The Beaufort county council meeting was packed with residents eager to speak about a potential golf course on St Helena Island, South Carolina on 8 April. At stake was the future of a 500-acre property known as Pine Island Plantation/St Helenaville, where a developer had plans of building a golf course. Those who were against the development of the property cited “backroom shenanigans”, a reference to alleged deals that the developer made with elected officials in a nearby town to garner their support for his plan, and the need to protect the local community.
“We’re asking that you listen to the who signed a petition saying that we don’t want this,” Marque Fireall, a St Helena Island resident said. The people in favor of the golf course argued that the development could bring needed infrastructure, resources and jobs to the island. “I think that the CPO should be abolished,” said the real estate investor Jesse Gantt about the “cultural protection overlay”, the island’s zoning law that bans the development of golf courses and gated communities.
“It doesn’t allow me to do what I need to do with my property.” Local zoning ordinances, he said, prevented him from building tiny houses for veterans on his St Helena land. The dispute illustrates the broader tug of war between preservation and growth on the sea islands throughout the south-east US.
Created in the late 1990s, the cultural protection overlay is the brainchild of local activists and members of.
