Xanadu residents say their community not a crime haven

Residents of Xanadu Villas lashed out at opponents of split-unit condos on Wednesday for presenting what they say are exaggerated crime statistics about their building and its neighbor, Oceanwalk Villas.

The two buildings sit side-by-side behind the Metropolitan Hotel on South Forest Beach Drive and have been center stage in an ongoing argument over whether the town of Hilton Head Island should allow split units and whether the units increase crime.

While a small group of owners at both buildings have argued split-unit tenants attract crime to the area, a direct connection isn't clear, said Capt. Joey Woodward, who leads the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office Southern Enforcement Branch on Hilton Head.

"Based on what we're looking at, we can't say the lockouts are the prime part of the problem for that area," Woodward said.

Last year deputies responded to 98 calls for service at Oceanwalk, where there are 40 split units, but only 31 calls for service at Xanadu, where there are three split units, Woodward said.

But those numbers pale in comparison to statistics for the neighborhood as a whole, he said. Deputies were dispatched to the South Forest Beach neighborhood more than 2,500 times in 2015, including 1,500 crime patrols.

"(At Xanadu) we're painted with the same brush as everyone else, when we don't have the crime that might be happening elsewhere around us," said Leonard Vender, a Xanadu condo owner and board member. "We'll do anything we can to address any kind of problems that we're having (as a neighborhood), but it's unfair to make this out to be a Xanadu problem."

This story was originally published January 20, 2016 at 5:34 PM with the headline "Xanadu residents say their community not a crime haven."