From staff reports
At its next meeting at 6 p.m., Monday, Dec. 8, Beaufort County Council will discuss a motion to rescind a 10-1 vote from the Sept. 22 meeting to deny the Pine Island development agreement.
Councilman Logan Cunningham of Bluffton, who is running for the 1st Congressional District seat currently held by Nancy Mace, announced publicly at a November meeting his intention to make this motion.
Just before 2 a.m. on Tuesday morning, Sept. 23, as reported in The Island News, at the end of an unprecedented 7½ hour public hearing, Council voted 10-1 to uphold the Cultural Protection Overlay (CPO) installed on St. Helena Island years ago and to not move forward with a development agreement that would allow for a golf course to be built on Pine Island.
The development agreement, put forth by the representative developer Elvio Tropeano, sought to put an 18-hole golf course and 49 houses on the property, which would ultimately be a gated community.
This plan to develop a golf course is in violation of the CPO, which was instated in the late 1990s to protect and preserve the Gullah/Geechee culture that is prevalent on St. Helena Island.
During the nearly four hours of comments during the public hearing, most of the speakers stood and spoke to how devastating they feel allowing a golf course and gated community to be developed on Pine Island would be to the people, culture and way of life on St. Helena Island.
If they are unable to put a golf course on the property, developers have said that they can legally go forward with a higher density plan with a significant increase in the number of homes built on the island.
With the 149 homes and 90 docks proposed under the full density plan, there would be no golf course, and they would be able to do this with the CPO as it stands with the necessary permits.
According to Beaufort County public information officer Hannah Nichols at the time, more than 500 people attended the Beaufort County Council meeting held at Burton Wells Recreation Center in Beaufort, and at least 50 speakers stood up to express their opinions on the development agreement on St. Helena Island.
The public hearing portion of the meeting lasted for more than four hours.
When it came time to vote, only Cunningham voted in favor of continuing negotiations.
