Are warehouses coming to one of Savannah's last remaining rural enclaves? MPC votes Tuesday

One day in 2020, the sun rose at Robert Thornton's house on Derrick Inn Road and never seemed to set again.

Thornton has lived in the rural neighborhood tucked behind Highway 17 for more than 50 years when it was nothing but woods, river and marsh, with perhaps more wildlife than humans for neighbors.

Now, his closest neighbor is a 24-7 container yard.

"The lights are like a stadium," Thornton said. In some parts of his yard, he said the lights at night can be blinding. He also said that at nighttime, sound seems to travel faster than during the day, and with the container yard came what he and his wife Teresa describe as around-the-clock clanging, banging, thrumming and the uneven clatter of diesel engines running.

The Thorntons sleep with the TV on, volume turned all the way up. Or sometimes, Teresa said, they do not sleep at all.

Thornton said he didn't know anything was being built next to his property until the machines hit the ground and he asked an on-site worker what was happening. But by then it was too late: The logistics-sector sprawl had arrived at this rural corridor of Chatham County.

One of the few residents near this truck yard, Thornton's misery didn't have much company. But a couple of miles down the road from where he lives, a new proposed warehouse development is galvanizing neighbors along the quiet, grassy spread of Buckhalter Road and Garrard Avenue, a rural enclave behind Highway 17 and Veterans Parkway, to combat the spread of trucking and logistics into their area.

For those community members, Thornton is the canary in the coal mine: An omen for what might happen should industrial activity take hold in earnest in the area. While some community members are fighting to maintain the rural way of life on Buckhalter Road, others ― whether because of development or a slate of personal and financial reasons ― are looking to sell to industrial developers.

These community members are feeling a boom and strain similar to many other areas around Georgia's north coast as residents ― and local governments ― navigate the rapid industrial development that is impacting land and water use throughout the region. Buckhalter is one of several communities encountering whether they have the power of self-determination as participants in deciding where the port's meteoric growth fits into their neighborhoods and landscapes, or if they are at the mercy of economic and development forces beyond their reach.

This Tuesday, July 25, the Metropolitan Planning Commission's board, which ultimately decides zoning and land use in the City of Savannah and Chatham County, will vote on whether the Comprehensive Plan will be amended to allow light-industrial activity in one of the county's few remaining rural corridors.

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Look back to 2020: Savannah City Council approves Rockingham Farms annexation

Proposed development comes to Buckhalter Road, conflicts MPC planning

Capital Development Partners, LLC is seeking a zoning amendment from the MPC to change the city's Comprehensive Plan, the overarching document outlining land use and zoning through 2040, to allow Light Industrial zoning on Buckhalter Road.

Ultimately, the company will seek to rezone 10 parcels of land comprising a total of 52.86 acres from Residential-Agriculture to Light Industrial for warehouses and truck bays on a property located at 343 Buckhalter Road.

The land is zoned Residential-Agriculture, a designation meant to maintain low-density residential development to preserve rural, small-town character and small-scale agricultural activities. Developers, however, are seeking to change the land use to Light-Industrial, which the city's zoning code defines as for industrial uses that do not create excessive noise, odors, smoke and dust, and don't have other characteristics that would be detrimental to a neighborhood.

This isn't the first outcropping of the port-related logistics sector to plant roots in the neighborhood. In 2020, the city established a public-private partnership with the developers and the Savannah Economic Development Authority (SEDA) to make Rockingham Farms, a more than 1,000-acre property planned to create 10 million square feet of warehouse space, according to previous Savannah Morning News reporting.

Rockingham Farms is located next to Veterans Parkway for trucks to have easy access to highways, placing it toward the edge of Buckhalter Road near where Buckhalter Road passes over Veterans Parkway before terminating at Garrard Avenue. Capitol Development Partners' proposed development is located on a tract of land right next to Rockingham Farms.

On July 25, the MPC will decide whether to approve the zoning amendment or not. The staff of the MPC, a group of planning professionals, recommended the board deny this motion; however, the board is not compelled to follow staff advice.

The staff did recommend a different rezoning, in which Light-Industrial zoning would extend 800 feet from the southern property line of all the parcels, and the Residential-Agricultural zoning would extend from that border to Buckhalter Road, meaning the frontage of those parcels would only be developable for uses such as housing and not warehouses or truck bays.

Neighbors along Buckhalter Road and Garrard Avenue said they didn't see this new development coming, despite Rockingham Farms, because it simply wasn't in the plans.

The MPC revises its Comprehensive Plan every five years. The plan was last updated in 2021 and designated the Buckhalter Road area to remain zoned Residential-Agriculture despite Rockingham Farms' presence.

However, on page 158 of the Comprehensive Plan, Rockingham Farms, Chatham Parkway and Highway 21 are all listed as areas that "may be suited to accommodate future development or redevelopment/ infill efforts." The "Growth Centers Map" lists these areas, among others, as areas worthy of study by local leaders for public transit expansion, transit-oriented traditional neighborhood development and mixed-use due to their proximity to major road systems.

According to open records obtained by Savannah Morning News from the MPC, about a quarter (24%) of the zoning changes the Planning Commission board approved between Jan. 1, 2020 and July 6, 2023 deviated from the comprehensive plan, although the majority of those were recommended for board approval by the MPC staff. Some staff recommendations are outright denials, while others are denials with conditions for approval, such as mitigating activities to reduce impacts on neighbors or recommendations for other, more fitting zoning designations than what the applicant was requesting.

To sell or not to sell

According to a staff report published by the MPC, 86 people, the vast majority in opposition to the proposal, attended a June 5 community meeting to discuss the rezoning of the 52 acres of rural land for warehouses.

"Approximately 10 people appeared voicing support for the rezoning, the majority of whom were the residents who have been constructively displaced by the construction of adjoining warehouses," the report said.

The rezoning's petitioner, John D. Northup III, agent for Capital Development Partners, said the city and residents reached out to Capital Development Partners first given the changes they were seeing with Rockingham Farms. He now represents a group of 10 landowners who are ready to sell their properties to Capitol Development Partners should the MPC vote in favor of rezoning.

Wayne Wells is one of the property owners looking to sell. He has lived on Buckhalter Road for more than 20 years.

"We always referred to it as living in the “country” within the city," he said. It hasn't been all quiet in the last decade since traffic from people using Buckhalter as a way around Highway 17, the noise and commotion from the Montessori school.

Another homeowner looking to sell, Eva Smith, bought her house on Buckhalter Road in 2020 and said she too loves the idyllic feel of the "country"-like neighborhood that's only 15 minutes from the city. But she and Wells both noted the traffic from people avoiding Highway 17 and Chatham Parkway, with Smith commenting that it creates a place where it is not safe to walk or bike. They both also lamented the aesthetic decline of the street, stating that poor maintenance, dilapidated houses and trash dumping have been problems. One end of the street has densely populated trailer parks and a couple of auto shops, Smith said, and the other end of street had "that tragic story of the toddler that was killed and had weeks of protestors," referring to the case of Quinton Simon from last fall.

While both noted the things they loved and disliked about the road, Wells shared some of the more mundane reasons he is looking to sell: He and his wife are downsizing. Their kids are grown up and moved out, and they're looking for something with less acreage to maintain. Since Buckhalter Road has many aging residents, there are other households as well with older occupants who are looking to move for similar reasons.

Wells and his wife have already settled on where they'd like to go next, but they've been under contract since April 2022, and the rezoning process stalling has put their plans in purgatory.

"We came together as a group of neighbors and were all in one accord when we made the decision to sell to Capital Development," Wells said. "Now, we are all frustrated that outside groups are trying to dictate what we can and cannot do with our own property that we decided ourselves to sell."

A point of contention for Wells, and other residents attempting to sell, is that the individual leading the opposition to the rezoning — Laura Mackey, whose family owns and operates Red Gate Farms nearby off Chatham Parkway — took part in selling off many acres of her family's land in 2007 for what was supposed to be a new Calvary Day School campus that never materialized. Far out of the view-line of the new development, those looking to sell contend they, too, should have the right to sell their property.

Mackey clarified that her mother and siblings each inherited portions of the land, and it was her uncle and two aunts who live out of state that sold their properties in 2007, and that Red Gate Farms "never sold an ounce of what we own." Moreover, she said they sold under the impression the development would be Calvary Church's sports arena, an assisted-living facility, and an Alzheimer unit walking trail, uses that align more closely with what Red Gate Farms is today.

Wells, like Northup, doesn't think the development will affect neighbors all that much. "The proposed Industrial traffic will be strictly using Veterans Parkway. As far as noise, we don’t see where it could be any different at this point."

Smith agrees.

"I am not sure the residents of this neighborhood are aware that the industrial development has been underway for three years. The trees have been cut down, two warehouses are already built, and the third is underway," she wrote in an email to the Savannah Morning News. That third one, she said, is set to be the largest warehouse in the city, and she argues it will be viewable from Buckhalter Road whether or not she and other landowners looking to sell do so. Rezoning, she said, makes it so the new boundary between homes and industrial development is defined by a railroad, Veterans Parkway and Buckhalter Road, giving the road as a buffer, a drainage easement and a proposed 200-foot vegetative buffer.

Moreover, she said she only recently found out about a completely separate project that is already approved and in the works, a housing development with "hundreds of homes" going across the street which has made her even more ready to leave. If anything can change the rural feel of this small section of road, she wrote, having a thousand new neighbors would.

Savannah Morning News reached out to Tribute Companies, the North Carolina-based company building the housing development to see if industrial plans in the neighborhood would affect the project, however, no representative answered phone calls or emails.

"This is phase one," Northup said. "The idea is we would get these properties annexed into the city, and then rezone, and then in probably two to three years we would acquire the remaining properties on Buckhalter Road between phase one and Veterans Parkway, which would be phase two."

However, there are still a few landowners in the phase two area who have not decided to sell yet. One of those holdouts is J.W. Smith.

Holding out

J.W. Smith is one of the landowners in Capitol Development Partners' "phase two," but he's not selling. At least not yet — he's on the fence, conflicted by a deeply challenging choice.

His wife, Shirley, was the daughter of David Rahn who owned the dairy on Buckhalter Road, the silos of which are still standing. Smith lives down the street, where in 1968 he and his wife built the house in which he still lives. Like many on the road, it's a ranch-style house with a lovingly tended backyard that Smith's little dog trots around, and the yard sits on 5 acres of wide open fields. They moved in that August 1968 on a Sunday afternoon, and their daughter was born the following Friday. Both his kids group up to adulthood on Buckhalter Road, and his wife lived at that house until she passed away last May.

"We never considered anything like this would happen," Smith said. "But now that it's happening, we're kind of in a quandary — I'm borderline, I mean, I'd like to stay here even if we get developed all around."

What Smith thinks neighbors are worried about losing is heritage. Look all around, he said, and it's containers popping up, and there's probably not many other places you can find hundreds of acres of wide open field. Big oaks shade the fringes of his yard, tall grasses sway in the background. He has a gazebo with little benches and a swing, surrounded by shrubs and flowers that looks over the bucolic scene outside his fence.

He said even if he sold and tried to find another place like this in Chatham County, he wouldn't be able to. But he'd like to find something like what he has now.

Smith's son and his wife live on the property, but they have plans to retire in another county eventually. He's looked around a bit, but Smith doesn't have an exact plan for what would be next should he sell his home and land.

"The thing that I hate most, I guess, is I'm really the only one that knows anything about the history of the property now that my wife's gone, all her brothers are gone, her parents are gone," Smith said. He is 80 years old, turning 81 in the fall.

Maybe it's not important to anyone else but him, he said, but it's history nonetheless of Chatham County's farming families and the generations of folk who worked the pastures and moved those 150 cows across what was then a dirt road, who then also worked to pull the school buses out of the pits in the road said cows had made.

"I understand development, and I understand the need for it," Smith said. "But I'd hate to drive by one day and see a warehouse sitting here instead of these trees, or instead of the field that I have to cut with my tractor."

Marisa is an environmental journalist covering climate and the coast. She can be reached at mmecke@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Buckhalter Road neighbors oppose MPC rezoning for warehouses