Land trust applies for $1.5 million state grant to help fund public park at Whitehall Plantation

The Beaufort County Open Land Trust has applied for $1.5 million from the South Carolina Conservation Bank to help fund a proposed $3.3 million waterfront park at the planned Whitehall Plantation development, officials said this week.

If approved, the conservation bank grant would go toward purchasing the 3.5-acre waterfront property on Lady's Island, just across the Woods Memorial Bridge from downtown Beaufort.

But county and city officials are still scratching their heads about where to find another $1.8 million to fund parking, boardwalk and other improvements at the park.

"This park will do its part to highlight the turn bridge and the (Henry C. Chambers) Waterfront Park on the other side," County Councilman Brian Flewelling said Monday afternoon. "It's a great idea and it's a great price. I just don't know where we'll find the money."

That's where the Open Land Trust stepped in, said Lisa Lord, administrator for the land trust and the county's Rural and Critical Lands Program.

Over the summer, Whitehall developers Dick Stewart and Steve Tully approached the Open Land Trust about applying for the grant because they want to preserve the waterfront as part of their plan to build 76 homes on the property. The land trust agreed and wanted to contribute, so Lord applied in July.

"It's a very unique project for the bank -- it's not something they're typically used to seeing -- but I think it's a great project. It serves several purposes," Lord said. "Our (application) was ranked very, very strongly. We hit all of the right criteria. It's just going to depend on where we sit when they clear out some of the past projects backlog."

The conservation bank will consider the application at its meeting Nov. 4 in Orangeburg.

Even if that grant is approved, though, the county and city are still left with a sizable expense to make the park a reality, officials said this week.

The developers have proposed that funding could come from the creation of a multi-county industrial park at the property, in which community residents would be charged a payment in lieu of their property taxes to pay down construction of the public park.

However, county administrators said Monday they are uncomfortable with the precedent that plan could set.

"Our concern is that agreeing to do that for this development opens up a Pandora's Box for other developers to come ask us, 'Can you help with my infrastructure?'" deputy county administrator Josh Gruber said.

Instead, county and city officials will brainstorm on other possible financing options, such as funds from the county's Rural and Critical Lands program, a tax increment financing district, county and city reserves, borrowing or a combination of any of those, said Gruber and city manager Bill Prokop. A tax increment financing district, such as the one the city has set up for Boundary Street improvements, involves using growing tax values in a particular area to pay for specific improvements there.

City Council discussed its options in executive session at its meeting Tuesday night, but the details are in still in the works, Prokop added.

"We have not made any decisions," Prokop said. "We're looking at what would be the right way, whether it's a (tax increment financing district) or other method of financing, but we think the park could be a real contribution to citizens."

The councils have until January to figure out a solution or risk losing the development entirely, Tully said Monday.

"If you don't want to study this, it's OK," Stewart said. "Just say so now and we'll just go sell the property to somebody else because this is not really something I want to chase around forever if it's not important."

"What I've heard here is that the city supports and everybody else supports it," he continued. "Now it's just a question of how you do it."

Follow reporter Zach Murdock on Twitter at twitter.com/IPBG_Zach and on Facebook at facebook.com/IPBGZach.

Related content:

• Whitehall developers want city, county help to build public park, Aug. 23, 2015
• Developers team up to develop vacant Whitehall Plantation, Oct. 31, 2014

This story was originally published September 22, 2015 at 5:53 PM with the headline "Land trust applies for $1.5 million state grant to help fund public park at Whitehall Plantation."