Port Wentworth's rural neighborhoods face an uncertain future with warehouse development

Port Wentworth’s Monteith and Meinhard neighborhoods, surrounded by lush green woodland, are remnants of the region’s rural landscape predating the urbanization and industrialization that has paved over vast portions of the rest of the city in the last few decades. The community of about 25 households enjoy a respite from all the traffic and noise that plague Georgia 21 just down the road.

But for the past month, the residents who live there have glimpsed a possible end to that idyllic lifestyle. Construction of a long-opposed warehouse park on the eastern side of the neighborhood has begun.

The site has been razed, bulldozed and leveled. Eventually, the cleared land, just minutes away from the ports, will be home to concrete warehouses servicing the Georgia Ports Authority’s (GPA) operations.

It’s a pattern seen throughout the city that lies directly in the path of the Port of Savannah. Once a small, quiet town, land acquisitions by the GPA and industrial developers have gradually turned Port Wentworth into more of a logistics hub and a driveway for the tractor trailers mobilizing the supply chain flow.

Port Wentworth is a city divided - politically, geographically, economically and in terms of quality of life. To better understand the roots and impact of these divides, Savannah Morning News journalists studied records, reviewed decades of news coverage and interviewed dozens of current and former residents. The research revealed how unchecked growth, poor city planning and historic racial tensions have all contributed to a broken community, one on the verge of splitting into two separate municipalities. This four-part series explores:

➤ The Divide: A split decades in the making
➤ Geographic divide: North vs. South
➤ Economic divide: Industrial vs. Residential
➤ Quality of life divide: Sprawl vs. Community

As of last fall, about 5 million square feet of warehouse space already existed in the city, and about 15 to 20 million more were either being constructed or had been approved.

In an effort to quell industrial growth, Port Wentworth’s council recently approved a six month moratorium on industrial rezoning applications while they assess the city’s landscape and revamp their zoning ordinance.

Read more: Port Wentworth issues warehouse moratorium for next six months

But for residents of Monteith/Meinhard, they say the damage has already been done.

A bitter battle and failed negotiations

For 15 years, Monteith/Meinhard residents fought bitterly against the industrial rezoning of the neighboring commercial tract of land, calling instead for development that would better serve people and their families.

They lost that bitter battle in 2020. After city council granted the rezoning request, Greenland Developers, Inc., who had bought the land for $685,000 in 2013, sold the tract appraised at about $3.4 million for $18.7 million to Sansone Group, a commercial real estate firm.

Last December, Lineage Logistics, a temperature-controlled industrial REIT and logistics solutions provider, bought just one out of the three lots on the western edge for $12.8 million. Sansone representatives have not announced tenants for the remaining two lots, so residents have yet to find out what businesses they’ll eventually have to share their neighborhood with.

At the May 26 council meeting, Sansone presented initial site plans for the warehouse complex.

About six homes will have to live right next door to the 102-acre complex, separated by a 50-foot buffer and landscaping. For those households, looking out the window means seeing a concrete box instead of open land or wooded trees. For the entire neighborhood, as well as hundreds of households from a nearby cluster of subdivisions, that means having to squeeze past the trucks — a predicted 2,000 per day at the least — rumbling along Hendley Road, the main route, and one of only two roads drivers take to get in and out of the area.

Construction called for the temporary closure of Hendley Road last month, a move that residents decried as dangerous. On June 9th, during a thunderstorm, a tree fell across Meinhard Road, effectively trapping the neighborhood for nearly two hours.

While Hendley Road remains closed for the next several weeks, residents have no choice but to drive down Meinhard to Benton Boulevard. The total detour to GA-21, the city’s main corridor, can add 20 to 40 minutes to a commute during traffic hours.

Developers gave Monteith residents $500 gas cards to reimburse them for the extra travel. Family farm businesses were also offered $11,000 to compensate them for the potential loss in revenue.

But residents say these are only stopgap solutions to what will eventually permanently alter their rural, agricultural neighborhood.

A more effective solution residents suggested during a community meeting with Sansone was a separate route for warehouse traffic to ensure that their residential roads wouldn’t be overrun with tractor trailers. Monteith road, which currently dead ends on the east side, could be extended to connect to GA-21, they said.

But representatives with Sansone and Kern & Co., the engineering and landscaping company, said that would be unfeasible.

“It’s not that we haven’t looked at it, it’s just extremely difficult,” said Chad Zittrouer, civil engineer and project manager at Kern & Co. during the May 26 council meeting. “Number one, you’d have to permit a railroad crossing; number two, you’d take out the ballfield; or number three, you’d reroute around it and take out the fire station … so those are the options for continuing Monteith Road.”

Council member Smith, who represents the city at-large, pushed the group to research those alternatives.

“Nobody is asking you not to build a warehouse. They realize it’s been zoned that way, but what they’re asking is do what the planning commission said, which is get another exit out,” said Smith.

Janet Hester, a planning commission member and whose family has lived on Meinhard for generations, was on the verge of tears when she implored the council: “I just want you to know that the changes that you approve tonight, we will have to live with forever, it will change everything forever for their financial gain, don’t do it – don’t do it.”

In a 4-3 vote, the presented site plan was approved without promise of further efforts to explore an alternative route. Council members Jo Smith, Gabrielle Nelson and Mark Stephens voted against. Members Glenn Jones, Rufus Bright and Thomas Barbee, along with Mayor Gary Norton’s tie-breaking vote, approved the plans.

An uncertain future

Cultural relics dot the stretch of Monteith/Meinhard Road, itself the site of an 1864 Civil War battle. Two historically Black churches, Mt. Moriah and White Oak Baptist, were erected as praise houses on plantations in the late 19th century, serving as places of worship for the enslaved.

Family farms grow fresh produce for the community. One of them, Promised Land Farms, is one of the last Black-owned farms left in the county and is a remnant of Sherman’s Field Order No. 15, which distributed 40 acres and a mule as land reparations to newly emancipated African Americans.

Residents of Monteith/Meinhard look to the pushing out of another historically Black neighborhood on Grange Road as a cautionary tale. In the late 1990s, the GPA had acquired several properties through eminent domain along Grange Road to expand its operations. Remaining residents, sensing the same would happen to them and realizing they’d be living next to a container yard, negotiated their own buyouts and left.

“Where’s the line going to be drawn?,” asked Robert Johnson, one of the owners of Promised Land Farm, ”I’m just wondering, when are warehouses going to cross over into the Promised Land?”

Monteith resident Hubert Hicks, remembers fighting against the rezoning over a decade and a half ago. He remembers losing the battle and his mother, suffering from dementia, complaining about the subsequent razing of trees and the noise it made. Now, with the construction of the warehouses, Hicks said he’s just trying to ensure his brother, a Vietnam War vet with PTSD, can live in peace.

“If you can quiet this thing down, we’re going to try to live with you because it’s already been done,” said Hicks to developers at the May council meeting.

Like other residents, Hicks knows he can no longer prevent the warehouses from coming, but is trying hard to negotiate compromises so that the industry doesn’t vastly alter the character of their historic, agricultural oasis.

Hendley Road is already congested during peak traffic hours. And, with the Effingham Parkway currently under construction, more cars are expected. But with developers having seemingly very little room to budge, Hicks is not sure how much he can do.

“We’re stuck, somebody approved this, and it’s on and running.”

Also: Port Wentworth Council approves rezoning of largest warehouse project in the city

Historically Black neighborhoods on Saussy and Berrien Roads face the same fears as one of the city's largest warehouse projects encroaches upon them. Residents in Old Port Wentworth have contended with industrialization for decades. Logistics centers flank the historic neighborhood on the west side and the ports sit to their east.

"What’s going to happen when they come a little bit closer,” asked Johnson, “Some things need to be sacred … let’s draw the line somewhere.”

Nancy Guan is the general assignment reporter covering Chatham County municipalities. Reach her at nguan@gannett.com or on Twitter @nancyguann.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Warehouses pose threat to Port Wentworth's agricultural neighborhoods