This Catholic church is expanding and wants to be annexed into Bluffton. What’s coming?
As St. Gregory the Great Catholic Church nears its 20th anniversary in two months, church officials are planning its future.
The church, located along U.S. 278, wants to expand.
Partially hidden from the highway by a thin layer of trees and bordered by the Bluffton Fire station and Berkeley Hall, the church was dedicated on Sept. 3, 2000, and is attended by many prominent Blufftonians including Mayor Lisa Sulka.
Church officials say they want bigger facilities for the church and school and a new rectory building for its clergy members.
However, those plans are at least five years away, Monsignor Ronald R. Cellini said Thursday.
There’s one caveat: Although the church’s 61-acre campus has a Bluffton address, it is not inside the town’s limits.
In a request reviewed by the town’s planning commission last week, the church says it wants its entire campus annexed into Bluffton.
The campus, situated on the north side of U.S. 278 in unincorporated Beaufort County, currently includes the church, school, parish life center, multi-purpose field, the county-owned St. Gregory Drive and a Beaufort-Jasper Water & Sewer Authority pump station.
Also on the property is 10 acres of undeveloped land that is currently for sale.
The church now wants to be officially part of Bluffton “for many reasons,” Cellini said, but mainly to connect with parishioners and the town it serves, he said.
“We are the parish for Bluffton,” he said. “We are part of the Bluffton community. When the Bluffton Town Council comes up with a ruling about wearing masks, we wear masks.”
“It gives us that unity of purpose,” he said.
Even with Bluffton leading Beaufort County in the number of confirmed coronavirus cases, the parish is still seeing people move to the area, Cellini said.
Before the pandemic started, the church was registering about 15 new families a week, he said. Its now home to about 11,000 parishioners.
Part of the church’s request also includes a plan to change the zoning of the property to be part of the town’s Buckwalter Planned Unit Development.
That zoning change would allow for several categories of development on the undeveloped portions of the property, according to planning documents. Those categories include:
▪ Community recreation
▪ Dwelling units
▪ Hotel/Inn
▪ Institutional civic
▪ Maintenance areas
▪ Multifamily residential
▪ Neighborhood commercial — including specifically convenience stores and automobile service stations with up to 20 fueling stations but excluding RV parks
▪ Open space
▪ Roads
▪ Setbacks and buffers
▪ Silviculture
▪ Single family residential but excluding mobile homes
▪ Wetlands
▪ Utilities
The zoning rules in the Buckwalter Planned Unit Development allow more permitted uses than Beaufort County’s current zoning allows, according to planning documents. For example, multi-family dwelling units are permitted in Bluffton, but are “conditional” under the current neighborhood mixed use zoning in Beaufort County.
“We’re looking for growth,” Cellini said. “We’d like to grow our school and someday build a new church. Down the road, if Bluffton keeps growing, we are going to build a new facility. It’s like a rose opening up one leaf at a time.”
On the town’s side, Kevin Icard, Bluffton’s planning and community development manager, said the town’s level of police and government services can be a factor when an applicant wants to be annexed.
“It’s about the municipal services that are provided. That’s a big part of it,” he said. “It’s a benefit to the tax base of the town. You’re also part of the community.”
Walter Nester, the attorney representing the church in its annexation request, said the undeveloped land on the property could be developed for the church or “as some other type of use.”
“It could be dormitories for student housing or housing for employees,” he said. “In Buckwalter, there are buckets or various types of density and types of uses. Right now, the church doesn’t know how the property is going to be used in the future. They certainly have some ideas of what might be used there, but today, they don’t have specific plans.”
Because of that, Nester said he recommended the church ask the town for an allowable density of 10 acres of general commercial development and 446 residential dwelling units on the 61-acre property.
“If we don’t ask for it today, in the future ... we’ll have to buy it from somebody else,” he said.
To be annexed into the town, the church will have to go through a long process with town officials.
After Wednesday’s initial planning commission hearing, the plans will go before the planning commission one more time in August.
If the commission recommends approval, it will likely head to town council for first reading in October before a final vote considering approval in November, according to town documents.
The public will have the opportunity to voice concerns or support about the planned annexation during the planning commission meeting expected to be held on Aug. 26 and during the town council’s public hearing planned for Nov. 10.
“We just sync more perfectly with Bluffton,” Cellini said. “It’s fitting — like a glove and a hand.”
