COASTAL OBSERVER

A zoning change for two area golf courses moved forward last week with amendments that will further restrict future development if the courses close.

Georgetown County Council Member Bob Anderson said there could be further “tweaks” before the change to the Litchfield Country Club and Founders Club courses receives final approval next month.

“What I’m asking you all, and you all out there in TV land, is to give us a little time to fix this,” he said, referring to the audience and residents watching the council’s livestream.

While a hearing on the rezoning drew a standing-room-only crowd, a call from the citizens group Keep It Green for a similar turnout at this week’s council meeting didn’t have the same result.

The two courses are currently zoned “residential 10,000-square-feet,” which allows houses on quarter-acre lots. That is the same as the surrounding neighborhoods. The county created a “neighborhood amenity” district for the courses that allows one house on every five acres.

That will result in a maximum of 24 new homes on each course, said Holly Richardson, the county planning director.

A provision that would have allowed the clustering of homes on lots of at least one acre was cut before the measure received the second of three required readings by the council. The ordinance creating the new district was also amended to require the new lots have 100 feet of frontage on an existing street.

Richardson estimated that under the current zoning, the 156 acres at Litchfield Country Club could accommodate 417 homes after a portion of the land was used for infrastructure.

“A very rough guess,” RIchardson added.

Council Member Stella Mercado said people were concerned about the change because they thought that under the previous land use element of the comprehensive plan no development was allowed. Everyone she told that the current R-10 zoning allowed development agreed the change was a good one.

“We are decreasing density by over 95 percent,” she said.

Mercado laid the blame at the feet of the citizens group Keep It Green.

While the group supports the county’s goal of protecting the two neighborhoods, “the best protection against residential development is to not allow it,” said Cindy Person, a Litchfield Country Club resident and attorney for Keep It Green.

She urged the county to follow the example of the town of Mount Pleasant that restricted residential redevelopment on golf courses even more by tying it to a narrow list of recreational uses. The ordinance survived a challenge that reached the state Supreme Court.

“It’s not even a close call, legally,” Person said.

Anderson agreed that the county could have changed the zoning on the two courses after it adopted a land use element in 2007 with more restrictive language than the current element. But he also noted that at the time, the economy was entering the Great Recession and the slowdown in real estate development made that less of a priority.

The current zoning change is an effort to correct that, Anderson said.

He met last week with Person; Tom Stickler, president of the Hagley Estates Homeowners Association; and the attorneys who represent the owner of the courses, state Sen. Stephen Goldfinch and Shep Guyton. The owner, Founders Group, wants to negotiate a higher use for the two courses.

Anderson and Mercado have both said they won’t support a higher use.

The council adopted the “neighborhood amenity” zoning district and voted to apply it to both golf courses. The vote was unanimous.

Mercado also asked the council to reaffirm the “pending ordinance” doctrine for the changes, meaning redevelopment under the current R-10 zoning would not be allowed.