New Home Development Stalls

Mount Pleasant’s Planning Commission on Wednesday delayed approval of a plans for a massive residential development on a 200-acre piece of marsh-front property

While they balked on those plans, commissioners approved an apartment complex on a once-stalled parcel of Hungryneck Blvd. land.

Commissioners said Oyster Point development at the end of Six Mile Road need to refine their proposal for a first-of-its-kind cultural landscape district that would allow for up to 593 homes.

“I think you all are close, but I think we need to be closer,” said Commissioner Alice Ann Lehrman. “You have a great opportunity as the first (cultural landscape district) coming down the pike.”

Commissioners did vote to annex and rezone the property, which had previously been in the county, but they voted unanimously to defer action on the developer’s plans.

The cultural landscape district designation allows the developer discretion in setting lot sizes, but they must reserve 25 percent of the project for cultural, historical or environmentally significant objects.

Developers say their plans reserve 22 acres of land for historically significant elements and that they will preserve 446 historic trees.  But commissioners say builder D.R. Horton and their engineers, Seamon Whitesides and Associates need to refine their plan and make it seem less like a standard residential development.

In other business, commissioners approved a 300-unit apartment complex at the once-stalled Central Mount Pleasant project on Hungryneck Boulevard.

That project had already been approved for apartments, commercial space and homes, but developers say they are responding to market demands and now want to reconfigure the property.

Originally, Central Mount Pleasant sandwiched its apartment complex between a small parcel for mixed-use development and a larger parcel for homes.

New plans considered Wednesday did not change the number of the residential units, but it did push the apartments into taller buildings on land previously reserved for mixed-use development.

Developers also wanted the roughly 50 acres of mixed-use land to be rezoned commercial. Neighbors worried to commissioners that the rezone could open to the door for a big-box retail development.

Commissioners approved the 8.99-acre land rezone for the apartment complex and signed off on a higher-than-normal building height of roughly 60 feet, but they did not approve the rezone for the roughly 50 acres of land.