‘Not just another development’: Del Webb announces Sun City community in 1994

Editor’s note: This story was first published in the Island Packet on Jan. 21, 1994. In honor of The Island Packet’s 50th anniversary, we are republishing stories from our archive.

It’s official! Del Webb gives OK to plans for new development.

Del Webb Corp. gave the official go-ahead Thursday to a retirement community that will bring a building boom, hundreds of jobs and thousands of new residents to Beaufort and Jasper counties.

Gov. Carroll Campbell and other dignitaries gathered at the Michael C. Riley Elementary School library praised the announcement.

“Look at the magnitude of it!” Campbell said. “We’re talking about a community that will bring an investment of over $1 billion. This is a tribute to our quality of life in South Carolina.”

The Arizona-based corporation plans to build as many as 500 homes a year on the 5,180-acre tract in Beaufort and Jasper counties. Officials expect a population of 14,000 to 16,000 in the new “Sun City” when it is completed in about 17 years.

Del Webb vice president Jack Gleason, who is in charge of planning for the company, told the crowd of more than 100 that the corporation’s board of directors unanimously approved the project.

“We are looking forward to having a premier project and are looking forward to a long and cooperative relationship with residents here,” he said. “We will be a good corporate citizen and a good neighbor. And we know the future citizens we will bring here will be good citizens and neighbors, too.”

Campbell, who flew to southern Beaufort County for the formal announcement, called the project “one of the most significant ever to come to the state.”

“It’s not just another development we’re talking about here — it is a city,” the governor said.

Del Webb, founded in 1928 by a New York carpenter, completed its “Sun City” retirement village in Phoenix in 1978.

The community is now home to 46,000 people and includes 10 golf courses, a 355-bed hospital, and a 7,000-seat outdoor amphitheater.

The South Carolina community is slated to have as many as 8,000 homes and three golf courses when it is developed.

Portions of the development will be along the Okatie River in Beaufort County, but most will be in what is now forests owned by the Union Camp Corp.

Del Webb is paying $23 million for the acreage, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings by the company.

While significant for Beaufort County, where two-thirds of the community will be built, Campbell said the new development would mean a radical transformation for rural and impoverished Jasper County.

“We compete with some other areas for this,” Campbell said. “We compete hard to get them. We had not just land, not just water. We had a community that had quality. That tipped it in our favor.”

Del Webb plans to begin construction late this summer or fall and deliver houses between summer and fall of 1995, Gleason said.

The company has developed several similar communities in Arizona, Nevada and Palm Springs, Calif. Like most of the communities elsewhere, the South Carolina community will be limited to homeowners age 55 and older.

Officials who spoke at Thursday’s announcement stressed the economic benefits that the new community will bring.

“We welcome the roughly 800 direct jobs, which will run a full range of skills,” Campbell said. “But I am particularly pleased that our technical education system will be upgrading the skills of hundreds of construction trade workers. This skill upgrading raises per capita incomes and provides the upward mobility I seek through economic development.”

Beaufort County Council chairman Thomas C. Taylor said Del Webb would provide new jobs for minorities and 20 years from now could be viewed as the “touchstone of solid planning.”

D.P. Lowther, chairman of the Jasper County Council, said Jasper will be looking for the spinoff once the project gets going in Beaufort County.

“All of our lives we’ve never seen a project like this come,” he said. “It will help our financial situation and put some money on the streets.”

Dennis Wilkins, a Del Webb official picked as general manager of the development said in a later interview that the company has been working with James Mitchell, president of the Hilton Head Island NAACP chapter as a consultant on how to increase hiring of minorities.

He said Del Webb expects 150 to 220 sales people, accountants, maintenance and other workers over the next five years.