Kiawah’s most recent trouble isn’t really about parking spaces — it’s about typical not-in-my-backyard politics. And that’s the sort of politics that could cost the town, and its residents, millions of dollars ..
. without accomplishing much of anything. See: Mount Pleasant.
As The Post and Courier’s Teri Errico Griffis reports, Kiawah Resort Associates — the island’s longtime master developer — has sued the town of Kiawah Island for changing the terms of an agreement after KRA spent millions of dollars on a new development. Still, the town refuses to allow its brand-new beach club to open. Basically, KRA says its deal with the town signed years ago required 14 off-site parking spaces for the club.
But as construction was winding down, the town — citing an obscure ordinance — came back and demanded six times as many spaces. The company says it scaled back another development to free up land for the additional parking, but the town still won’t issue the certificate of occupancy needed to open the club. So the company is asking for $11 million in damages.
The bigger problem for the town is that its ongoing spat could hurt the value of 78 condos at a new development adjacent to the club called The Cape. The people who bought those luxury condos have publicly suggested that, if this impasse continues, they could be looking at losses of $1 million per unit . Guess who’d get sued for those damages.
Kiawah Mayor Brad Belt says there’s much more to the story, that it’s much more complicated than parking, but he won’t litigate it in the media. At a meeting last month, however, he said the developer should’ve gone through normal administrative channels for a zoning variance. Many longtime islanders say the developer likely sued because normal channels aren't a realistic option nowadays.
The real problem, they say, is an anti-development fever that has swept the island. That sentiment is particularly strong among residents who deal with the worst of the island’s traffic near busy Beachwalker Drive — home to a wildly popular county park and, perhaps not coincidentally, KRA’s new development. This, some residents say, is a politically driven effort to stop development the town approved years ago.
Councilman Michael Heidingsfelder hinted at the problem just last month. “I have been sneered by several people on Kiawah for just even using the word of ‘compromise,’ but this is what reasonable people do,” Heidingsfelder said. “This is what responsible people do, both in business or in public service.
” Heidingsfelder, by the way, ran for mayor in an April special election — and one of his issues was the speed of development on the island. But he lost by about 2-to-1 to Belt, who was even more vocally anti-development. At one point, Belt said one of the problems he’d found with island governance was “insufficient attention was being paid to legal and contractual requirements.
” Now, that was months after the town and KRA allegedly got into it over parking at the beach club. But because Belt is also a member of one of the three HOAs being sued by KRA, some residents have asked him to recuse himself. Yes, this is the nastiest kind of local politics (and admittedly a first-world problem).
Who knows where the truth lies? But whatever’s going on, and whether there’s more to the story, the town should tread lightly and take a lesson from Mount Pleasant. A decade ago, Mount Pleasant — then the fastest-growing town in the state — was caught up in similar NIMBY politics. A parking garage on Shem Creek had raised the ire of longtime residents, who subsequently descended on Town Council and demanded it renege on a deal to allow a new apartment complex on Ben Sawyer Boulevard.
Council tried to stop the development by refusing to accept a fairly routine document, and the developer sued. The town’s attorneys warned council it would lose that suit, and that might cost Mount Pleasant millions. But Town Council listened to its constituents, got new lawyers .
.. and promptly lost the case.
Council avoided punitive damages, but a judge ruled the apartments could be built. Basically, all that anti-development politicking cost the town a lot in legal fees, and the outcome didn’t change. Kiawah should keep that in mind as long as that beach club stays closed.
The town has good attorneys, but if the facts are as the developer claims, KRA could win — and, as several residents argue, ruin the reputation of the town. The upshot of that isn’t pretty. It ends with the beach club open and a lot of Beachwalker Drive residents stuck in traffic while paying the tab for a losing fight.
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