Will crowded schools and messy Highway 170 have to handle a new Okatie development?
Last night was a win for parents of school-age children and others interested in slowing Beaufort County’s aggressive growth.
A parcel of land alongside an already over-crowded section of S.C Highway 170 won’t be rezoned to allow for higher-density dwellings, the county council decided Sept. 25. Consideration of the rezoning is tabled for at least another year, buying the county more time to prepare to support the around 400 new homes it would bring.
“Give us time to move forward,” County Council member Logan Cunningham said at the meeting. “To see if we actually get the funds to approve roads in the future. Let’s see if (voters do) actually approve the referendum this November.”
The proposed development would have been on Cherry Point Road and adjoined Okatie Elementary School and the River Oaks community. It would have connected to the Malind Bluff community. This section of Highway 170 is already accident and traffic-prone, and the schools in the area are overcrowded. The school district warned that Beaufort County’s elementary, middle and high schools in Okatie currently don’t have the capacity or the funding to support any more students.
Based on current mapping, students would have been zoned for Okatie Elementary, at 91% capacity; Bluffton Middle School, at 84% capacity; and May River High School, at 91% capacity, even after a 22-classroom addition from the 2019 referendum.
The council failed to pass a motion to bump the rezoning back to the Community Services and Land Use Committee to be reworked. Then none of the members raised another motion, failing it automatically.
