'Hilton Head' name is headed west -- and not everyone is happy about it

It's not unusual for Hilton Head Island Mayor Tom Peeples to get a letter in the mail or hear from a visitor complaining about a speeding ticket or something else that happened to them on their way to the island.

The problem is that sometimes what they're talking about happened in Hardeeville or Bluffton, long before the visitor crossed the bridge into Hilton Head town limits.

"I think from basically the minute they get off exit 8, they have the perception they're on Hilton Head Island," Peeples said.

But you can't really blame the average traveler for confusing the mainland with the island proper. The "Hilton Head" name has been on a slow but steady march farther and farther westward over the years, and is plastered on residential communities and businesses.

With the announcement two weeks ago that the 9,500-home Hardeeville development known as Tradition was adding"Hilton Head" to its name, the brand name of the little island has reached just about as far out on the mainland as it can go.

The trend has Hilton Head officials and residents worried that every time the name gets stretched farther geographically, the island's identity becomes more diluted and muddled. Some on the mainland feel slighted by developers who pass over names like Bluffton and Hardeeville to go for the recognizable island brand.

But it's a trend that's not likely to stop anytime soon.

DILUTED CHARACTER?

Like many island residents, Judith Berry was upset at the recent survey by the National Geographic Traveler magazine that criticized Hilton Head Island as being an overdeveloped, soulless destination. She wondered: Was the island mistakenly being lumped in with the sprawling mainland development because its name is being tagged on stuff far outside town limits?

"As long as Hilton Head is going to be associated with development all the way up to I-95, I can understand why people would say 'Hilton Head, you know what that is: It's just a corridor of development and strip malls,' " said Berry, acoauthor of the high school textbook "Housing Decisions" that focuses on urban planning. "Our concern is over us losing our identity."

But for developers and businesses, that Hilton Head name is too hard to resist.

For the car dealerships located 15 miles out on U.S. 278, it makes sense for luxury brands like Jaguar and Porsche to be associated with the upscale image of Hilton Head, said Jill Jauch, marketing coordinator for the New River Auto Mall.

"Could you imagine Porsche of Hardeeville?" she said.

Sun City Hilton Head (13 miles from the bridge) shares the geography, climate and natural beauty of Hilton Head -- and the prestige aims to be about the same, said Jon Cherry, South Carolina Coastal Division president for Pulte Homes, Sun City's developer.

It's about attracting buyers, he said.

"Hilton Head packs marketing horsepower," he said.

Sometimes, using the name is a way of getting on the map. Tradition (20 miles out) plans to market in Europe, where people might not exactly know what Hardeeville is. Before the name change two weeks ago, the development was billed as its own town, as in "Tradition, South Carolina."

"The name is Tradition and the South Carolina in general was a locator, but, at times, people were like, 'Where are you in South Carolina?' " spokesman Martin Sauls IV said.

SPECIAL CHARACTER

Despite misgivings about the ever-westward migration of the Hilton Head name, there's not much that can be done about it.

When Sun City was being developed in the early 1990s -- clear-cutting trees and doing other things that are anathema to the Hilton Head development philosophy -- the town researched if there was any legal way to stop it from using the Hilton Head name.

There wasn't. It'd be like trying to stop all the pizzerias in the world from using the name "New York" on their menus, Peeples said.

Likewise, Hardeeville and Bluffton aren't too happy their identities get leapfrogged in favor of Hilton Head's.

"It's kind of a give-and-take kind of thing. The city wants our projects to prosper, of course, but, in the same sense, we want it named after Hardeeville, too," Mayor Rodney Cannon said. It's like in Florida, he said, where the name "Orlando" is tacked onto anything within 50 miles of Disney World.

In Bluffton, the new Best Buy originally identified itself as "Best Buy Hilton Head" before residents protested and the store agreed to identify with Bluffton.

"I think it's disrespectful to the community that the businesses are in," Mayor Hank Johnston said. It would be better if places were advertised as "on the road to Hilton Head," he said.

"People in Bluffton have got a lot of pride in their community," he said.

Peeples said it seemed silly 15 years ago when Philip Perkins, husband of a Hilton Head councilwoman, began a campaign to get everyone to refer to the town as "Hilton Head Island." He argued that the whole region would soon be known as Hilton Head, and the island needed to distinguish itself. He even lobbied CBS to use the full name in its sports coverage.

Turns out he was right, Peeples said.

The semantic distinction is about the best way people can fight the dilution of the Hilton Head name, he said. This year, Peeples successfully pushed the schools to add the word "island" to their official names.

"I would urge all our citizens to always refer to us as 'Hilton Head Island' to differentiate ourselves," he said. Peeples said he wasn't knocking the mainland communities, but that the island has its own special character.

"We just ought to be proud of that," he said.