After battling for years, Pepper Hall's owner & Beaufort Co. want to collaborate on this

County officials and the owner of a long-contested property in an area poised for dramatic growth have rekindled efforts to develop the land using, potentially, a public-private partnership.

Beaufort County Council approved unanimously at Tuesday night's meeting a memorandum of understanding between the county and Robert Graves, owner of the Pepper Hall property in Okatie, that will serve as a framework for a partnership to eventually develop Graves' roughly 80-acre tract and establish an 18-acre, county-owned passive park adjacent to it.

There is no timeline for the project and scant details about it, but both parties see it as a positive step in years-long zoning battle marked by fits and starts and negotiation breakdowns.

"Perhaps we're past the point, to use a NASA analogy, of ignition," Graves' attorney, Barry Johnson, said after the meeting. "And we might have liftoff, but we're not in orbit," he said, echoing councilman Brian Flewelling's earlier comment that there was still "a long way to go."

Johnson said the vision for the property, located just east of S.C. 170 and the Okatie River and north of U.S. 278, includes "commercial, residential and possibly some very low-impact light industrial (construction) that is in the nature of ... an office park."

Graves' planner Tom Low said there is "interest in kind of weaving the park into the neighborhood," which would be publicly accessible by shared roads; the county would oversee the operations and security of the park, Johnson added.

"But this won't be a typical southern Beaufort County gated community," Johnson said. "It will be very different ... ."

In 2014, the county spent $4 million to purchase 18 acres of the Graves tract along the Okatie River to protect it from development.

That piece of land is envisioned to become Okatie River Park, which the county will initially operate and maintain. But in the distant future, according to the MOU, money from Pepper Hall property and home sales and, potentially, property owners' association fees will help fund the park's operation and upkeep.

That assumes both parties can work together to iron out details, something they've had difficulty doing in the past.

In 2016, negotiations between Graves and the county broke down over the proposed construction of up to 700,000 square feet of commercial space and 480 residential units, which Flewelling then said was "so far beyond what I think is appropriate for that area."

Graves' property is located just across the river from proposed developments at Malind Pointe and Malind Bluff and, still farther to the west, portions of the forthcoming Hardeeville East Argent community, poised to add 9,500 homes and, potentially, 20,000 people to the area.

Johnson said the Graves team is trying to adhere to the county's community development code, which was adopted in 2014 and, according to Johnson, changed the way Graves' property was zoned.

"We might have preferred a slightly different zoning change than what occurred," Johnson said, "but we are doing the best we can to operate within the parameters of the CDC."

He said the commercial construction would be an attraction for residents of nearby Island West and Berkeley Hall.

Graves' cousins own about 40 acres directly to the north, which are not part of his and the county's MOU, according to Johnson.

Councilman York Glover called the MOU a "win-win" at Tuesday's meeting.

Councilman Jerry Stewart said Pepper Hall is an issue he's spent much of his 12 years on council trying to help resolve.

"Thank you for your help on this, and your willingness to do this," Stewart said to Graves.

This story was originally published May 30, 2018 at 3:26 PM with the headline "After battling for years, Pepper Hall's owner & Beaufort Co. want to collaborate on this."