PRC buys site near McClellanville

The Charleston County Park and Recreation Commission has bought a vast swath of pine forest about the size of 800 football fields just outside McClellanville.

The commission paid for the sale with $3.09 million of its money from the half-cent sales tax, plus another $1 million from the county's Greenbelt Bank Board.

The Nature Conservancy bought the 812.5-acre property from an International Paper subsidiary in 2005 and originally hoped to resell it for $4.5 million.

The nonprofit was able to break even in the deal by raising about $500,000 from private sources, said Mike Prevost, the Conservancy's Sewee to Santee project director.

"It represents a huge physical and ecological linkage between the Francis Marion Forest and the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge," he said. "We've been working for some 10 years to protect and augment habitat with the National Forest and the National Wildlife Refuge."

Julie Hensley of the Park and Recreation Commission said the county has no timetable for developing a park on the property, which includes more than a mile of frontage along U.S. Highway 17.

"The first thing we'll do is develop a forestry-management plan," she said. "We don't necessarily want to be in the timber management business, but we see it as an opportunity to enhance the property over time."

The property currently is blanketed with loblolly pines, and the commission hopes to thin them out gradually and use the timber proceeds to plant longleaf pines and more native vegetation, she said.

The Conservation Bank Board donated $1 million toward the sale in exchange for an easement that forbids the subdivision of the parcel and requires future roads to be made from dirt or shell — a feature that will reduce harmful runoff to Cape Romain's pure waters. The easement also will limit future park buildings to no more than 0.5 percent of the site.

So far, the commission has spent or committed about $19.5 million of the $36 million it received from the county's half-cent sales tax to buy land for parks, trails and boat landings.

Reach Robert Behre at 937-5771 or at rbehre@ postandcourier.com.