Sea Pines Resort
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Sea Pines Resort or Sea Pines is a gated community in the town of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Sea Pines is home to the Harbour Town Golf Links.
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[edit] History of Sea Pines
On June 20, 1957, the Sea Pines Company was formed by Charles and Joseph B. Fraser Jr, with their father Joseph B. Fraser Sr serving as Chairman of the Board. The original offices of the company were located in a trailer on Sea Pines Circle (the intersection of Wm. Hilton Parkway, Palmetto Bay Road, Pope Avenue, and Greenwood Drive), and the only phone on the island was a car-based mobile unit. Several roads were established on the island based on paths from the plantations that had been located on the island years ago.
Suddenly, Fraser (an "idea man" by nature), realized he had forgotten about the company's financial situation. Sea Pines changed hands many times in the decade of the 1980s. The Heizer Corporation purchased it in 1982 for $10 million. It was then transferred to an independent investor named Bobby Ginn, who (after purchasing most of the property on the island) nearly ran Sea Pines into the ground financially. When Ginn could no longer afford to pay his debts, he sold his assets to Roylat Holding Corporation with the deal financed by Philip Schwab, a stockholder in a large Florida savings and loan organization. To bring an end to the crisis, Federal Judge Sol Blatt of Charleston placed the Roylat Corporation and Schwab's organization in involuntary bankruptcy. The legal team he appointed to rebuild Sea Pines created two organizations to run Sea Pines: Sea Pines Associates, which owns resort properties, and CSA (Community Services Associates) which owns, maintains, and secures common property and roads within Sea Pines. CSA runs, for example, a 42-man security department which handles traffic violations, DUIs, and domestic violence cases within the plantation independent of local police. In March of 2005, ownership passed to the Riverstone Group, a private concern owned by William Goodwin of Richmond Virginia, and the resort was renamed The Sea Pines Resort (dropping "Plantation").
[edit] The Architecture
Charles Fraser, sometimes called the "inventor" of the modern American resort, originally envisioned selling only oceanfront and ocean-oriented lots. Plans changed when architect Stewart Dawson of Boston planners Sasaki, Dawson, and DeMay developed "T-roads," pictured at right, that made up rows of seaside houses. Golf courses were also beginning to be built, luring would-be residents into the interior of the island with beautiful wooded views. Sea Pines expanded further and further to offer different types of residences as well as a vast array of sports and activities.
Charles Fraser along with many local architects developed an endogenous style of architecture called "The Hilton Head Style" or the "Sea Pines Style" . It was influenced by the 1960 Modern architecture movement, California Modern, Japanese Architecture , Frank Lloyd Wright's Aldbrass house, and the local vernacular style, or "Low Country Architecture". It is categorized by large overhangs, screen porches, low roof slopes, earth tone colors , and landscape with native plants rather than formal southern plantings. The desired effect is to blend the house into nature rather than to stand out.
With rising land prices and a change on public taste this style has largely been abandoned in favor of ever larger private residences, and historically derivative styles from around the world. The best examples of this architecture were built in the period of 1961-1973 in Sea Pines Plantation. Most of these house , and all on beach front lots, have been torn down for larger residences.
Today, houses, villas, condominiums, and hotels within Sea Pines and other plantations have expanded inward to cover virtually the entire island.
[edit] Sea Pines real estate and rentals
The tourism and travel industry in Hilton Head is one of the largest in the country. Sea Pines, as the largest plantation on the island, occupies a large portion of the rental market with properties available for rental year round.
In recent years, Hilton Head has also developed a large permanent resident population. In the 2000 census, it was determined that over 33,000 people live on the island, which has an area of approximately 55 square miles.
The real estate market is also quite lucrative, with the average home selling for about $440,000.
