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Mayor: Grow or die
But Awendaw residents line up to fight White Tract development
By Kathleen Dayton
Staff Writer
A recent public hearing in the town of Awendaw filled the auditorium at the Sewee Visitor and Environmental Education Center, normally unlit on the last night of November.
Young mothers cradling infants and old men with serious faces, black and white, natives and newcomers, came to hear more and say more about development coming to their rural community, which is bordered by the Francis Marion National Forest and the Cape Romaine National Wildlife Refuge.
Here, in a town that has no stoplights, no supermarkets, no banks and no medical
facilities, a local family wants to sell its property to a developer for a community of about 300 homes.
The prospect of development on what is known as the White Tract has Awendaw residents, along with environmentalists, lobbyists and government officials, grappling with the same issues that are besieging other rural communities in the tri-county area and up and down the East Coast.
Development in rural areas, particularly in environmentally sensitive ones, quickly becomes a duel between landowners and environmentalists and between those who want to come in and those who are already in and don’t want company.
Landowner Louis White, who was born in Awendaw 79 years ago and inherited much of the property from his father, owns the 327-acre tract with his brother and three sons. One of his sons, Winston White, said his father always knew the property would one day be valuable. His sons weren’t too sure.
“Dad always said, ‘Boys, there’s going to come a day that this property will become too valuable for you just to use for hunting,’” Winston White said. “We just laughed, because the property was so far out. Then, lo and behold, development took off in Mount Pleasant in the late 1980s.”
The White Tract is now only about 15 minutes from the northern edge of Mount Pleasant, in the heart of the Lowcountry’s sweetgrass basket-making culture. Still, there is no city sewage service in the area, and a water system is only partially built. That has made the property less appealing to developers, but not entirely
unappealing.
“Our family has been getting calls from Realtors since the early 1980s,” White said. “Baby boomers are moving to the coast. It’s not just Awendaw. It’s from Virginia to Florida.”
Typo leads to extra hearing
The Whites are hoping to sell their land to Wateree Properties, a division of Land Consultants Inc. The company has not finalized its conceptual plans, which would still have to be approved by the town’s planning department.
A residential development on the tract would require rezoning from agricultural to planned development, which was recently approved by the town council and Awendaw Mayor William Alston.
The packed hearing at the Sewee Visitor Center ensued from a mistake made in drafting the ordinance, which misidentified tax map numbers on some of the land parcels.
Alston said he did not want to make a pen-and-ink change on the ordinance without informing the public.
“The public needed to know we made a mistake and needed to correct it,” Alston said.
The hearing allowed residents and others once again to vent their concerns about the rezoning. By the time the hearing rolled around, a local resident, Samuel Robinson, had organized the Awendaw Community Action Group. Citizens wearing ACAG T-shirts raised their hands one after the other to speak against the development during the hearing.
“We would support the sale of the property by Mr. White … as long as the scale of this development is reduced,” Robinson said.
Environmental groups such as the S.C. Coastal Conservation League also made presentations, citing the sensitive nature of the area’s forest and wetlands, a relatively unspoiled domain for birds, shellfish and other wildlife.
John Brubaker, a member of the S.C. Native Plant Society, said a development as large as what is planned for the White Tract, with approximately one house per acre, would be a mistake.
“It is an ecological disaster to even consider that,” Brubaker said. “It’s right in the middle of the Atlantic flyway, for all of those birds that move up from South America to the Arctic Circle. We are taking those places away and we are losing those species. One house per 25 acres would be sustainable. If there were city sewer, then the amount could be increased.”
Public opposition
White said he should be able to sell his property to whoever will pay market value.
“Basically they want to put their finger in it and agree (on) who buys it. That’s not how the free-market system works,” White said.
White and his family would sell the property to a conservation group if they had an offer, he said.
“I met with a Nature Conservancy agent and rode him all around the property,” White said. “He said ‘Look, you have too much waterfront. The market value on that exceeds what we can pay.’”
Mark Nix, executive director of the S.C. Landowners Association, said no one should try to steal the White family’s profits.
But Awendaw residents also voiced concerns about rising property taxes if upscale developments come to their town.
Recent tax reforms should prevent that, said Al Parish, director of the Center for Economist Forecasting at Charleston Southern University.
“Property tax reform limits the millage rate to rise no more than the consumer price index plus growth, which averages about 3.5% a year, regardless of what the value of the property is,” Parish said.
More than once during the public hearing, reference was made to the traffic, congestion and sprawl in neighboring Mount Pleasant. Parish said he believes Awendaw won’t be able to continue to shield itself from some level of future growth.
“You’re going to see development up the coast, I don’t think there’s any doubt about it, unless the development rights are bought to keep it the way it is,” Parish said. “If it’s private property and people don’t want it developed, then let them buy the development rights.”
Parish doesn’t think Awendaw could become densely developed unless it obtains water and sewer service.
“It would take the completion of that to attract a great deal of business,” Parish said. “Three hundred homes is enough to get a gas station and maybe a little restaurant, but not enough to get a Super Wal-Mart.”
Planner: Growth needed
Awendaw’s town planner, Bill Wallace, said the town desires some growth in order to offer its citizens services such as banks, supermarkets and medical facilities, which they now have to drive to Mount Pleasant to obtain.
The town plans to avoid Mount Pleasant-style sprawl by sticking to its comprehensive plan, he said.
“We don’t have large scale multi-family developments like Mount Pleasant has,” Wallace said. “Mount Pleasant has tons and tons and tons of apartments and condos and we have none, and we don’t intend to have any.”
Alston said without some growth, the town would die.
“These same citizens who are complaining and criticizing Mount Pleasant won’t stay out of Mount Pleasant,” Alston said. “They go there for recreation, they go there to shop, they go there to eat. Some of them work in Mount Pleasant.”
The federally protected lands bordering Awendaw would also help ensure that the town’s growth is minimal, Alston said.
“As long as this council and future councils and future mayors abide by our comprehensive plan that we have in place, we’ll have some control,” Alston said. “I’m not saying just go all out, but there has to be some growth for us to survive.”
Kathleen Dayton is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her at kdayton@charlestonbusiness.com.
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