GEORGETOWN — Looking over the zoning plan for two Georgetown County golf courses, many neighbors want a mulligan.
They packed the benches at an April 17 Georgetown County Planning Commission meeting, leaving only narrow gaps between attendees’ shoulders.
“I don’t want to see houses back there or anything else beside my home,” said Christine Prior, who lives on the 14th hole of the Litchfield Country Club’s course. “Neither do the countless residents who choose to live here for the natural beauty, peace and open space these golf courses provide.”
In February, Georgetown County Council proposed a change to the zoning for the Litchfield Country Club and Founders Club courses. Under the current zoning, the properties could be developed with four houses per acre if the courses were to close.
The council wants to create a new neighborhood amenity district that would preserve green space and limit residential development on the courses to one house per five acres.
But for many residents, it’s not enough.
Prior said the proposed district is packaged as a gift, but it could actually do more harm than good. She asked instead for a zoning district that prohibits all residential development.
A neighborhood amenity zoning district would still allow the land to be used for a golf course, public facilities, parks, open space and recreational facilities, according to Holly Richardson, the county’s planning director.
There would also be limited conditional uses. For example, a clubhouse could be converted into a subdivision amenity, and there could possibly be commercial development along land fronting U.S. Highway 17, Richardson said.
Although neither the Litchfield Country Club nor Founders Club has announced closures, the new zoning would be used as a stopgap measure until the county could update its zoning ordinances to reflect how the courses are designated in the comprehensive plan.
The future land use map lists them as conservation agriculture districts, which are areas that include land critical to the health of watersheds and waterways, public recreation facilities or specific protected features in neighborhoods, Richardson said.
Updating the zoning could take between 12 and 18 months, and some council members are looking for a quicker solution to limit development in the case of a sudden closure.
“We feel that the proposal of some limited use, mostly recreational for the courses, and some very restricted residential, single-family density is both reasonable and best in keeping with the language from the comprehensive plan,” Richardson said.
Community raising concerns
More than 10 people spoke at the planning commission meeting and almost all of them said the neighborhood amenity zoning district is an unacceptable solution. They said they’d rather see a new zoning district that restricts all residential development.
Mary Beth Cline lives in Pawleys Plantation. She called the new zoning district a Trojan horse. A neighborhood amenity district may have fewer adverse impacts than the current zoning, but inviting development would still negatively impact home values and create more traffic and flooding issues, she said.
“Do you really want to yet again ignore the desire of the majority of people living in these communities and vote against them?” she asked the commission.
Several residents raised concerns about flooding, traffic and housing density.
State Sen. Stephen Goldfinch, R-Murrells Inlet, also spoke at the meeting. He echoed the concerns about infrastructure and unfettered development. He asked that negotiations between residents and the local government be held before any decisions are made about the zoning.
Duane Draper and Cindy Person of the nonprofit law firm Keep It Green said the future land use map of the comprehensive plan should be changed to designate the courses as private recreational, which would prohibit residential development, and a new zoning district should be created in line with that.
They said the future land use map designated the courses as private recreational until a new plan was approved in 2024, but the zoning was never updated to reflect this designation.
Person supports the council’s desire to quickly change the existing zoning and protect the courses from development, but she said the proposal still has many deficiencies. It should only be used as a temporary measure, she argued.
Several others asked that the comprehensive plan be changed to reflect the original private recreational designation and that a corresponding zoning district be created.
Ultimately, after hearing such staunch opposition, the planning commission recommended that the council wait to create the new zoning district.
“I don’t know why it is that the county seems hellbent and determined to ignore what the taxpaying citizens of the Waccamaw Neck are all screaming at them — ’No increased density,’” planning commission member Marla Jean Hamby said.
