COASTAL OBSERVER

County planning staff is reviewing a plan for 46 townhouses on Petigru Drive in Pawleys Island.

So are the neighbors and a citizens group that has challenged four other multi-family projects in and around the Parkersville area.

The project, known as Sweetgrass West, is the first to come up for approval since Georgetown County Council revised its zoning ordinance to shift the process known as site plan review from the Planning Commission to the staff. Since 2011, multi-family projects with more than 10 units came before the commission for a public hearing and required final approval from the council. The goal was to provide public notice of development that complied with the existing zoning.

The county initiated the change back to staff review after lawsuits challenged approval of three multi-family projects that received site plan approval from County Council after the Planning Commission recommended denial. The plaintiffs, represented by Keep It Green Advocacy, argued that the process violated state law by giving the council the final decision and that the commission had been correct in denying approval because the zoning that allowed the high-density projects was not consistent with the future land use maps that showed the property as medium density.

The suits were dismissed in Circuit Court and are now on appeal.

As part of the change to staff review, the county extended the radius for notification of adjacent property owners from 400 to 600 feet and required that a sign be posted on the property that a multi-family project is under review. Notices were sent last week. The sign went up Monday.

“We’ve had a few phone calls,” Holly Richardson, the county planning director, said Tuesday.

So far, the staff has only reviewed the application from Justin Nash and Garnet Investments for completeness, she said. It will now review the project for compliance with the requirements of the “general residential” zoning district.

The plan for Sweetgrass West shows six buildings of six units apiece and two buildings with five units each on 8 acres just south of the Hammock Cove subdivision. There are also three single-family lots at the end of a cul de sac. That portion of the property is zoned single-family residential with a minimum lot size of 10,000 square feet. There is no public hearing before the Planning Commission, but the public can comment on the plan by calling 843-545-3158 or by sending an email to planningdept@gtcounty.org. The staff will also send a copy of the plan to people who request it, Richardson said.

Comments will be accepted through the end of next week.

Duane Draper, who chairs the citizens group Keep It Green, said they will review the plan. But he was more concerned about making the public aware of the project. “With Planning Commission and County Council, there was a provision for a public hearing. Now there’s not,” he said. “Unless the general public is notified, they wouldn’t know this is going on.”

Before the commission held the hearing, it received a report from the planning staff.

Under the new process, “there is no finding to say ‘yes, we agree’ or ‘we disagree,’” said Cindy Person, chief counsel for Keep It Green Advocacy. “You have to be proactive then. I have to find out what’s going on. That’s a lot for a neighboring landowner to do.”

If a neighbor or the applicant doesn’t agree with the staff decision, they can appeal it to the Planning Commission. If they don’t like the commission’s decision, they can appeal to Circuit Court. “We still have the same issues,” Person said of the current project. It is a high density development (six units an acre) in an area shown on the future land use maps as medium density.

The county once had the opportunity to reduce the density on the tract. In 2013, a Myrtle Beach couple bought the tract and applied to rezone it to “forest and agriculture.” They wanted to build a house and keep two horses and a pony on the property.

The county planning staff supported the change because it would reduce the potential density from 50 lots or over 100 apartments to no more than one unit an acre.

Parkersville residents objected to the horses, saying it would open the door to more livestock in their neighborhood. One resident said at a public hearing he would rather have the 100 apartments.

The Planning Commission recommended denial and the applicants withdrew the request and sold the property to the owner of an oil company who put a helipad on the site.