![Harbour Town July 2007](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Harbour_Town_July_2007.jpg)
The Sea Pines Resort or Sea Pines is located in Sea Pines Plantation, a 5,200-acre private residential
gated community
A gated community (or walled community) is a form of residential community or housing estate containing strictly controlled entrances for pedestrians, bicycles, and automobiles, and often characterized by a closed perimeter of walls and fences ...
located on the southern tip of the island which comprises the town of
Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Hilton Head Island, sometimes referred to as simply Hilton Head, is a Lowcountry resort town and barrier island in Beaufort County, South Carolina, United States. It is northeast of Savannah, Georgia, and southwest of Charleston. The island is n ...
. Sea Pines is home to four golf courses, including
Harbour Town Golf Links
Harbour Town Golf Links is a public golf course in the eastern United States, located in South Carolina in Sea Pines Plantation on Hilton Head Island in Beaufort County. Since 1969, it has hosted the RBC Heritage on the PGA Tour, usually in mid- ...
, Atlantic Dunes by Davis Love III, (formerly known as the Ocean Course), the Heron Point golf course (formerly known as the Sea Marsh course) and the Sea Pines Country Club Course. The
RBC Heritage
The RBC Heritage, known for much of its history as the Heritage Classic or simply the Heritage, is a PGA Tour event in South Carolina, first played in 1969. It is currently played in mid-April, the week after The Masters in Augusta, Georgia.
T ...
is a
PGA Tour
The PGA Tour (stylized in all capital letters as PGA TOUR by its officials) is the organizer of professional golf tours in the United States and North America. It organizes most of the events on the flagship annual series of tournaments also k ...
event held annually in April at the Harbour Town course.
History
![Liberty Oak Harbour Town August 2007](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Liberty_Oak_Harbour_Town_August_2007.jpg)
On June 20, 1957, the
Sea Pines Company was formed by
Charles E. Fraser 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 William Hilton Parkway, Palmetto Bay Road, Pope Avenue, and Greenwood Drive). The only phone on the island was a car-based mobile unit.
During the late 60s and early 70s, Fraser hired locals as well as young
Turks
Turk or Turks may refer to:
Communities and ethnic groups
* Turkic peoples, a collection of ethnic groups who speak Turkic languages
* Turkish people, or the Turks, a Turkic ethnic group and nation
* Turkish citizen, a citizen of the Republic ...
and pioneered new principles of land development and management, including environmentally sensitive land use, blending with nature rather than overpowering it, and nature oriented tourism.
Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...
grads worked alongside creative land planners and contractors. Some of the first computer modeling in the South demonstrated how they would leverage land and their planning with Real Estate Investment Trust and banks.
Fraser encouraged his people to learn through travel, to stay fresh by playing tennis in the middle of the day and picnicking with family and friends and to have plenty of gatherings where networking and cross fertilization would take place. Several developers across the nation that cut their teeth on Fraser and the Sea Pines Company.
In 1967 Fraser had been developing 5,200 acres for 10 years, all on Hilton Head. By 1971 the company had 135,000 acres under development or planning with models showing positive cash in just 3 years. When the Prime Interest Rate jumped from 6 at the beginning of 1973 to 11.75 in October 1974 the company began to unravel as most of their loans were cost 3 points over prime. With a jump of 5 and ¾ percent in such a short time sales had no way to keep up.
Sea Pines changed hands many times in the decade of the 1980s. The Heizer Corporation purchased it in 1982. It was then transferred to an independent investor named Bobby Ginn with the Ginn family. The Ginn family sold assets to Roylat Holding Corporation with the deal financed by Philip Schwab, a stockholder in a large
Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...
savings and loan
Wealth is the abundance of valuable financial assets or physical possessions which can be converted into a form that can be used for transactions. This includes the core meaning as held in the originating Old English word , which is from an I ...
organization.
Roylat Holding Corporation had a financial 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 the Community Services Associates (CSA) 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 and other limited law enforcement functions. In March 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").
Th
Braddock's Point Cemetery a Gullah sea island cemetery on Hilton Head Island is a historic graveyard hidden between 2 apartment buildings and adjacent to the 18th fairway on Harbour town Golf Links – "the fairway may pass over buried ancestors" which may be the source of the urban legend that the 18th hole is haunted.
Architecture
Charles Fraser, sometimes called the "inventor" of the modern American resort, first envisioned selling only oceanfront and ocean-oriented lots. Plans changed when architect Stuart O. Dawson of Boston planners
Sasaki, Dawson, and DeMay developed "T-roads" 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
Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements o ...
's
Auldbrass in Beaufort County, 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 houses, 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. A current popular trend in housing on the island is the buying up of adjoining lots, tearing down their buildings and building a brand new home covering one, two or three adjoining lots.
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 .
The real estate market is also quite lucrative, with the mean residential property in Sea Pines selling for about $639,000 as of February 2018.
References
External links
The official Sea Pines Resort web siteTown of Hilton Head IslandHistory of Sea PinesThe Island Packet a local newspaper
Hilton Head Lifestyle & Real Estate a blog covering Sea Pines and the surrounding areas
{{coord, 32, 09, 10, N, 80, 46, 03, W, scale:50000, display=title
Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Buildings and structures in Beaufort County, South Carolina
Resorts in South Carolina
Tourist attractions in Beaufort County, South Carolina