Growth control, or Hilton Head’s ‘schizophrenia,’ dominates the news over past 50 years
Growth control and its built-in “schizophrenia” have dominated the pages of The Island Packet over its first 50 years.
Born in a carefully planned setting of original developers Charles Fraser, Fred Hack and Olin T. McIntosh, the paper from the beginning documented, and participated in, the conflict between retirees, the business community and working families.
Lightning rod issues for the “burn-the-bridgers” have included expansion of the Hilton Head Airport and construction of the Cross Island Parkway.
The parkway connecting the island’s north and south ends was fought in court and in the political arena for well more than a decade.
Countless stories covered organizations like the Resident Homeowners Coalition, which championed a successful mayoral candidate who famously said he was “turning over the welcome mat” to Hilton Head visitors. Frank Chapman said of park development that children could learn to sail. And he constantly reminded the island that rampant growth would outstrip its “carrying capacity.”
A major conflict erupted with an unsuccessful ballot initiative called the Traffic Safety Amendment. It would have stopped all construction if one traffic light on the island reached what engineers called “level of service D,” basically having to sit through more than one light cycle. The Packet was a strong opponent editorially.
But the paper has given voice to all sides on its editorial page, particularly in the letters to the editor.
All-star letter-writers would include the dogged town government watchdog Connie Angeletti, and airport-expansion opponent Harvey Marriner.
Milestones
When BASF proposed a $100 million petrochemical plant on Victoria Bluff in Bluffton, it had all the state’s backing.
But a small band of Beaufort County residents protested it, and won.
The plant was not built.
And the die was cast.
This would be a community of resorts, retirees, recreation, and the real estate, retail and service industries — not “heavy industry.”
That episode also is known as one of the few times the entire community united for a cause — regardless of age or race.
The island Gullah community, skeptical of the newcomers from the beginning of modern development in 1950 — played a key role in the fight, led by the Hilton Head Fishing Cooperative.
The Packet’s leading voice in the fight came from columnist Nancy Butler Cathcart, a naturalist who would write a book documenting the island’s natural resources before she died at a young age.
The Packet’s pages later included environmentalist Todd Ballantine, whose drawings and easy-to-understand columns on local flora and fauna would lead to his top-selling “Tideland Treasure” book.
Other milestones covered at great length by the Packet include:
▪ A barge knocked the swing-span bridge to the mainland out of service on a foggy night in 1974. The local reaction by citizens would be the forerunner to incorporation of the island into a self-governing community.
▪ Hilton Head Hospital was born in 1975 behind the energy of the late Dr. Peter LaMotte. Improvements to the nonprofit hospital — and just keeping the lights on — became a unifying cause for the community. When it was sold in 1994, the proceeds seeded today’s Community Foundation of the Lowcountry.
▪ Incorporation of the Town of Hilton Head Island in 1983. Packet publisher Ben T. Banks played a big role in this long and drawn out public debate. Professor Horace Fleming, who did studies on the proposition, used the Packet as his local office.
Incorporation was seen as a desperately needed means to control growth. But it was opposed by native islanders who feared it would bring new regulations and taxes but no basic services.
In 1995, a team from the American Institute of Architects produced a study accusing the town of ignoring the infrastructure needs of non-gated areas of the island.
It’s an issue still getting a lot of coverage in the Packet.
▪ Bankruptcy rocked the island from late 1985 to 1987. A company bought three of the largest developments on the island, including Sea Pines and its Harbour Town Yacht Basin, and eight of the island’s 20 golf courses, including the Harbour Town Golf Links where the PGA Tour plays. But the leveraged purchases quickly collapsed.
The complex legal morass was bad for the island and many unsecured creditors, but island property owner and U.S. District Judge Sol Blatt Jr. oversaw a resolution under bankruptcy trustee John F. Curry that kept major tracts intact and kept outsiders from taking the Harbour Town golf course.
From this debacle came the nonprofit Heritage Classic Foundation to run the RBC Heritage Presented by Boeing golf tournament. Since 1987, it has produced about $45 million for charities.
▪ Sun City Hilton Head was announced in 1994. It was a game-changer for the development pattern of southern Beaufort County, and the pace of growth. Del Webb promised hundreds of new homes per year for 20 years. One promise made to the developer in secret negotiations was a direct link to Interstate 95 via U.S. 278.
▪ The influx of the Latino community began at about the same time, catching most service providers off guard and quickly changing the working world.
▪ Bluffton’s explosion. When International Paper began selling off its tree-farm land for development, a quiet town of one square mile and 500 residents ballooned 54 square miles and 25,000 residents, and counting.
Almost overnight, large tracts were annexed, complete with development agreements for tens of thousands of new homes. Beyond fears of a negative impact on the May River, the challenge of overcrowded schools remains unresolved despite hundreds of millions spent on new construction.
After Sun City’s development began, growth along the Bluffton corridor was like a field on fire, resulting in widening U.S. 278 and construction of the Bluffton Parkway and flyover.
The quiet village was gone.
Hilton Head ‘schizophrenia’
The seminal book, “Profits and Politics in Paradise: The Development of HIlton Head Island” by Michael N. Danielson notes the challenge growth control presented to the newspaper.
“At the outset, the Packet voiced many of the early settlers’ worries about growth,” Danielson writes.
“Yet the paper, as (Jonathan) Daniels said, ‘suffered like the whole island from schizophrenia’ of ‘worrying about development while benefiting from growth.’ “
Over the years, the Packet grew to seven editions per week, and was sold in 1990 along with The Beaufort Gazette and The Herald in Rock Hill to McClatchy for $74 million.
The Packet under publisher Sara Johnson Borton moved into a 30,000-square-foot office building on 10 acres in Bluffton, and in 2007 added its first printing press.
Danielson writes that “when the chips were down, the paper bet on more development — well-planned and sensitive to the environment, it was hoped, but more growth nonetheless.”
He also says “growth also turned a lively community billboard into a good newspaper, one that improved over the years ... a paper that dominated the market.”
The Packet has been consistently recognized for general excellence and outstanding reporting in many areas over the years under publishers John Heath, Ben Banks and Sara Johnson Borton; and editors Ralph Hilton, Emily Bull, Tom Fesperman, Terry Plumb, Fran Bollin, Fitz McAden and Brian Tolley.
Each of them led fights for open access to public documents and public meetings.
Top stories
The longest-serving editors today can cite long lists of major stories and significant enterprise reporting produced by their limited staffs, always stretched to its limits by a fast-paced community.
And in addition to gush of issues the community faced, there was Mother Nature.
The entire newsroom had to be moved a number of times for hurricane evacuations: to Beaufort; Point South; Statesboro, Georgia; and Columbia.
Editor Terry Plumb recalls that reporting both the problems and successes of the local public schools got buy-in from newcomers at a crucial point in the 1970s.
He says Fran Bollin’s early reporting on the environment helped shape state law and regulations.
During her watch as editor, Bollin’s staff won the S.C. Press Association’s top award for public service for its 12-page special section: “Black on Hilton Head, Dreams and Realities.”
She says today, “For some, those contrasting dreams and realities are as real now as they were then.”
Reporting under McAden included uprooting a popular island doctor following a nurse’s tip that he was performing heart procedures under the influence of alcohol. The reporting showed local and state systems that protect and hide poor professional conduct.
Tolley’s staff dove into the question of why there were so many fatal wrecks along I-95 in Jasper County. Reporting on the “Coffin Corridor” resulted in the state clearing trees from the median — and a reduction in fatalities.
The stories are endless, but the mysterious disappearance of John and Elizabeth Calvert from Harbour Town in 2008 remains one of the paper’s best-read stories.
Today, the Packet depends on extensive online analytics to track what readers spend time on, and what gets their interest.
The paper has had a website since 1997, but only in recent years has it turned its focus to digital readers and digital subscriptions.
The press is gone, and the staff has shrunk as the world has turned from print to online reading. The paper does not attempt to be the full-service printed paper that it was in a tiny community at its outset.
Recent challenges to the industry have forced a reinvention. It has a robust daily digital offering, posting news around the clock, sailing around the globe.
In that way, just like 50 years ago today, The Packet faces a new beginning.
This story was originally published July 9, 2020 at 4:50 AM.
