association’s executive director.

Swearingen hasn’t mentioned his home while campaigning, preferring instead to talk about other cities he has lived in, including Austin, Texas, and how Columbia can learn from them.

Swearingen and his wife bought their 1952 home on Wellington Drive for $220,000 in 2002. The Swearingens were part of an influx of young, professional couples who bought and renovated old homes in the Forest Hills neighborhoods in the late ’90s and early 2000s.

Swearingen said the problem with most neighborhoods is the older homes are not modernized and don’t sell. Eventually, the price drops far enough that the houses become attractive to renters.

“I don’t have a problem with tearing down a house, as long as they rebuild it in character with the neighborhood,” Swearingen said.

That hasn’t happened on the outskirts of Forest Hills, Swearingen said. He cited an example on Delano Street, where one lot was subdivided and now holds two, two-story homes.

“They just tower over (neighbors),” Swearingen said. “That house would look good on the Intracoastal Waterway.”

Reach Beam at (803) 771-8405.