By Delayna Earley
The Island News
Pine Island developers have recently reintroduced plans to develop Pine Island to County Council members through a series of committee meetings.
The plan, which is called The Pine Island Downzoning Plan and can be found at pineislandplan.com, outlines the plans that Pine Island Property Holdings, LLC hopes to get approved in spite of St. Helena’s Cultural Protection Overlay (CPO) zoning.
The CPO is a decades-old ordinance that 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.
In 2023, Beaufort County Council voted to strengthen the CPO through revisions that make it clear that there shall be no gated communities or golf courses built on St. Helena Island.
Pine Island developer Elvio Tropeano again seeks an exemption to the CPO to build a golf course and gated community with the new “downsized” plan.
“It’s not a request for more, but a commitment to less, forever,” Tropeano said during the April 14 Beaufort County Council meeting. “It’s a common sense approach to reasonable growth in downzoning.
Jessie White, the South Coast Office Director of the Coastal Conservation League, said in an email to The Island News, that the CPO’s language is clear about what is and is not allowed on St. Helena.
“However it is packaged, a gated golf resort still conflicts with St. Helena’s CPO zoning that clearly prohibits this development to protect the rural sea island’s character and Gullah/Geechee culture, identity and land,” White said.
While the proposal has not gone before the Beaufort County Planning Commission yet, opposition and supporters of the development showed up to speak during the public comment portion of the April 14 Beaufort County Council meeting, as it will eventually be up to council members to decide whether to uphold the CPO or make an exemption for Pine Island developers.
“The CPO that protected St. Helena from golf course development worked perfectly for a quarter of a century and the Gullah people on the Island were spared the fate that has substantially destroyed the culture on virtually every other sea island,” said Robert New, a resident of St. Helena Island. “St. Helena and its rich heritage and culture cannot be for sale to the highest bidder. Will the people of Beaufort County, through its representatives, betray St. Helena for 30 pieces of silver?”
Sea Eagle Market owner Craig Reaves stood up to speak in support of the new plan to develop Pine Island.
“We have an opportunity to develop this with the least amount of environmental impact and the least amount of homes,” Reaves said. “The CPO doesn’t, in my opinion, protect the community when you can build 100 homes and potentially 100 docks. I’ve never heard of a developer wanting to do less.”
Reaves, who has been a shrimper in the community for 33 years, said he also thinks it is a great opportunity for people on St. Helena who need some economic growth within their community.
“I ask for people to look at what is being offered,” Reaves said. “I personally think that what is being offered will help because it will offer a lot of opportunities to work for people in the St. Helena community.”
A point that was seconded by Tropeano, who said that if built, Pine Island Golf Club would be the largest employer on St. Helena Island and the people there wouldn’t need to rely on Parker’s gas stations for jobs.
Robert Adams, Executive Director of the Penn Center, spoke about how violating the CPO would be the first step in stripping away the culture and history of the Gullah Geechee people who still call the island their home.
He said that the CPO was put in place in the 1990s with the forethought of what was to come, to protect the culture of the island for generations to come and to prevent development such as what is being proposed by the Pine Island developers.
Kevin Dukes, a real estate attorney with Harvey & Battey, P.A., spoke on behalf of Pine Island and said that there is no third option, and a conservation acquisition of Pine Island cannot happen and stated that this is the best option for everyone.
“Yes, there will be a golf course, but what does it take the place of?” Dukes said. “It takes the place of 100 houses, 60 feet from the water. It takes place of over 1,000,000 sq. ft. of impervious surface. It gives way to 360 acres of open space, 82 percent of the property. There is a reduction of 92 percent of the permutable docks on the site protecting the waterway. So yes, there is a golf course, but it eliminates so many ills that everyone in this room, some of which I’ve seen come up here before and spoken against and gets us to a density of T1 nature preserve, the lowest density zoning classification in Beaufort County. Something that the current zoning and the CPO cannot achieve.”
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.
