Hilton Head National: Take closer look at development codes

Hilton Head National redevelopment opponents may have a bigger beef with Beaufort County than the landowner.

The right question is not necessarily why a landowner would want to redevelop a placid, 300-acre golf course site into 300 apartments, 300 homes, 400,000 square feet of retail space, 125,000 square feet of office space, a 500-room hotel, a 400-bed assisted-living facility, a 1,500-seat performing arts center, a convention center and a water park.

The question is why Beaufort County planning ordinances would allow it.

The landowner started out with plans for more than that. The proposal for the tract off the Bluffton Parkway behind Lowe’s and an outlet mall has been whittled down a bit. And last week, a Beaufort County Council subcommittee charged with negotiating a development agreement with owner Scratch Golf Inc. called it off because they were at an impasse. The subcommittee pushed for limiting the rezoning to about 130 acres instead of the whole tract.

The landowner does not have to build as much as is proposed, and the County Council does not have to approve it. But the bottom line remains the same: what is proposed is OK by the Beaufort County Community Development Code, with caveats.

So how did we get here? And what’s to be done about future development? Could it all be that intense?

That’s what the county needs to help people understand. And the people need to know how to treat the disease, if that’s what it is, rather than the symptom.

These codes are not developed in a vacuum. But they are rife with jargon and minutiae that don’t mean as much to the average citizen as a traffic jam, crowded school, polluted creek or many other images that come to mind when a high-density development is proposed for an already-congested area.

The county code calls itself a “place-based approach to zoning.” And the place that is the Hilton Head National site is by no means rural, as it is currently zoned. What, then, comes next?

The code calls for “walkable urbanism.” The preamble says that “places of human habitat within Beaufort County should be of a scale that is primarily pedestrian-oriented in nature. Past regulations have promoted drivable suburban habitats and development patterns that over time have compromised the county’s unique character. This Development Code instead provides a regulatory framework that preserves, enhances, and creates ‘walkable urbanism’ while continuing to preserve the county’s natural resources and sensitive environmental habitats, in keeping with the county’s defined planning areas.”

It says the “successful walkable places within Beaufort County are those that have a variety of residences, employers, shops, schools, and parks organized within a five-minute walk of one another. The five-minute walk roughly translates to a quarter mile radius around the center of a community. The five-minute walk, known as the ‘pedestrian shed,’ is the basic building block of walkable neighborhoods.”

That is what the county apparently believes is being proposed for the Hilton Head National site.

But it quite naturally is not passing the smell test for many people.

And neither is development on Lady’s Island. Or proposed development on Bay Point Island.

While the public plays whack-a-mole with landowners cashing in on their land, focus also needs to be on the regulations that control development.

This story was originally published May 6, 2017 at 8:33 AM with the headline "Hilton Head National: Take closer look at development codes."