After a lengthy search, Beaufort has a new development director. Here are the details
The city of Beaufort’s has hired a new director of Economic and Community Development — a key department that oversees development in a city sensitive about preserving its history and the environment.
The city had been searching for the right candidate for nine months after the former director, David Prichard, resigned.
City Manager Bill Prokop made the announcement at a City Council meeting Tuesday.
Curt Freese, the director of the Community Development Department at Berthoud, Colo., was hired two weeks ago, Prokop said. The town of Berthoud, known as the “Garden Spot of Colorado” because of its agriculture, is a fast-growing historic town of about 11,000 residents located at the base of the North Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, 40 minutes from Denver and 30 minutes from Fort Collins.
“It’s just really a beautiful, historic town,” Freese told the Beaufort Gazette and Island Packet on Wednesday, referring to Beaufort and why he sought the job. “It seems like a good place to be.”
Freese is no stranger to South Carolina. He was zoning administrator for Horry County from 2008-11. He’s originally from Cincinnati, and his wife hails from Kentucky. “We’re trying to move back to the area we are used to,” Freese said.
Before moving to Colorado, Freese was executive director of the Henderson City-County Planning Commission in Henderson, Kentucky.
The advertised salary for the Beaufort job ranged from $84,000 to $132,000. Freese’s annual salary, Prokop said, will be in the “low 100s.” He will join the Lowcountry community in South Carolina in January.
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Freese will run a department that oversees development in a city that closely scrutinizes building because of its history as South Carolina’s second oldest community and Lowcountry location on Port Royal Island in the heart of the Sea Islands. The department includes Planning, Building Codes, and Code Enforcement divisions.
Riccardo Giani is the interim Community Development director. He’s overseen development and other duties in the office while the city searched for a permanent replacement for David Prichard. Prichard resigned in February after the State Ethics Commission ruled he had a conflict because of his wife’s job with a developer.
It took several months to fill the position, Prokop said, because of the high number of vacant planning jobs in the country.
Freese has a background that includes 15 years in planning, Prokop said. His experience includes work with so-called “form-based” codes that is important in Beaufort’s planning decisions.
Form-based codes address the relationship between building facades and the public realm, the form and mass of buildings in relation to one another, and the scale and types of streets and blocks, according to the Form-Based Codes Institute. The approach contrasts with conventional zoning’s focus on segregation of land uses, controlling development through dwellings per acre, setbacks, parking ratios and traffic.
That Beaufort uses the form-based code was one of the attractions to the Beaufort job, said Freese, in addition to the city’s staff, said Freese, including Prokop and Deputy City Manager Reece Bertholf.
The town of Berthoud was just awarded a planning award, Feese noted, and has some similarities with Beaufort, including an historic downtown and issues pertaining to growth and affordable housing.
The right candidate to head the Community and Economic Development office, the city said when it advertised the job, must be skilled in the administration of the Historic District, with a strong understanding of the history of its development pattern “and how to incorporate new development within the existing historical context.” The 304-acre area comprising the original town of Beaufort is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
The position, the city added in the job post, required managing, planning, organizing, and administering the department “in a sophisticated and unique environment.”
The city also is looking for a new city manager to replace Prokop, who announced in September that he was retiring in January.
The city received 23 applications for the city manager job, Mayor Stephen Murray said. Last week, council members interviewed six applicants in executive sessions that were not open to the public. The pool, Murray said, has been narrowed to four, which includes external and internal candidates.
Over the next week, Murray said, the city will announce a process so the the public can meet finalists after Thanksgiving.
Murray called it a “great pool” of candidates.
“Bill Prokop is going to have some big shoes to fill,” Murray said, “because he’s served the city extraordinarily well for the past eight years.”
This story was originally published November 16, 2022 at 2:40 PM.
