Uphold the Integrity of the Cultural Protection Overlay on St. Helena Island | Opinion

Drive down Sea Island Parkway on St. Helena Island in the winter, and you will pass Barefoot Farms’ red, hand-painted sign that advertises a winter produce staple: “GREENS.” Locals believe that, when eaten on New Year’s Day, collard greens promise wealth in the new year.

The notion of wealth blossoming out of the ground is not far-fetched on St. Helena Island, where my Gullah Geechee people have sustained our own culture and livelihoods for generations by farming and fishing. I grew up on Tom Fripp Road and have made it my mission as the executive director of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor National Heritage Area to preserve and maintain this self-sufficient lifestyle on St. Helena.

To quote retired Penn Center Director Emory Campbell, “Our people are tied to their land; so, if we don’t have the land, we can’t protect the culture.”

But our land and culture on St. Helena are being threatened by a proposed zoning change that Beaufort County’s Planning Commission will consider on Jan. 5.

St. Helena is the last great Sea Island in South Carolina that has not been overrun by development and is a mainstay for Gullah culture. The island exists in its current state in part because my community rallied together to implement the Cultural Protection Overlay in the late 1990s. Tailored by and for St. Helena Islanders, the CPO is a zoning policy that expressly forbids the development of golf courses, resorts and gated communities. It also disallows franchise design and construction that restricts access to waterways.

The overlay was recently reinforced in Beaufort County’s 2040 Comprehensive Plan, adopted last year. The plan states: “The existing Cultural Protection Overlay (CPO) District protects St. Helena Island from gentrification that would result in a greater demand for services and higher property values, making it more difficult and costly to maintain the traditional rural lifestyle on the Island.”

The plan goes on to recommend strengthening the overlay to include additional restrictions on destructive land uses.

Clearly the CPO has worked, because St. Helena has retained its sense of place, Gullah heritage, and rural quality of life despite booming overdevelopment elsewhere in Beaufort County and the region. For example, once thriving Gullah communities on Hilton Head Island are now modern resorts, golf courses and gated neighborhoods marketed as “plantations.”

We can learn from this history: St. Helena Island should not suffer the same fate as Hilton Head. However, despite this alarming past, Beaufort County is entertaining a text amendment to the CPO to accommodate a developer’s high-end, exclusive golf resort at St. Helenaville & Pine Island.

This 498-acre property is wholly within the jurisdiction of the CPO prohibiting golf resorts. It is simply the wrong place for a gated golf resort.

St. Helenaville & Pine Island are listed on the National Register for valuable archeology and historic architecture and should be respected and protected. Converting this forested, culturally significant site to a golf course will also impact water quality, strain our vulnerable drinking water supply and damage our natural resources.

It is imperative for Beaufort County to uphold the integrity of the CPO, or it will risk setting a precedent that will lead to future exceptions creating a ripple effect of incompatible development across the island. I ask that you stand firmly with me and my community in opposing the golf resort and protecting St. Helena’s landscape and Gullah culture.

Victoria A. Smalls is executive director of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor National Heritage Area. Email her at vsmalls@gullahgeecheecorridor.org.