COASTAL OBSERVER

Efforts to preserve the beach houses that give Pawleys Island its character are moving into high gear with the goal of creating a certified program that will unlock incentives for property owners to rehabilitate older homes.

Historic preservation has picked up momentum since the town adopted architectural guidelines for new homes in 2021 to help maintain “the Pawleys look.” The town Architectural Review Board has now reviewed 20 sets of plans, many replacing older homes that were torn down. 

Under the town’s current flood ordinance, required to qualify for the National Flood Insurance Program, structures where improvements exceed 50 percent of their value have to comply with elevation requirements. That can make it cheaper to tear down and start over than to renovate.

The Planning Commission pushed for the town to adopt a historic preservation program, expanding on a historic district included in the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. It held a workshop for town officials with a historic preservation consultant last year, and Town Council created a special committee to develop a preservation program. It met last week for the first time with a dozen people attending either in person or online. Another dozen or so expressed interest in helping create an ordinance and compile and inventory of the island’s historic properties, said Jerry Lieberman, who will chair the committee.

That should be done by the end of the year. 

“What we have confirmed over the past month is there are things we can do to go outside of the standard two-year process,” said Council Member Paul Groce, who served on the commission before winning election last year. “What we’re hoping is, as opposed to applying for another grant, having to get $30,000, $50,000 to hire a consultant to do a lot of things, there are certain things that we are going to be able to do ourselves.”

The preservation consultant provided the town with a list of recommendations for creating a program. The town has focused on one: becoming a “certified local government” through the State Historic Preservation Office. That is done in partnership with the National Park Service.

“That local historic board is exactly what we need,” Lieberman said. 

He also serves on the town Board of Zoning Appeals and attended the workshop last year. The appeals board crafted a variance that ensured that the 19th century Liberty Lodge, a house on the National Register, would be preserved in exchange for approval to replace a 1940s house on the same property. 

Lieberman said he sympathized with the owners. “They wanted to save it, too, but the rules didn’t allow it,” he said.

As a certified local government, or CLG, the town could maintain an inventory of historic places that would qualify for preservation tax credits and exemptions from the flood rules mandated by the federal government. The designation would also make the town eligible for federal grants, usually around $75,000 a year, for historic preservation efforts.

“If you look at the recommendations that came from the consultant there are a number of things there that focus on our attaining the historic status at the national level. That’s very aspirational,” Groce told the Planning Commission last week. “We hope to get there over time, but the immediate thing is for us to create the local ordinance, create the local historic committee, get our certified local government authorization and with that we then have the authority and proper power to grant certain variances legally and that’s our priority, to fast track all of that. ”

He has already talked with the state’s historic preservation officer about ways to compress a two- to three-year process.

“Paul and I are pretty optimistic,” Lieberman said.

Commission member Bert Mills, who was appointed last month, said he liked the idea of promoting renovation over demolition.

“We’d like to keep Pawleys the same. We like it the way it is. We like the houses,” he said.

Reducing the threshold for a “substantial improvement” that triggers compliance with the flood ordinance would help.

“I think that’s very valuable,” Mills said.

Lieberman noted that in the past some owners of National Register properties were cool to the idea of the town adopting measures to preserve the appearance of those structures.  Officials have said they want Pawleys Island’s program to be based on incentives. 

“The big thing for me is communication,” Lieberman said. “If you don’t get your message straight, the misinformation will just knock you over.”