Bluffton is in the caboose, getting whipsawed by Palmetto Bluff’s new owner

Will the real Bluffton please stand up?

Bluffton is being asked to hit the gas on waterfront development.

It should instead be hitting the brakes.

But that would require today’s Bluffton to act like the historic Bluffton it longs to be.

The old Bluffton worked out a deal with the developers of Palmetto Bluff in 1998 to tamp down activity and environmental impact on its miles of beautiful Lowcountry waterfront.

That was then.

But this is now, and new owners are asking the new Bluffton to change that.

They want the town to change the Palmetto Bluff development agreement so they can pump fuel over water at a large new marina (think Shelter Cove) on the New River.

Town Council needs to put its finger in the dike. It should let the new owners know that Bluffton stands for something more valuable than a quarterly statement.

I’m sure they’re pitching fuel pumps on the dock and a neighboring 500-boat drydock building as minor details. The marina is already approved. What difference does it make? And besides, this change to enable more and bigger boats on the serpentine New River is around the corner from the prized May River, and you won’t even see it.

Try telling that to the people of Bluffton who spent a year and a half negotiating that development agreement in 1997 and 1998.

Union Camp, the original owner, honored local desires back then by signing a development agreement that strictly limited docks and waterfront development.

“It’s all the more frustrating for those of us who were part of that in 1998 to, 20 years hence, see it beginning to be chipped away at,” said Emmett McCracken, a former mayor and longtime voice of reason in his hometown.

WHIPSAWED

Development at Palmetto Bluff has always been a lightning rod.

And the people were promised that the town would not let it be turned into Six Flags Over Pritchardville.

Union Camp had quietly used its 20,000-acre Eden as an exclusive hunting preserve for top executives and clients. Activities were more land-focused than water-focused.

In the mid 1990s when it behooved Union Camp, and its successor International Paper, to sell tens of thousands of acres surrounding Bluffton for development, old Bluffton got nervous.

Palmetto Bluff was the first shot fired over the bow.

The one-square-mile town that prided itself on being an eccentric “state of mind” was suddenly looking at annexing Palmetto Bluff, like a speckled trout swallowing a shark.

The town had no full-time manager or planners. People joked that town clerk Sandra Lunceford could draw up the budget on the back of an envelope, with most of the revenue coming from strict enforcement of the 30-mph speed limit. One of Mayor Theodore Washington’s jobs was to move the trash can around during council meetings to catch water from the leaking roof. Town Council members literally considered chipping in personally to keep the garbage truck running.

But the winds of change were rustling in the palmettos, and soon uprooting oaks.

Sun City Hilton Head hit the ground by 1995.

County voters passed a temporary sales tax hike to four-lane S.C. 170, and U.S. 278 was being widened.

A new elementary and middle school were under construction deep in woods now known as Buckwalter Parkway.

Beaufort County had just finished a Comprehensive Plan and added zoning.

And Union Camp was shopping for the best deal on development, even saying it might seek to get Palmetto Bluff annexed into Jasper County.

McCracken says that at 86, his only involvement now is “sitting out here in my yard and watching the kudzu grow.”

But as a young 63-year-old, he said, “It was evident that Bluffton would either get a seat in the engine or we would be whipsawed in the caboose.”

And so Bluffton annexed and annexed and annexed again, mushrooming to more than 50 square miles filled with neighborhoods and cars.

The business plan was to buy a huge tract from International Paper, get it annexed into Bluffton along with a generous development agreement, then bring in developers and national builders anxious to see who could build the most the quickest.

But Palmetto Bluff was supposed to be different.

And the birthing pains of Palmetto Bluff should not be dismissed now.

DEAD VOTERS

Today’s change.org “Save The River! Stop Palmetto Bluff” petition opposing Palmetto Bluff’s new tactics is like a blast from the past.

Palmetto Bluff’s annexation and development agreement sparked spirited back and forth from groups like the Bluffton Area Community Association, Concerned Citizens of Bluffton and Citizens for Annexation.

The town set up an Annexation Negotiating Committee that met with Union Camp mostly in private for 18 months.

And Town Council put a non-binding question on a crowded ballot in November 1998: To annex or not to annex?

Emotions ran high. There was a lot of concern that dead people would vote. People pored over voter registration lists to discern who actually lived in the tiny town limits.

Signs for and against annexation were stolen in the dead of night.

“They were gone from Dogs Breath Saloon all the way to Wharf Street,” one person told The Island Packet.

A banner hung over the town’s infamous four-way stop, blaring:

“Do You Want Bluffton To Have: More and Better Jobs? Parks for Our Children? Clean Rivers? Vote YES for Bluffton Annexation.”

The Packet editorialized that it was too much change too fast.

But 62% of the voters — all 255 of them — wanted annexation.

Hank Johnston, negotiating committee member and subsequent mayor, said, “The county is not working for southern Beaufort County and it isn’t working for Bluffton. This sends a message that says, ‘Let’s take care of our own destiny.’ ”

So what is that destiny?

The greatest wish in all the hullaballoo about Palmetto Bluff was to protect the natural environment, that gift of God that separates Bluffton from Atlanta.

But that was then.

And this is now.

Will the real Bluffton please stand up?

David Lauderdale may be reached at LauderdaleColumn@gmail.com.