"Airport Land Use: Planning chairman: Airport area zoning change a 'mistake'"

["Stephen Irwin" <stepheni@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sunday, April 8, 2007

Planning chairman: Airport area zoning change a 'mistake'
"The day will come ... when we'll ask, 'How did we let this happen?'"
By JEREMY HSIEH
The Beaufort (SC) Gazette


BEAUFORT -- A dense, 82-home community under construction beneath the path
of small aircraft near the Beaufort County Airport on Lady's Island is
giving pause to a planning official and raising concern for at least one
nearby resident.

Planning Commission Chairman Jim Hicks admitted the rezoning, which he
recommended in 2004, was a poor move.

"That was a mistake. It shouldn't have been allowed there," he told Wayne
Freeman, a retired engineer who lives in the airport's approach path.
Freeman said the 13.1-acre development bodes ill for future families.

Freeman told the Beaufort County Planning Commission on Monday county
officials should not have approved zoning changes that lifted a cap of one
home per three acres on the site.

"The day will come ... when we'll ask, 'How did we let this happen?' " he
said.

Specific density caps do not apply to properties like the new development
because it is in the Lady's Island redevelopment overlay district, which the
County Council created to promote redevelopment of blighted areas and infill
of underdeveloped areas. 

That doesn't mean there is unlimited density; design requirements such as
buffers and height restrictions create a de facto limit. The ratio in this
case is about 6.25 homes per acre.

Hicks said the development could create an issue of airport encroachment.

"By allowing the thing there, it could potentially cause problems for the
airport," he said.

>From a legal perspective, Hicks said, it is too late to change the
development's course. 

Freeman disagreed.

"It's only too late when a plane full of fuel crashes into a home," he said.

No homes have been built on the site yet. The development does not conflict
with local zoning regulations, said Amada Slade, a spokeswoman for the
developer, Tradewinds LLC.

There have been 20 aircraft accidents or incidents, five of them fatal, in
and near Beaufort since 1962, according to a National Transportation Safety
Board database. 

The most recent accident was in October 2005, when a pilot lost control on
the runway after a rough touchdown.

The last fatal accident happened in December 1999, when a pilot crashed
northeast of the airport in a tidal basin during a landing attempt. The
pilot died and the co-pilot was seriously injured, according to the
database.

   Post your opinion on this story in the CAA General Aviation Forum
http://www.californiaaviation.org/dcfp/dcboard.php

*****************************************