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Sometime Saturday, the sign disappeared, according to Wayne Freeman.
Freeman, 59, purchased the 12-by-18-inch sign that reads "Danger Low Aircraft" and placed it on his property facing Tradewinds Plantation in hopes anyone interested in purchasing one of the almost 80 homes slated for the 13-acre development off Sea Island Parkway will notice and ask more questions.
The development is between Freeman's 25-acre Meadowbrook Farm and the airport, he said. Developers have installed roads and other infrastructureon the property and construction is under way on the first house.
"Putting almost 100 homes at the foot of the runway to me is just unconscionable," said Freeman, who has spoken against the development since 2007. "I figure now the last thing I can do is say 'buyer beware.' "
Tradewinds Plantation developer Bruce Wylesof Lady's Islandcould not be reached for comment Friday.
Specific density caps do not apply to the property because it is in the Lady's Island redevelopment overlay district, which the County Council created more than five years ago to promote redevelopment of blighted areas and to fill in underdeveloped areas, said Planning Commission Chairman Jim Hicks.
Design requirements such as buffers and height restrictions create a de facto limit -- about 6.25 homes per acre on the Tradewinds Plantation.
Hicks supported the district, and said the concept remains a valid one, although officials probably should have "considered the airport in this specific rezoning."
"The only problem with that project was the fact that it was in the flight path," Hicks said. "It wasn't that it was a bad development."
The county's Design Review Team approved the Tradewinds Plantation about four years ago and Hicks said at the time, from a legal perspective, it was too late to change the development's course.
Since then, however, the county has strengthened its disclosure requirements for real estate near the airport, such as the Tradewinds Plantation, he and airports director Paul Andres said.
A county ordinance adopted in 1999 requires most real estate buyers within about 2.5 miles of the Beaufort County Airport on Lady's Island to sign a disclosure form acknowledging noise and the potential for accidents caused by airport operations, as well as development restrictions.
In 2007, hoping to clear up any potential confusion surrounding the form, aviation and county planning officials updated the disclosure requirement for real estate purchases near the Beaufort County Airport, Andres said.
"If they look at the ordinance, it should be very clear," he said.
A notification requirement won't lessen the impact of a plane crash, Freeman said. He's long said an accident would be "disastrous" and compounded by the development's high density."My concern is the target families were supposedly low-income, first-time home buyers," Freeman said. "They may be unsuspecting and end up buying a house almost on the runway of the county airport."
Of the disappearance of his sign, Freman wrote in an email Saturday afternoon, "I had attached it with stainless steel tie wraps and it would take a pretty strong set of cutters to remove. The fence is not cut so I am reasonably sure it was intentionally taken. No big surprise here!"
