Effort to save the old hospital

Published 11:33 pm Tuesday, November 12, 2019

By Leah Justice

The old St. Luke’s Hospital, located at 330 Carolina Drive in Tryon is being purchased. The Tryon Board of Planning & Adjustment meets at 3 p.m. Thursday to make a recommendation on whether to rezone the property from R-2 residential to General Business. (file photo by Leah Justice)
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Tryon Board of Planning & Adjustment to hear rezoning request

TRYON—An effort is being made to save the old St. Luke’s Hospital building on Carolina Drive in Tryon, but in order to restore it to use as a residence and offices, the town will have to rezone the property. 

The Tryon Board of Planning & Adjustment meets at 3 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 14 in the council chambers at town hall. The board will hear the request and make a recommendation for town council to approve or disapprove at its next meeting. 

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Several nearby residents have expressed concern over the request to rezone the property from R-2 residential to General Business. 

Some of the concerns have been that nearby residents do not know the plans for the building and say they are concerned the building could be sold at a later date for other uses approved for the General Business district. 

Local residents Tom Brylowe and Dorothy Easley applied for the rezoning and say they are trying to purchase the old hospital in an attempt to restore it and eventually make it a residence with offices for their businesses. The couple has recently restored the 100-year-old log house on Lynn Road near McFarland Funeral Chapel. 

“Some people come into a community to see what they can take,” Easley said. “We have moved into Polk County and look for ways to be a part of something positive.”

Easley said they saw that the old St. Luke’s is deteriorating and has not received a lot of love of late and decided to purchase it to try and restore it. 

“So many Tryon residents, their parents, their grandparents were born in St. Luke’s,” Easley said. “So, St. Luke’s has a rich Polk County history and that matters to Tom and to me.”

In order to do the construction to restore the building, Easley said the zoning has to be changed. She also said the uses of the building have always been General Business, not residential. The building was constructed in 1929 for the hospital and after the new hospital was built in Columbus (in 1973), the original building was used as county offices, including the Polk County Department of Social Services and the Meeting Place Senior Center. 

Easley said architecturally, the old building was built with great care and no corners were cut. But, now the roof is rotting and needs repair promptly. She said the property needs protection from vandalism and the land needs replanting of trees and aesthetic landscaping. 

“To accomplish all of that in a way that is done with care and caution, GB allows that,” Easley said. “It allows a shop with light industrial equipment to do the interior repairs that are needed.” 

She also said GB would allow the possibility of goats to help control the kudzu. Easley, now an appellate lawyer, used to be a research forest geneticist. Brylowe works on patents for certain gun parts and can have an office and shop to work on those parts he makes by hand, Easley said. 

“Around (the old) St. Luke’s instead of a big, ugly gate, we want to use the talents of local stone masons to build entrance stone work and the gates by local blacksmiths,” she said. 

She also said the effort will be a slow process and will likely take years to accomplish. 

“We would eventually be living there and each decision would proceed slowly and thoughtfully,” Easley said. 

Most of what would occur initially, she said, is to repair the roofs to protect the structure, beating back the kudzu and re-planting. 

The meeting on Thursday is public and public comments will be allowed. Tryon Town Council will make the final decision on the rezoning, likely at its next meeting, scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 19 at 7 p.m. 

To see Easley’s full explanation of their plans for the old St. Luke’s property, visit this article at www.tryondailybulletin.com. 

Attached is our Rezoning Application to place St. Luke’s Hospital back to GB, general business.  It shows we are attempting to save St.  Luke’s Hospital and eventually use it as a home with workshops and personal offices for us.  Some people come into a  Community to see what they can take.  We have moved into Polk County and look for ways to be part of  something positive.  That’s why we bought the 100 year old log house on Lynn Rd that was in great disrepair and over grown with saplings, wisteria, and kudzu.  We’ve been restoring the land and the property since 2015, including rechinking and redaubing the old logs with the mortar made using the old recipes in Polk County that worked for 100s of years and the Pacolet river sand.  We restored the old stone wall you now see that I found buried under ivy and soil debris and got the local stone masons, Terry Hudsons’ company now run by Mark Burrell to restore the stone retaining wall and Ben Hudson’s company to restore that old stone wall in front.  Now, we see St. Luke’s deteriorating and it has not received a lot of love of late.  Yet, St. Luke’s has a long, important history in Tryon.  We’ve learned that, before St. Luke’s  Hospital, babies were delivered in Misslidine’s, the second floor, and then they opened St. Luke’s.  So many Tryon residents, their parents, their grandparents were born in St. Luke’s.  So, St. Luke’s has a rich Polk County history and that matters to Tom and to me.  Architecturally, the old building was built with great care and no corners were but.  The roofing decking is of highest quality.  The beams are of highest quality.  The stone is the now-rare Saluda blue granite.  These are vital parts of Polk County history.  But what has happened is the roof is rotting and needs repair promptly.  The property needs protection from vandalism.  The land needs reclamation — meaning replanting trees and aesthetic landscaping.  To accomplish all of that in way that is done with care and caution, GB allows that.  It allows a shop with light industrial equipment to do the interior repairs that are needed. GB would allow the possiblity of goats (we had goats growing up on our farm, but it’s a big responsibility) to beat back the kudzu.  In the existing forests, we want to eradicate the kudzu and wisteria.  We want to set up plots in the forest floor for agro-forestry.  Before becoming an appellate lawyer, I was a research forest geneticist.  I love plants. This gives us a chance to try out very small scale agriculture within the forests using high-revenue culinary mushrooms, such as morels, shitakes, chanterelles, and ramps.  Local species that support high end products via clean industry.  Tom is working on patents for certain gun parts and can have an office and shop to work on those parts he makes by hand.    Around St. Luke’s instead of a big ugly gate, we want to use the talents of local stone masons to build entrance stone work and the gates by local blacksmiths.    But it is going to be a slow process, years and years, and the opposite way that a business investor have to work to quickly convert his sizable investment into a business option.  We would be eventually living there and each decision would proceed slowly and thoughtfully.  All  of this is so far down the road, however.  Most of what would occur initially would be repairing the roofs to protect the structure, beating back the kudzu, and re-planting.
That is why we want the rezoning for GB.  Not all restoration and reclamation needs to be done with a chainsaw.  It can be slowly and carefully, and private owner financed, in lieu of an investor with financial constraints looking to make the best and biggest return with the least amount of time.
Here is the link to the 186-page Town of Tryon Code:
https://townoftryon.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/chapter-154-zoning-ordinance-as-amended-052119.pdf
Second, my husband and I respect Town zoning and Town history.  Per the Tryon Town Code, GB is the zoning for hospitals, government buildings and the like.
Here is a link to the 186-page Town of Tryon Code that shows this to be true.
https://townoftryon.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/chapter-154-zoning-ordinance-as-amended-052119.pdf
You can word search for hospitals, government buildings, schools and you will find those fall under GB.
This property has never been used as a Residence.  Being zoned as R-2 violates the way that property has been used since inception.  I don’t know when or how R-2 zoning was placed.  But the zoning application is really a request to return the zoning of this property to what it has always been — GB.  We can find no historic record of this property ever having been used as a residence.
Tom and I are not independently wealthy.  We eat what we bring home.  We’ll have to work very, very hard on this project.  But GB allows a private owner like us to come in and work hard and long to protect the property exterior, and then carefully, slowly repair its interior with the tools they need to do that and to support their small, private entrepreneur ventures.  We’ll eventually live in the original structure (we cooked on camp stoves for 3 years while we were restoring the log house).
As for R-2 somehow giving more protection, the best evidence that the current R-2 designation is not protecting the property is by looking at the property’s current state.  Mature trees have been felled and removed, it is covered in kudzu, it is decaying and it is regularly vandalized.
Maybe we are nuts, but Tom and I have come to this area to be a positive part of this Community.  You know we’ve been heavily involved in the Save Hwy 108, in a time when some of the highway expansion was literally going to take peoples’ yards, some even their homes.  We’ve worked on the Scenic Byway  that protects more of Highway 108.  We have funded the Historic District application that covers all Emma Payne Erskine’s property and her works, which runs from Lynn Cote, across the street to the old Living Facility, the old log houses that Emma Payne Erskine had designed and built for her, almost up to McFarland’s Chapel, which will further protect that area, those families and their homes from highway expansion.  If we can be a positive to help protect St. Luke’s and bring it back to a positive condition, then we are honored to be part of that.
— Dorothy Easley

 

 

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