Mayor's Task Force to present vision for island |
In the early days of the Sea Pines Company, when Hilton Head Island was making a name for itself as an upand-coming place to visit, everyone on the island was on message.
The first marketing efforts were simple and told the world of Hilton Head’s pristine beauty, its stretches of sparsely crowded beaches, the sedate charm of the newly developed sea island and the recreation bounty it offered. Then in the ’80s, when bankruptcy rocked Sea Pines and much of the island, the coherent mantra fractured.
“It was less obvious of what the message was, why people would come to Hilton Head Island,” said David Ames, who worked for the Sea Pines Company in the 1970s. “Hotels were sending out one message, time shares another message.” Real estate agents got into the mix, too, when primary home buying began to grow.
“In some cases, there was a real lack of awareness of what these real island values are that we should be emphasizing.”
When you’ve seen a tourist Mecca rise out of the marsh only to later face competition from the mainland growth it sparked, reclaiming identity is a big issue.
As Hilton Head approaches expected buildout in 2020, and with the property tax base leveling off while competition across the bridge grows stronger (often using the “Hilton Head” name as far west as Jasper County), just what does it mean to be “Hilton Head” any more?
Enter the mayor’s Task Force for the Island’s Future, a group outgoing Mayor Tom Peeples created late last year to chart a new vision for Hilton Head. The panel is a brain trust of island elders, led by Ames, who have all seen, and participated in, Hilton Head’s evolution over the past five decades.
“The discussion bubbled up from the community,” Peeples said. “I was beginning to hear questions from people: ‘Are we on the right track?’
Finding evidence of the track the community has experienced isn’t hard, Ames said. There are vacant storefronts, condo regimes with outdated properties, worn-out shopping centers and other “disturbing trends in terms of a lack of reinvestment on the island,” he said.
The task force has been meeting since January to discuss three prime economic drivers: hospitality, retirement and businesses that bring outside money to the island. The goal is to figure out what those industries will need to prosper in the future, Ames said.
The end product the group was scheduled to release in late June will look similar to the goals the Town Council establishes during its annual retreat, but on a much larger scale. A vision statement will be put forth, and out of that the panel will create strategies that can be implemented over the next three to five years. (The goals and recommendations will be posted at hiltonheadmonthly.com/taskforce when they are released.)
So what will all this include? One thing, members said: The island needs to brand itself as a crucible for creativity, not just a relaxing playground.
“If we can strengthen the third leg of the stool … and are independent of the hospitality and retirement stimuli, then I think that we have the opportunity to be perceived as a place where entrepreneurial minds and creative people can come and prosper,” Ames said. “All that intellectual energy creates the atmosphere of a college town. It’s like having a university town without having a university.”
The group is also focusing on the need for “town centers” where people could shop, eat, go to the theater, enjoy water activities and other amenities, said member Peter Kristian, general manager of Hilton Head Plantation Property Owners Association.
Encouraging that kind of development means shaking up some of the founding principles of the town, namely the Land Management Ordinance. The young town created the ordinance as a check against unregulated growth. Now parts of it are considered obsolete for a community with little buildable land left, Kristian said.
The vision task force will discuss why islandwide green initiatives are important for the future, as are a focus on and coordination of the arts, members said.
“We don’t ever want to forget what originally attracted people to (Hilton Head Island),” Kristian wrote in an e-mail. “The island’s beaches and natural beauty, those assets need to be protected and maintained.”
But several groups are already tasked with promoting and marketing the island — from the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Convention Bureau to the Hospitality Association to all the major resorts. An update of the town’s comprehensive plan was just completed that discusses similar topics. The chamber alone spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on branding every few years.
Does this mean someone dropped the ball to force the mayor to step in and reclaim the conversation? The committee says no. Moving away from a central identity was a gradual tectonic shift, not an earthquake. When the economy fell in recent years, residents of typically blithe Hilton Head felt vulnerable. It incited a period of soul-searching.
That kind of evaluation can be healthy for any community, Peeples said. He purposefully withdrew his involvement from the panel to guarantee independence.
When it comes down to it, Ames said, it’s like all the resorts, real estate offices, businesses and organizations have been walking around with different feathers in their caps for years. The mayor’s task force is figuring out how to use those feathers for one big headdress that the island can wear for decades to come.
