From staff reports
Environmental advocates, as well as the Gullah/Geechee people, can once again declare victory in their battle to prevent a controversial luxury resort from being built at Bay Point, adjacent to St. Helena Island.
On Thursday, July 21, Judge Marvin Dukes upheld the Beaufort County Board of Zoning Appeal’s Sept. 24, 2020, decision to deny a building permit for Bay Point.
In 2020, plans for a $100 million, 50 cottage development faced stiff opposition from groups like the Gullah/Geechee Fishing Association, the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition and the Coastal Conservation League.
The organizations argued that the Bay Point area was fragile and was one of the few pristine, undeveloped areas in the Gullah/Geechee Nation. They argued the land and surrounding waters were critical for the subsistence of native Gullah/Geechees of St. Helena Island.
Marquetta Goodwine, better known as Chieftess Queen Quet of the Gullah/Geechee Nation, amassed the signatures of 30,000 people in opposition to the development.
According to an Oct. 1, 2020 story in The Island News, conservation leaders cited severe erosion, rising sea levels, increased hurricanes and storms in an area with an already fragile ecosystem as reasons for denying such a development.
After more than a year of trying to make their case for a high-end, ecotourism resort, developers from Bay Point Island were eventually shut out, denied unanimously by the county’s Zoning Board of Appeals at a public hearing.
Mindy Lucas of The Island News wrote, “Board members found it inconsistent with the county’s plan to protect rural resources, incompatible with land in the local vicinity, not designed to minimize the impacts on wildlife, not designed to minimize the impacts on local services, such as emergency or fire protection, and did not meet the definition of ecotourism.”
