By Delayna Earley
The Island News
Beaufort County Council will be having the first public hearing for the development agreement for Pine Island as well as voting on an ordinance to amend the Pine Island Zoning Map during its Monday, Sept. 22 meeting.
The decision was made in August to hear arguments from lawyers regarding their development agreement, but County Council Chairwoman Alice Howard and Chair of the Natural Resources Committee York Glover decided before the Natural Resources Committee’s Sept. 3 meeting that they would also defer their vote on whether to pass an ordinance to amend the Pine Island Zoning Map.
This decision was made following a request from applicant Elvio Tropeano, who asked that the Zoning Map Amendment not be looked at before council has had a chance to discuss the related development agreement that he put forward. He is hoping to have Pine Island removed from the Cultural Protection Overlay (CPO) to allow for a golf course to be built on the property, something that is currently not allowed with the ordinance in place.
The CPO is an agreement that has been in place since 1999 meant to protect the Gullah/Geechee culture, people and land on St. Helena Island from being erased by overdevelopment with gated communities and golf courses.
At the time, Glover said that this practice of deferring a vote is not normal, but Councilman David Bartholomew said that he believes that this will become the new way of doing things in the future when development agreements are involved.
“By considering both items (the development agreement and the zoning map amendment) at the same time, the Council will have the clearest picture of the project with as much information as possible to make a well-informed decision,” Hannah Nichols, a spokesperson for Beaufort County said in early September.
Council recently rejected another development agreement, denying a petition for a zoning amendment and a development plan for the 86-acre, 244-home Ramsey Farms Project at 98 Jennings Road, just east of Battery Creek High School.
Like Pine Island, this was the second time that the developer had tried to bring the project before Beaufort County after it failed the first time in May 2024.
During the Sept. 8 meeting, the zoning map application was put to a vote and failed 9-1 with Councilman Joe Passiment casting the only vote in favor.
As for Sept. 22 Council meeting, at the request of Councilman Glover, the decision was made to move the meeting to be held at Burton Wells Recreation Center instead of its planned location south of Broad River so as to allow citizens in northern Beaufort County, who would be most directly affected by this vote, to more easily attend.
The meeting begins at 6 p.m. at 1 Middleton Recreation Drive in Beaufort.
Delayna Earley, who joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
