The 498-acre Pine Island/St. Helenaville is among the final massive tracts of land on St. Helena Island.
Coastal Conservation League
Drive down Sea Island Parkway on St. Helena Island within the winter, and you’ll move Barefoot Farms’ purple, hand-painted signal that advertises a winter produce staple: “GREENS.” Locals consider that, when eaten on New 12 months’s Day, collard greens promise wealth within the new 12 months.
The notion of wealth blossoming out of the bottom is just not far-fetched on St. Helena Island, the place my Gullah Geechee individuals have sustained our personal tradition and livelihoods for generations by farming and fishing. I grew up on Tom Fripp Street and have made it my mission as the chief director of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Hall Nationwide Heritage Space to protect and preserve this self-sufficient life-style on St. Helena.
To cite retired Penn Heart Director Emory Campbell, “Our persons are tied to their land; so, if we don’t have the land, we will’t defend the tradition.”
However our land and tradition on St. Helena are being threatened by a proposed zoning change that Beaufort County’s Planning Fee will think about on Jan. 5.
St. Helena is the final nice Sea Island in South Carolina that has not been overrun by improvement and is a mainstay for Gullah tradition. The island exists in its present state partially as a result of my neighborhood rallied collectively to implement the Cultural Safety Overlay within the late Nineteen Nineties. Tailor-made by and for St. Helena Islanders, the CPO is a zoning coverage that expressly forbids the event of golf programs, resorts and gated communities. It additionally disallows franchise design and development that restricts entry to waterways.
The overlay was just lately strengthened in Beaufort County’s 2040 Complete Plan, adopted final 12 months. The plan states: “The prevailing Cultural Safety Overlay (CPO) District protects St. Helena Island from gentrification that might lead to a higher demand for providers and better property values, making it tougher and dear to keep up the normal rural life-style on the Island.”
The plan goes on to suggest strengthening the overlay to incorporate extra restrictions on harmful land makes use of.
Clearly the CPO has labored, as a result of St. Helena has retained its sense of place, Gullah heritage, and rural high quality of life regardless of booming overdevelopment elsewhere in Beaufort County and the area. For instance, as soon as thriving Gullah communities on Hilton Head Island at the moment are fashionable resorts, golf programs and gated neighborhoods marketed as “plantations.”
We will study from this historical past: St. Helena Island mustn’t undergo the identical destiny as Hilton Head. Nonetheless, regardless of this alarming previous, Beaufort County is entertaining a textual content modification to the CPO to accommodate a developer’s high-end, unique golf resort at St. Helenaville & Pine Island.
This 498-acre property is wholly throughout the jurisdiction of the CPO prohibiting golf resorts. It’s merely the unsuitable place for a gated golf resort.
St. Helenaville & Pine Island are listed on the Nationwide Register for worthwhile archeology and historic structure and needs to be revered and guarded. Changing this forested, culturally important website to a golf course may even influence water high quality, pressure our weak consuming water provide and injury our pure assets.
It’s crucial for Beaufort County to uphold the integrity of the CPO, or it should danger setting a precedent that may result in future exceptions making a ripple impact of incompatible improvement throughout the island. I ask that you simply stand firmly with me and my neighborhood in opposing the golf resort and defending St. Helena’s panorama and Gullah tradition.
Victoria A. Smalls is govt director of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Hall Nationwide Heritage Space. E-mail her at vsmalls@gullahgeecheecorridor.org.
