Georgetown area restaurant ended up in the state Supreme Court. How did they get there?
A Georgetown County seafood restaurant has papers filed in South Carolina’s Supreme Court.
The case before the Supreme Court of South Carolina stems from an initial complaint by the Gulfstream Cafe restaurant in Murrells Inlet and its objection to Georgetown County approving the re-development plans for the Marlin Quay Marina. Gulfstream claims the re-building of the marina took away its parking spots from the parking lot the two businesses share.
While the process of approving the Marlin Quay Marina’s re-development is at the heart of the litigation, the marina and its owner are not a party in the case before The Supreme Court of South Carolina, according to court records.
This civil litigation began almost eight years ago, court documents show.
After the county zoning board dismissed an appeal by Gulfstream Cafe, and a S.C. circuit court ruled in favor of the county, Gulfstream’s lawyers filed an appeal with the state’s Supreme Court in June 2023.
Public Information Officer for Georgetown County, Jackie Broach, declined to comment on the matter, citing the pending litigation. She added that it is county policy not to comment on pending cases.
As of Thursday afternoon, the state’s Supreme Court decision was still pending, according to court records.
The main issue?
The Quay’s owners wanted to build a new marina and restaurant, which took away Gulfstream’s preexisting parking lot for its customers.
Until 2014, the marina had been a store and snack bar, but now the property is an enlarged three-floor building with a restaurant.
Now, the Gulfstream Cafe alleges it lost parking for its customers due to the increased traffic to the Marlin Quay Marina.
“This case is entirely about parking and the lack thereof for two full-service dinner restaurants,” the 2023 Supreme Court appeal states.
Messages for lawyers representing all parties were left earlier this week, and were not returned as of Friday morning. The Charleston, S.C.-based restaurant firm CentraArchy Restaurants owns Gulfstream Cafe and also did not return a request for comment before publication.
So, how did we get here? And could the decision of this case have overarching impacts for businesses throughout South Carolina?
Was a former Georgetown County council member involved?
Within the first 10 pages of the state Supreme Court filing, the lawyers for The Gulfstream Cafe argue that Palmetto Industrial Development LLC hired former county council member Steve Goggans as a way to try and bypass the preexisting parking easements.
Goggans operates a residential and commercial architecture firm based on Pawleys Island, according to his firm’s website.
Under Goggans, the attorneys for Gulfstream Cafe argue that the county subsequently permitted redevelopment of the snack bar into a 3-story, almost 10,000-square-foot restaurant and bar.
According to Georgetown County’s code, this property would allegedly need 72 dedicated parking spaces. The initial brief further stated these resulted in “favorable outcomes” for the owners of the Marlin Quay Marina, and Goggans requested an additional $72,000 for the concessions he obtained.
“Respondent Goggans is either the most persuasive architect in America or his powers of persuasion had something to do with the fact that he controlled the jobs and budgets of the people evaluating his client’s rezoning applications and calculating parking requirements,” the lawsuit before the South Carolina Supreme Court states.
During an interview with The Sun News, Goggans called the claim about his persuasiveness “specious and ridiculous.”
Goggans said he did not initially discuss his position on Georgetown’s County Council with Palmetto Industrial Development LLC when the company initially hired him.
“My position on council and how that went was irrelevant when I was first hired,” Goggans said. “Later, of course, it was discussed because lawsuits were flying and accusations were being made.”
Goggans added that he did not use his position on the council to push through the Marlin Quay Marina redevelopment. He said he recused himself every time the project came up at council meetings.
He said his conversations with county staff regarded the technical aspects of the building plan, and did not convince them to approve the project.
An ethics commission later reprimanded Goggans and ruled he had to pay an $800 fee for attending a zoning appeal board meeting.
Goggans said he had previously appointed one of the zoning board’s members. He did not know the future board member personally before nominating him, he said.
He further claimed a different county council member initially appointed the board member, and Goggans re-nominated them when their term came up for renewal.
He said he couldn’t recall the name of the board member he re-appointed.
According to Goggans, the $72,000 he received from Palmetto Industrial Development LLC was for extra work, not pay-for-play.
During an interview on Thursday afternoon, Palmetto Industrial Development LLC’s owner, J. Mark Lawhon, said Goggans was not his first choice when designing the new marina.
Instead, he went to a different architect to design the rebuild, but was recommended Goggans after the initial contractor proved unable to do the job.
“He just said he couldn’t do it without his structural engineer,” Lawhon said of the previous architect. “So we had to find someone else, and he recommended Steve.”
He said that the previous marina building got torn down because of a sinkhole that opened after Hurricane Matthew when the building started to allegedly crack open. Lawhon declined to comment on the years of litigation and acrimony between the Marlin Quay Marina and Gulfstream Cafe.
“That stuff’s in the past,” he said. “I don’t even think about it anymore.”
Lawhon declined to comment on the case before the South Carolina Supreme Court or the statements made by Gulfstream’s lawyers in their initial filing.
“We’re not involved with that lawsuit at all,” he said.
A parking easement passed down through generations
The Gulfstream Cafe has been open since Feb. 1986, which is within the Marlin Quay Development, court documents said. The development was passed as an ordinance four years prior in 1982, the lawsuit states.
The year and month The Gulfstream Cafe opened, was the first time they were granted an easement for additional parking from the Marlin Quay Marina.
Four years later, in June 1990, the cafe was granted more easements for parking from the original development, Marlin Quay.
All of these easements were subsequently recorded in the county’s register of deeds, records show.
Since 1986, Gulfstream has shared the parking lot with the Marlin Quay Marina, along with its Marina Store and Snack Bar, the suit says.
Almost 40 years later, in 2014, that original land was sold to Palmetto Industrial Development, LLC. Mark Lawhon is the limited liability company’s principal.
After purchasing the land, the lawsuit alleges that the new owner began construction in 2016 that blocked parking access for The Gulfstream Cafe, and refused to share the plans for the project with the restaurant.
New land owners & the beginning of a legal battle in Georgetown
“In November of 2016, Palmetto initiated a construction project to improve the Marina Store and Snack Bar by placing construction equipment, materials, and containers on the Parking Lot, erecting signage, fencing, and barricades which obstructed access to the Parking Lot, and demolishing the existing building,” the suit states.
On Nov. 16, 2016, the legal battle began.
Gulfstream filed litigation against the marina’s new owners, Palmetto Industrial Development LLC.
A judge subsequently granted an injunction that prevented the new owners from “blocking or otherwise reconfiguring the Parking Lot,” the suit says.
Thus began a years-long legal battle between the two entities over the rights of the parking lot land, and the right to build on it.
Since that first filing in 2016, the two entities have been back and forth, involving the county’s zoning office at various points, according to a timeline presented in the lawsuit.
The Zoning Board ruled the same both times, suit says
On Feb. 2, 2017, a hearing was held in front of the Georgetown County Zoning Board of Appeals.
At that meeting, board members heard from a litany of different folks, including: extensive public comment, Attorney Dan Stacy, Architect and former Councilman Steve Goggans, and Palmetto’s owner, Lawhon, Gulfstream’s attorney, George Redman, the Affidavit of Roberts Castles, the P.E. of Castles Engineering, as well as other documentation that was submitted as evidence, the lawsuit states.
Ultimately, despite strong public discourse against the project, council members approved the new development.
A month after the Feb. 2 hearing, the Georgetown board ruled that Palmetto’s proposed plans were not “a major change” to that original Marlin Quay ordinance from the 1980s.
A similar pattern happened again in the fall of 2017.
The new owners submitted new plans to county officials without the knowledge of The Gulfstream Cafe. And again, the restaurant fought it both in court and in statements to the zoning board, according to the lawsuit.
At the end of the second hearing in front of the board, they made the same determination they had made a year prior. As a result, Gulfstream filed another appeal.
In the appeal, Gulfstream’s lawyers argue that the shift from a 70-seat snack bar to a new 170-seat restaurant proposed by Palmetto is a big change, and should be viewed as such.
