COASTAL OBSERVER
April 24, 2025

To the editor:

WOW! In politics there can be strange alliances, but the one that now exists between Keep It Green/Keep It Green Advocacy (KIG/A) and Chinese-owned Founders International (owners of Litchfield Country Club and Founders) golf courses is troubling. Both oppose the proposed Draft Neighborhood Amenity District (NAD) zoning ordinances regulating golf course land use that dramatically reduces residential development. In a blast email last week, KIG/A attorney Cindy Person actually embraced the tactics used by the owner of the golf courses to oppose the ordinances.

Under a big, bold “Good News” heading, Person recited a quote from Founders International attorney, South Carolina State Senator Stephen Goldfinch, who said at the planning commission hearing on the ordinances: "This plan is not ready for prime time, and I ask you, respectfully, send this back to Council and tell them, please defer this until these people are able to sit at the table and we can have a negotiated agreement...”

Incredibly, the video of the meeting shows KIG supporters actually applauding Senator Goldfinch when he finished with his testimony on behalf of the golf course owner.

It’s my understanding that Founders is threatening to sue for a “takings” unless they get a “negotiated agreement” with the county to allow a lot more residential units per acre. Both KIG/A and Chinese-owned Founders are now aligned in opposition to these well-constructed ordinances that would slash the residential density of the golf course properties from four units per acre to one unit per five acres and add a restriction that any new parcels must front on existing road rights of way at the time the ordinances pass, a significant decrease in density.

They are indeed strange bedfellows.

For the Litchfield Country Club course, the proposed ordinances would reduce the hundreds of homes that could be built under the current R-10 zoning to just 30 homes, but that’s not enough for KIG – they want zero, zilch, nada. That’s not legally possible -- it would likely be ruled a “taking” -- nor is it smart to possibly end up with an abandoned, overgrown golf course, like Indian Wells in Horry County, with no other use at all, that undermines neighborhood property values.

KIG has taken a scorched earth approach, using inflammatory tactics that have now backfired and helped and emboldened the owner of the golf courses.

The potential losers are the golf course neighborhoods. I have and continue to lead the decrease in density on the Waccamaw Neck, which I thought KIG was for...guess not!

If these stopgap ordinances fail to pass county council and these neighborhoods are left unprotected, look no further than the shocking alliance between Keep It Green/Keep It Green Advocacy and Founders International.

Stella Mercado
Willbrook Plantation

The writer represents County Council District 6.