‘Most generous gift’: Prince George tract in Pawleys Island nets long-sought designation
A nearly 1,100-acre tract of beachfront property in Pawleys Island — located between Highway 17 and the Atlantic Ocean — will be permanently preserved with a conservation easement, the Pee Lee Land Trust announced this week.
The announcement is the culmination of a nearly 40-year history for the land, which was first planned as a major development and later promised as a preservation.
Preserved by PG Preservation LLC, owned by the former banker Bud Watts, the conservation easement will prevent the land from being heavily developed and will ensure that the natural habitats are sustained, said Susan Smythe, an attorney who worked with Watts on the easement. Under the easement, the property can’t be broken up into more than two large chunks and could, in the future, be granted to a nonprofit or government entity, potentially as a nature preserve.
A conservation easement allows a piece of land to be permanently preserved, even if the land changes ownership, and grants some tax breaks to the owner if certain conditions are met.
For now, though, the land will simply be allowed to exist, with some environmental researchers allowed to access the site from time to time. That’s a stark contrast to the rapid development along the beachfront on either side of the property, Smythe said.
“If you think about all the development that’s gone on in that area, to have a large swatch of forest that’s going to be there over the next 200 years and then some … it will have an impact today, and an even greater impact in the future,” she said.
Along with beautifying the Pawleys Island area, preserving the acreage could also help with flood control, explained Lyles Cooper Lyles, the executive director of the Pee Dee Land Trust.
“Having it be directly across from the public beach, it truly is the most generous gift to the community that that will stay wild forever,” she said. “Not to mention the water quality and flood mitigation. This will be an opportunity for the water to ebb and flow.”
But the fact that the land is now permanently preserved belies a long and complicated history that at multiple stages could have ended with the land developed as housing or tourist attractions.
A nearly 40-year history
Originally owned by Vanderbilt heiress Lucille Pate, Pate sold a 1,934 tract of land in 1985 to a group of developers for $17.6 million, according to an account of the Prince George tract published in The Sun News in 2013. The developers had big plans for the land and sought to build 3,000 homes, three golf courses and a convention hotel.
The developers took out a mortgage on the land to bring their plans to life, but those plans stalled. Meanwhile, the bank they took out the loan from failed and the federal government, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, took ownership of the land, eventually purchasing the land for $12 million in 1992.
Eventually, after trying and failing to find a buyer for the land, the University of South Carolina partnered with a group of developers to buy the land, in exchange for the developers receiving part of the property. At the time, USC stated it wanted to locate research facilities on the land, as well as grant public access and explore opportunities for “ecotourism.” The University also marketed the land to outside developers.
Those plans didn’t materialize, and the land sat unused and undeveloped — with no public access — for years.
How the conservation works
Rewind to five years ago.
USC agreed to sell the land to Watts, under his PG Preservation LLC. Working with local real estate salesman Phillip Lammonds, Watts purchased the land in 2015 and began the process of protecting it. Lammonds played a key role in the process, ensuring a buyer who wanted to preserve the land ended up with the property, according to a news release from the Pee Dee Land Trust.
“For years Phillip sold real estate in the area and believed that the tract was protected,” the release said. “When he realized that the tract could in fact be developed, he worked hard to find a conservation-minded buyer.”
After acquiring the land, the PG Preservation LLC worked with Smythe to draft the conservation easement, a process that can take years, she said.
The easement could allow for some of the timber on the land to be sold, if doing so fits in with the broader preservation goals the agreement, Smythe said.
“In the future, an owner could say, ‘I’ve gotta pay the bills, here’s something I can do to pay the bills that would not be detrimental to the property,’” she said.
The easement will prevent the land from ever being heavily developed or dug up, Cooper Lyles noted.
“It’s a very large decision, what can and can’t be done with a property forever, but its also giving up a huge profit,” Cooper Lyles said. “It can never be broken up into different pieces, it can never be developed for a residential community. No mining (either).”
The Pee Dee Land Trust noted that the property is one of the last undeveloped pieces of land along the Grand Strand, and its natural beauty stands out among the development that surrounds it. The land has a 5,000 foot border along Pawleys Creek and a 2,200 foot border along Highway 17 and will ensure that such a prime piece of real estate remains natural for decades and centuries to come.
Along with that comes the protection of several rare species that call that part of Georgetown County home. Nothern yellow bats, little blue herons, painted buntings, Southern hognose snakes, white ibis and western sandpipers all call the area home, according to the Pee Dee Land Trust. The longleaf pine savannahs and flatwoods of the land combine with the bottomland hardwoods, eventually giving way to the wetlands and maritime forests of Pawleys Island, landtypes that support the rare species there.
“Beyond protecting species and habitats, this conservation easement will preserve the ecological functions of the tract’s wetlands, reduce forest fragmentation, and preserve the viewshed along a major U.S. Highway,” the Pee Dee Land Trust wrote in the news release.
Throughout the preservation process, Watts has remained a low-key figure, and wished to stay out of the public eye, Smythe and Cooper Lyles said. However, Cooper Lyles noted, he wanted to ensure the property was preserved.
“He loves the property,” she said. “He wanted his land legacy to be the protection of the property.”
This story was originally published January 29, 2021 at 5:48 PM.
