Judge stalls permits for larger homes on Sapelo

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A yard sign in front of the Graball Country Store in Hogg Hummock encourages McIntosh voters to vote yes and repeal rezoning on Sapelo Island.

Credit: Jazz Watts / SICARS

Mary Landers, The Current

A judge on Monday called a temporary halt to controversial zoning that allowed larger houses to be built in the Hogg Hummock neighborhood of Sapelo Island, home to one of the last Gullah Geechee communities in the United States.

Superior Court Senior Judge Gary McCorvey issued the order late Monday afternoon. Three Sapelo Island residents requested the emergency injunction last week. The county responded with its motion Friday. 

The Sept. 12, 2023, zoning ordinance increased house size in the historic district from 1,400 to 3,000 square feet. A majority of the county commissioners favored the new zoning for the increased taxes larger homes would generate. Gullah Geechee residents, descendants of enslaved West Africans, rejected it as a path to gentrification that would lead to the loss of their heritage as they were priced off the island.

The order now bars the county from approving applications for building permits, issuing building permits, and enforcing building permits for Hogg Hummock unless those permits comply with the zoning in place prior to that date.

In a previous attempt to reverse the now-suspended zoning, Sapelo residents and descendants put into service a little-used state constitutional right that allows citizens to petition for a referendum to overturn unpopular decisions made by local officials. After they collected more than 1,800 signatures, McIntosh County Probate Judge Harold Webster in July approved the petition and a special election on Oct. 1 to put the repeal of the zoning directly to voters. But the McIntosh County Board of Commissioners challenged the validity of the election.

In September, McCorvey sided with local officials who believe that the referendum’s $20,000 price tag was a waste of taxpayer money. The judge halted the McIntosh County referendum after 826 people had cast their ballots in early in person voting. 

That decision is being appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court.

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Josiah “Jazz” Watts holds copies of the petitions with signatures requesting a referendum to repeal the new zoning ordinance affecting Hogg Hummock on Sapelo Island.

Credit: Susan Catron / The Current

In granting the injunction, McCorvey wrote that while he believed his decision invalidating the referendum was proper, the appeal has a “chance of success.” He also noted that if larger buildings are constructed while the issue is being litigated, a Supreme Court victory for the Sapelo descendants would be “hollow indeed.” Conversely, the county has little to lose from a delay in implementing the new zoning, McCorvey wrote. That’s in part because of the “uproar” over the situation, including a separate ongoing lawsuit that seeks to overturn the zoning on civil rights grounds.

“It’s not difficult to reasonably conclude that no one wanted to ‘buy into’ a lawsuit by seeking building permits which might be invalidated if a court decided in favor of the challengers to the ordinance,” he wrote. 

Josiah “Jazz” Watts, a Gullah Geechee descendant and community leader who also works on environmental justice issues for One Hundred Miles, hailed the decision as “only right.”

“What good would the Georgia State Supreme Court’s decision be if these larger structures were allowed to be built that would surely lead to the displacement and removal of Sapelo’s Saltwater/Gullah Geechee residents and descendants; erasing our culture, our history, and a historic Gullah Geechee community that has existed for generations since our ancestors were forcefully brought here,” he wrote in an email to The Current. “In the Sapelo Island Heritage Authority language it states ‘Whereas, the State of Georgia has concluded that ‘the best and most important use of this area of Greater Sapelo Island is for said community to remain, as it currently exists, a historic community, occupied by the direct descendants of the slaves (those enslaved) by Thomas Spalding”. We have to continue to push McIntosh County to fulfill its duty to protect Hogg Hummock, Georgia’s last intact historic Gullah Geechee community in the Georgia Sea Islands.”

This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with The Current.