‘Compounds’ will ruin Forest Beach

As a Forest Beach homeowner, I am gravely concerned.

This lovely neighborhood has been my home for 36 years. Enter the new entrepreneurs who seek to change our small residential neighborhood into a commercial district. The houses at 3 and 5 Heron St. are examples. These are my concerns:

The deck and destruction of the buffers are prohibited by Town of Hilton Head Island standards and Forest Beach Owners Association covenants. The town’s Land Management Ordinance requires a 20-foot buffer between these two houses. The Forest Beach Neighborhood Character Overlay District (part of the LMO) was created to “protect the single-family residential character and in particular the development and redevelopment of lots within the district.”

The approved plans did not include removing the buffer between the houses and the construction of a deck connecting the two single-family homes. The building permits were for two separate houses on two separate lots.

Town staff’s decision to allow the destruction of the buffer is based on commercial use of two adjacent properties functioning as one. It has never been applied to residential construction.

The bad precedent is this: property owners may purchase other adjacent properties and join all of them. Do you understand the danger this poses to the single-family nature of the neighborhood? “McMansions” will become obsolete as more “compounds” are built.

Just because something is not expressly forbidden doesn’t mean it should be allowed. Finding loopholes in the regulations is not justification for ruining the neighborhood character of Forest Beach.

This story was originally published June 10, 2017 at 6:00 AM with the headline "‘Compounds’ will ruin Forest Beach."