Closed gates trouble outsiders - common-interest housing developments ban beach access in South Carolina

Progressive, The, Oct, 1993 by Frank Heflin

Private

No Trespassing.

For Members Only.

Signs like these posted on guardhouses, beachfronts, walls, and fences of the growing number of exclusive resorts and residential communities along the Atlantic coast connote welcome to some, exclusion to many. As the coast of South Carolina, where I live and work, has grown in popularity, developers have cordoned off large sections of it to boost the value of real estate.

It works. Exclusive property worth billions of dollars has been sold and developed here as "closed-gate communities." And while it has brought a windfall of property-tax revenue to many coastal governments, it also has diminished public access to the coast, increased racial tension, displaced poorer residents, and polarized communities.

"This kind of development fractionalizes communities. I call it the enclaving of America's rich," says Jesse White, an official of the Commission on the Future of the South, a regional cooperative planning agency with representatives from twelve states. "Healthy communities encourage cultural and economic diversity, common public areas. These don't, and I just think they are a bad idea."

Developers, residents, and tourists behind walls argue that they are simply exercising a basic right to privacy. "I believe in the right to develop and, as an individual, to live in a private community. People who live here foot the bill for the cost of that, and that is their right," says Ken Willis, who owns the amenities and unsold property on Fripp Island.

From the plantations of Daufuskie, Hilton Head, and Edisto islands in the Lowcountry, and the closed-gate islands of Kiawah, Seabrook, and Debordieu around Charleston, to the rows of hotels standing shoulder-to-shoulder along the Grand Strand in Myrtle Beach, the South Carolina coast is increasingly becoming a walled resource.

"Until recently, people could use the beaches without this obstacle," says attorney C.C. "Cotton" Harness of the Coastal Council. "Now the ocean is being sold as an amenity. The more you can capture of it for yourself, the better you can parlay that into profits through the sale of exclusive land, golf packages, or hotel rooms. Once the local residential population was low and the money that could be made there was too. Because it has become a valuable commodity, people now find themselves excluded."

As the large resorts and closed-gate communities have grown in number, so has the coastal population outside the gates seeking access to coastal resources.

Many long-time coastal residents - accustomed to living in a community in which people moved across land freely to get to coastal resources even when the property was privately owned - are disturbed by the changes.

The village of Rockville exudes the rustic elegance that most new exclusive developments seek to create. Sandy roads meander between traditional Southern frame homes and huge moss-draped live oaks. Rockville has no police force, no mayor, and no guard gate to protect its population of 350 people, about 45 per cent of them white and 55 per cent black.

Across Bohicket Creek from Rockville are the islands of Seabrook and Kiawah where many of the residents of Rockville once spent lazy weekends. Both of these islands are now gated communities.

"When we were young, we would pile in a boat and go to Seabrook Island. We would stay in the community house there. A lot of times it was on a Sunday afternoon," says Mary Townsend who, at seventy-five, claims to be the oldest living person in the village.

Townsend, seated in her living room replete with family photographs, antiques, and doilies, describes how she raised her sons as "river rats" and taught in the local school for thirty-nine years. "Life here in the Sea Islands has been casual and open. But now we are not welcome any longer on that island, and I don't understand that. Seabrook was our heritage and I guess you could say I am resentful. There are many others here who feel the same way."

Forty miles down the coast lies Daufuskie Island. Here, too, dirt roads criss-cross this five-by-two-mile island. And at nearly every fork, the warning signs leave little doubt about the appropriate turn for those who are not members or guests of the plantations. The conflict between the island's black Gullah population and the developers of Haig Point and Melrose, both closed-gate communities, has been the subject of national news shows, lawsuits, and many newspaper stories.

In 1990, officials of the twenty-five-million-member National Council of Churches charged that developers of resort and residential communities on Daufuskie and Hilton Head were committing "cultural genocide," displacing black families from land they'd owned for generations. And in 1992, the NAACP threatened to file a class-action suit against the county and developers on Daufuskie Island for driving black families off the island - an issue that's still unresolved.

"For generations, this island has been an open community," says resident Yvonne Wilson in her Gullah accent. "You could go anywhere on the island. It didn't matter who you were. People shared. If someone caught fish everyone had fish. That is no longer true. Half this island is now off-limits."