By Mike McCombs
The Island News
If the prevailing question is what’s next for Pine Island and St. Helenaville, developer Elvio Tropeano has an idea.
Less than two weeks after a 9-2 decision by Beaufort County Council to adopt a strengthened Cultural Protection Overlay (CPO) for St. Helena Island, Tropeano has filed an application with the County’s Planning Department to change the zoning on Pine Island.
Approval would change the T2R CPO zoning for Pine Island to T2R. For property zoned T2R, golf courses are permitted use.
The developer is also appealing the rejection of plans for three separate, six-hole golf courses.
The County Planning Commission is slated to consider the application at its 6 p.m., Monday, June 5 meeting in County Council Chambers. The meeting is open to the public.
Though strengthening the CPO and the potential development of the Pine Island/Helenaville land are not the same issue, this move shows just how inter-related the two are.
“These revisions are so important because they make it very clear what the people of St. Helena want,” Councilman York Glover of St. Helena Island said after the May 8 County Council meeting. “It’s not about keeping development out, it’s about what these things represent. They don’t want to become another Hilton Head Island and lose their Gullah Geechee identity.”
The approved revisions to the CPO make it clear that there shall be no gated communities or golf courses built on St. Helena Island.
The decades-old CPO was originally written in the late 1990s and was intended to uphold the wishes of the residents of St. Helena Island to keep their island mostly rural and to preserve the deeply rooted Gullah Geechee culture that exists there.
The revisions to the ordinance came after Tropeano purchased the Pine Island property on St. Helena Island and proposed building an 18-hole golf course on the 450 acre property along with 65 homes.
The project also proposed preserving a historic area known as St. Helenaville, which is connected to Pine Island by a causeway.
Tropeano sought an exemption to the CPO to build the gated community or homes and 18-hole golf course, later changing his proposal to three six-hole golf courses instead.
The revisions to the CPO have altered the language to close any potential loopholes that developers might try and exploit.
The two dissenting votes were from council members Paula Brown and Logan Cunningham.
Cunningham and fellow Councilman Tom Reitz both recommended to the St. Helena Island leaders who were present at the meeting, that they should meet with Tropeano and try to come to a mutually beneficial agreement to preserve the integrity of the island, but also allows him to develop his purchased property.
“We know it is going to change. Everybody on St. Helena knows that it will change, but it’s a gradual change that we can live with,” Councilman Glover said during the discussion before the vote. “That’s what we want.”
Mike McCombs is the Editor of The Island News and can be reached at TheIslandNews@gmail.com.
