Pawley’s Plaza Redevelopment Approved

Pawleys Plaza: Council urged to sweat the small stuff

  

gtowntimes.com -- The redevelopment of Pawleys Plaza got final approval from Georgetown County Council this week, but not before several pleas for the county to be mindful of the details.  Pawleys Island Mayor Bill Otis wants the developer, Sunbelt Ventures of Mount Pleasant, to have different elevations of the three main buildings that total nearly 110,000 square feet. He’s worried that a continuous roof line would make it look like a big-box store, which is what the community was so opposed to.  Otis also said the requirement of a Level 3 landscape buffer, which includes trees 3 inches in diameter, is insufficient. He said those trees would look like “matchsticks” in front of a 35-foot tall building.
Waccamaw Neck resident Tom Stickler wants the county to make sure Sunbelt builds the homes that are shown on its site plan. A Supreme Court ruling requires Planned Developments to have mixed uses.

Linda Ketron, founder of Bike the Neck, said she didn’t realize a planned bike path at the site was “swept off the table” at second reading.  Sunbelt does not own the Bank of America property, and removed the LaPlaya property from the original plan, so it couldn’t guarantee it could build a path across those properties.  Ketron reminded Council members that one of the reasons that Bike the Neck was started nearly two decades ago was so Parkersville residents could uses their bicycles to ride to a grocery store that used to be located in Pawleys Plaza.  She said it would be “a very sad irony” if the reason the path was put together originally doesn’t include the new development.
Council also gave final approval to an agreement to develop a joint industrial and business park with Horry County.  The 56.83-acre site is near the intersection of Highways 14 and 90.