We Buy Estate Jewelry in Isle of Palms, SC

ISLE OF PALMS, S.C. (WCBD)- Parking on the Isle of Palms continues to be a contentious topic.

Some saying that a parking plan approved by the South Carolina Department of Transportation in 2015 which established resident-only parking zones needs to be revoked.

The parking plan that was approved in 2015 eliminated a significant number of free parking.

The approval was unpopular among the Charleston Beach Foundation, a group that advocates for more public access to the beaches, when it was first approved.

Now, this plan is now receiving renewed pushback.

“For Isle of Palms to eliminate parking in those right of ways is wrong to begin with and probably unconstitutional,” Parking advocate, Michael Barnett said.

Barnett, who started a petition over beach restrictions in the Lowcountry, says this parking issue has come up again after Isle of Palms voted to deny the short-term rental cap.

Barnett said, “The Isle of Palms is allowing short term rentals throughout the island, essentially making the residential only districts, commercial districts.”

Monday morning, Myra Jones with the Charleston Beach Foundation sent the City of Isle of Palms a letter, asking for the plan to be revoked, arguing IOP no longer has legitimate “residential” areas since the resolution to cap short-term rentals on the island failed.

“So, the SCDOT needs to now go back, review the 2015 parking plan, request that the Isle of Palms redo the parking plan, and they need to give back all residential only parking, they need to give back all 3,000 parking spaces that they took in 2015,” Barnett said.

Isle of Palms city council members are fighting back.

Councilman Blair Hahn providing a statement reading, “In response to Myra Jones’ letter to City council dated November 27^th, 2023, full council has not had an opportunity to discuss. However, Ms. Jones’ continued attempts to characterize the Isle of Palms as not resident friendly, not tourism friendly, not visitor friendly is nonsensical. Isle of Palms provides 8 times more public beach parking than is required by the SC Beach Front Management Act and more public parking per mile of beach than any other community in South Carolina.

Ms. Jones has previously taken her grievances to the South Carolina Courts and has lost. In my opinion, this is nothing more than another attempt of Ms. Jones to ignore the laws of the State and attempt to force her will on Charleston beach communities.

IOP city council members say they plan to discuss this more in future council meetings.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include additional information from the city, including the fact that IOP city does not set prices for the new park area.

—

ISLE OF PALMS, S.C. (WCBD) – Construction is underway on a new Isle of Palms waterfront space that will include a pier and other amenities.

Chaundra Yudchenko, who serves as the city’s public relations and tourism coordinator, said the Isle of Palms Public Dock Renovation Project will include a new 16-foot-wide pier with swings and benches.

The project also includes a floating dock with American Disabilities Act (ADA) compliant kayak and stand-up paddleboard launching.

Yudchenko said the public dock is not intended to be used for boat mooring; it will be available to the public for recreational use and passive water activities.

Construction of the public dock is set to begin in March with completion in May.

It’s all part of a 2020 vote by Isle of Palms City Council to improve the island’s marina area.

And while some are excited to have a new area to spend time with their family, others are concerned about potential costs.

“It’ll be nice to have something to bring the grandchildren over to and stuff like that- so, it’ll be nice,” said part-time resident, Dale Johns.

The project is an investment city council member Blair Hahn said was expensive but well worth it.

“The city has gone to great expense to redo the dock and we’re going to have a little green space,” Hahn said.

However, a visit to the park could cost more for non-residents. The plan is to charge visitors for parking and to launch a boat from the public dock. The cost to park is $3.50 per foot of the trailer plus a utility fee per day.

The private marina operators set fees for the new park area – they are not set by the city.

One non-resident who wanted to stay anonymous said many people are upset about this part of the plan. “The city is granting its residents special parking privileges and charging nonresidents exorbitant fees, all while calling this a “public dock.”

Hahn says fees for accessing public parks are nothing new in Charleston.

“It’s no different than Charleston County Park. They charge $20 a car to park on the island so unfortunately, that’s just a reality,” Hahn said.

The nonresident went on to say not everyone will be able to pay the fees.

“The city of Isle of Palms needs to treat residents and nonresidents the same at its “Public park” and charge everyone a fair amount, or allow free parking for everyone,” they said.

The city, according to Yudchenko, has not discussed implementing any feeds for the use of the public dock.

“Marina docks, boat launch fees, and The Outpost marina store are managed by Coastal Marinas, which is a tenant of the city. Fees for boat launching, dockage, and storage are determined by the marina tenant,” said Yudchenko.

Despite the concern, Hahn believes the park will still serve as a popular meeting spot for locals and visitors.

“We are doing everything we can to be resident-friendly and visitor-friendly and to bring people to Isle of Palms, but there’s always a cost to everything you do,” Hahn said.

Additionally, Yudchenko said the city is working with the marina restaurant, Islander 71, on a new parking layout to “increase the number and efficiency of parking spaces available to residents, visitors, and restaurant customers.”

The project is expected to be completed by May of this year.

Not so long ago, it would have been inconceivable for anyone to build a sea wall along South Carolina's coast, bury it in the sand and then set about rebuilding it when a winter storm washed away the sand and exposed it to public view. Unimaginable that the property owner would brazenly continue the construction project even after state regulators told him to stop.

After all, for more than three decades, our state law has prohibited property owners from building new sea walls on the beaches of our barrier islands. The S.C. Beachfront Management Act even prohibits the use of sandbags except on a temporary basis to protect against approaching hurricanes and similar emergencies.

The law is part of a well-known and well-litigated strategy to protect and preserve our sandy beaches, which belong to the public and fuel our tourism economy. Although sea walls protect the buildings and property immediately behind them, they also speed erosion in front of and alongside them — thus quite literally stealing the beach from all South Carolinians.

But the part-time, political board of the state Department of Health and Environmental Control started dismantling that law two years ago, when it ignored the advice of its expert staff, gave an extraordinarily liberal reading to a loophole and allowed seven property owners on DeBordieu Beach to essentially build a sea wall by burying an illegally constructed wall of sandbags in the sand. Even if the board's reading of the law was correct, it was under no legal obligation to allow the work.

Editorials

The homeowners’ attorney — state Sen. Steven Goldfinch — said the board wasn’t authorizing a sea wall but simply allowing Coastal Carolina University professor Paul Gayes to conduct an experiment to see what happens when sandbags are buried under more sand.

It’s true that we don’t know precisely how long or how well those sandbags will protect the property behind them, but we know what they will do to the beach in front of them, a beach that belongs to the public and that the DHEC board is supposed to protect. These bags have been transformed from temporary emergency protective devices into a sea wall, which will speed erosion of the beach in front of them and any property beside them that isn’t similarly hardened.

Before that 2022 vote, we warned about the message allowing the so-called experiment would send to every beachfront property owner in South Carolina: Don’t worry about what state law says about protecting your property at the expense of the public beach. Don’t worry about DHEC regulations. Do whatever you think you need to do. We won't simply forgive you for violating the law and the regulations. If you can find a professor to call what you’re doing an “experiment,” we’ll let you do even more harm to our beaches.

This is where we are once again forced to remind state officials that we told them so.

And it turns out we underestimated how brazen some beachfront property owners can be.

As The Post and Courier’s Anna Sharpe reports, Isle of Palms property owner Rom Reddy installed an unauthorized wall in front of his house last year after Hurricane Idalia and covered it with 30 feet of sand. When the December nor'easter washed away the sand, he set about rebuilding it. And when DHEC became aware of the structure, it appropriately issued a cease-and-desist order.

Mr. Reddy claims it’s not a sea wall because he never meant the structure itself to be exposed to the ocean — an explanation that makes the DeBordieu Beach property owners look like paragons of lawfulness. He also claims he has a right to protect his property, which displays a stunning misunderstanding of state law — and of who owns South Carolina’s beaches.

But no one should be surprised by this, after the DHEC board’s 2022 decision. Mr. Ruddy probably figures if regulators ever go beyond sending him orders and actually try to enforce those orders, he can just appeal to the DHEC board, and maybe hire a state senator to represent him. Did we mention that the Senate has to approve the governor’s nominees for the DHEC board?

Editorials

Ah, but here’s what he and other beachfront property owners might not have figured: Come July 1, the DHEC board ceases to exist, and appeals of decisions by the experts at the new Department of Environmental Services will go not to political appointees but to administrative law judges, who should be less intimidated than those DHEC board members by lawyer-legislators — or at least more likely to decide an appeal based on the law, rather than on their philosophical preference, as part-time governing boards of state agencies tend to do.

Coastal zone regulators need to take action to stop this lawless destruction of our public beaches. But they need to wait just long enough to ensure that the inevitable appeal of that decision is made once we have actual judges hearing the case instead of amateur politicians.

Click here for more opinion content from The Post and Courier.

Get a weekly recap of South Carolina opinion and analysis from The Post and Courier in your inbox on Monday evenings.

ISLE OF PALMS, S.C. (WCIV) — There are less than 25 days until a big decision is made on the Isle of Palms.

Should short-term rental licenses be capped at 1,600?

"We moved here deliberately," said Billy Lempesis, a resident of IOP, "understanding that it was a beach community. I have family here. It's always been a wonderful place. It's hard to understand the necessity of restricting short-term rentals."

Read more: SCDC uses new technology as a solution to stop inmates using contraband cellphones.

Many people say they're still unsure how they will vote.

"There's a lot more information that people need to find out if they're not clear because there's a gray area," said Debbie Strable, a resident of IOP for 22 years. "It is not what black and white, it's not quite clear to a lot of people. And it certainly isn't maybe 100% to me."

News 4 spoke with Mayor Phillip Pounds on Friday.

Read more: Gov. McMaster joins 18 other governors in urging Biden for stronger stance on Israel-Hamas conflict.

He said the city already has a little over 1,600 licenses issued.

News 4 asked him if this passes, would it impact property value and property taxes.

To that, he said he didn't think there would be an immediate effect on either one.

he also made a comparison to other Lowcountry beaches.

"If you look at what's going on at Folly Beach, who put a cap in earlier this year, you know, their, their property values have gone down, you know, pretty significantly in just a few months," said Pounds.

Read more: Dental clinics provide free care to patients in sixth annual Smiles From the Heart event.

Mayor Pounds said it's most important to know exactly what it is you're voting for.

"I would just encourage our residents to get educated from whatever source they use, to get their facts," Pounds said. "You know, whether it's the city's website or their couple of neighborhoods sites that have popped up. You just make sure you're educated on what your choice is."

A petition was created to get this referendum on the ballot.

Right now, IOP is the only Lowcountry beach community without a short-term rental cap.

ISLE OF PALMS, S.C. (WCIV) — There’s a controversial fight raging over an unauthorized structure's future. The dispute is between an Isle of Palms homeowner and city and state leaders over a retaining wall he's installing on what he claims is his property.

“What was happening, is the waters were coming in so severely that my soils in my yard were unstable,” said homeowner Rom Reddy. “We put in a retaining wall. It is not erosion control.”

Reddy said he's just trying to protect his land from heavy weather conditions.

“We wanted to put sand back in front of it, at our expense if need be. They say we can't. Why would you not want to put sand back on a beach? Now, we are faced with having to reinforce this structure because it's ocean-facing,” Reddy said.

City and state officials said this is an unauthorized project happening within city lines. The Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) issued a cease and desist to Reddy on Feb. 1- instructing him to stop work immediately.

City leaders said they're in the process of possibly changing a city ordinance.

READ MORE: Unauthorized seawall on Isle of Palms sparks DHEC intervention

“There's one ordinance on the city books that doesn't allow any type of structure within 250 feet of an OCRM line,” Isle of Palms Mayor Phillip Pounds said. “Right now that's all the way up to Ocean Boulevard given the change of the shoreline. We're just kind of in the middle of an erosion cycle that's painful to be involved with.”

According to DHEC, erosion control structures have been banned on beachfronts in the state since the 1980s, and only the agency's Ocean and Coastal Resource Management (OCRM) is authorized to alter beaches.

“That's why the OCRM has rules, and that's why the state has rules around what you can and can't do on an active beach,” Pounds said. The mayor added that the OCRM has claimed jurisdiction on this specific wall.

However, homeowner Rom Reddy stands strong in his argument he's doing no wrong.

“The state claims that whatever we are doing to reinforce what we have inside my yard, now it is inside my property. It's not on the active beach. How is it active beach inside my yard? An active beach is not a term used in the law. The beach critical areas are very clearly defined in the law.” Rom Reddy said, “I want to keep re-emphasizing that it is in my property outside of the state jurisdictional lines passed by the law.”

READ MORE: Sullivan's Island group urges protection of Maritime Forest

Since receiving the cease and desist, Reddy said his crews have continued to build.

According to DHEC regulations, if a person refuses to follow department directions, the department may file a lawsuit.

The Army Corp of Engineers is preparing to begin their erosion project in the area next month.