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Council denies development requests on property access
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Crissie Elric
Bryan County News
Updated: Oct 9, 2011, 12:00 PM
Published: Oct 7, 2011, 8:23 PM

Plans for the proposed Colonial Marsh development behind Sterling Creek subdivision came to a halt Tuesday after the Richmond Hill City Council voted unanimously to deny the developer’s requests for zoning changes.
Council member Marilyn Hodges cited reasons of increased traffic flow on Harris Trail Road near Richmond Hill Middle and Richmond Hill High schools in her motion to deny the request of two zoning condition changes from Wilson Burns on behalf of the developer, RVLH-Greenland.
The requested changes would have allowed access to the property either through Sterling Creek Drive or a private road to be built on 40 feet of right of way along the Old Seaboard Coastline Railroad tracks instead of the conditions’ required 60 feet, which would also require force main and sewer lines to be moved.
“There are probably 200-300 children in the morning and afternoon that go back and forth to school and home,” Hodges added. “It’s just not safe to have an ingress and egress right there at the railroad tracks and at the schools.”
Thompson Kurrie with Atlanta-based Coleman Talley law firm spoke on the behalf of the developer at the council’s regular meeting in City Hall about the request regarding the 187.7-acre parcel of land.
He said his client would prefer to have the right of way changed to 40 feet rather than use Sterling Creek Drive, though Sterling Creek Drive was still a part of the request. Without the changes, the property is not usable, he added.
“If we can’t develop it (the property) based on what your ordinance is, then there is nothing we can do with it – and frankly we should have the right to develop this land,” Kurrie said.
Read more in the Oct. 8 edition of the News.

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Later yall, its been fun
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Ted O'Neil
Updated: May 23, 2018, 6:03 PM
Published: May 23, 2018, 6:05 PM

This is among the last pieces I’ll ever write for the Bryan County News.

Friday is my last day with the paper, and come June 1 I’m headed back to my native Michigan.

I moved here in 2015 from the Great Lake State due to my wife’s job. It’s amicable, but she has since moved on to a different life in a different state, and it’s time for me to do the same.

My son Thomas, an RHHS grad as of Saturday, also is headed back to Michigan to play basketball for a small school near Ann Arbor called Concordia University. My daughter, Erin, is in law school at University of Toledo. She had already begun her college volleyball career at Lourdes University in Ohio when we moved down here and had no desire to leave the Midwest.

With both of them and the rest of my family up north, there’s no reason for me to stay here. I haven’t missed winter one bit, but I’m sure I won’t miss the sand gnats, either.

Shortly after we arrived here in 2015, I got a job in communications with a certain art school in Savannah for a few short months. It was both personally and professionally toxic and I’ll leave it at that.

In March 2016 I signed on with the Bryan County News as assistant editor and I’ve loved every minute of it. My “first” newspaper career, in the late 80s and early 90s, was great. But when I left it to work in politics and later with a free-market think tank, I never pictured myself as an ink-stained wretch again.

Like they say, never say never.

During my time here at the News, I’ve covered everything that came along. That’s one big difference between working for a weekly as opposed to a daily paper. Reporters at a daily paper have a “beat” to cover. At a weekly paper like this, you cover … life. Sports, features, government meetings, crime, fundraisers, parades, festivals, successes, failures and everything in between. Oh, and hurricanes. Two of them. I’ll take a winter blizzard over that any day.

Along the way I’ve met a lot of great people. Volunteers, business owners, pastors, students, athletes, teachers, coaches, co-workers, first responders, veterans, soldiers and yes, even some politicians.

And I learned that the same adrenalin rush from covering “breaking news” that I experienced right out of college is still just as exciting nearly 30 years later.

With as much as I’ve written about the population increase and traffic problems, at least for a few short minutes my departure means there will be one less vehicle clogging up local roads. At least until I pass three or four moving vans headed this way as I get on northbound I-95.

The hub-bub over growth here can be humorous, unintentional and ironic all at once. We often get comments on our Facebook page that go something like this: “I’ve lived here for (usually less than five years) and the growth is out of control! We need a moratorium on new construction.”

It’s like people who move into phase I of “Walden Woods” subdivision after all the trees are cleared out and then complain about trees being cut down for phase II.

Bryan County will always hold a special place in my heart and I definitely plan on visiting again someday. My hope is that my boss, Jeff Whitten (one of the best I’ve ever had), will let me continue to be part of the Pembroke Mafia Football League from afar. If the Corleone family could expand to Vegas, there’s no reason the PMFL can’t expand to Michigan.

But the main reason I want to return someday is about that traffic issue. After all, I’ll need to see it with my own eyes before I’ll believe that Highway 144 actually got widened.

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