11 acres cleared on prominent Port Royal property. Here’s what’s planned
Land is being prepared at a well-known Port Royal property to make way for more than 100 new townhouses planned by a regional home builder expanding its reach in the area.
The townhouses will rise next door to one of the town’s largest and best known apartment complexes, the Preserve at Port Royal.
But the two housing developments are not connected, according to the town of Port Royal.
The 122 townhouses at 1901 North Paris Avenue will be in a project called Mariners Walk. They will sit on 11 acres abutting the 400-unit Preserve at Port Royal off of Ribaut Road.
The Preserve apartments were recently in the news after Sundance Bay, the owner of those luxury apartments, took advantage of a loophole in state law to receive a $1.3 million annual tax break by purportedly offering a percentage of its units in its 40 buildings for low-income residents.
Officials with the town of Port Royal, which is losing some $350,000 in tax revenue, questioned the loophole and urged the state Legislature to close it before other market-rate apartment complexes do the same thing.
The townhouses and apartments have no connection today, even though both properties were once part of the same 2000 development agreement that also included the Port Royal Town Center, the professional and commercial offices along Ribaut Road, said Noah Krepps, Port Royal’s planning director.
The new townhouse project is being developed by Mungo Homes, Krepps said, which builds houses in the Carolinas, Savannah and Virginia.
Other recent projects in the area by Mungo Homes include Shell Point Farm off the Savannah Highway in Port Royal and Gleason Farm on Lady’s Island West of Sams Point Road.
Clayton Property Group Inc., doing business as Mungo, bought the 11 acres in May 2024 for $4.6 million from Port Royal Edp Crec LLC, a registered real estate and property investment entity, according to Beaufort County property records.
Clayton Property Group is the site-built housing division of Clayton Home Building Group, a major American home builder owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. The group is made up of regional home building companies including Mungo Homes.
In recent weeks, bulldozers have been at the Port Royal site readying it for building. That includes removing of a number of trees.
Port Royal has one of the toughest tree preservation ordinances in the state.
But the townhouse project was approved under the old ordinance, Krepps said. As a result, the development did not require as exorbitant mitigation as the current ordinance requires, he said.
Krepps said 47 specimen and landmark trees were retained for the project. Landmark trees are the largest, oldest and most valuable trees in the urban canopy. Specimen trees are approaching maturity and possess significant ecological value.
Between the retention of the larger trees and replanting of additional trees on the site, Mungo wasn’t charged any mitigation payments, Krepps said.
The project received final approval from the Design Review Board in October 2024.
