MOUNT PLEASANT — The Lowcountry Land Trust has successfully preserved a park within a settlement community that fought against incoming development earlier this year.
What started out as the Hamlin Beach Community Association’s effort to protect the Coakley Chapel turned into an opportunity to create a 6.5-acre park.
Hamlin Beach Community struggled earlier this year with landowners trying to get land within the community annexed into the town of Mount Pleasant to build subdivisions.
While the unincorporated settlement community is protected by Charleston County — where County Council last year approved a two-year moratorium on large-scale residential developments in historic districts like Hamlin — residents in community worried about this loophole landowners were trying to work around.
Ultimately, Mount Pleasant Town Council deterred any potential subdivisions by unanimously approving a temporary moratorium on major subdivision applications in historic districts within Charleston County limits at a July 8 meeting.
Now, the Hamlin Beach Community is also permanently protecting Coakley Chapel property for future generations.
The Coakley Chapel, first established by Sam Coakley in the 1900s, is the center of the Hamlin Beach Community, according to Myra Richardson, president of the Hamlin Beach Community Association. The chapel was always used to benefit the community, with the chapel functioning as a meeting house, school and market for people to sell sweetgrass baskets, she said.
Richardson said Coakley’s descendants no longer lived on the property but wanted the Hamlin Beach Community to preserve the chapel. Richardson then reached out to the Lowcountry Land Trust in November 2024 to get help purchasing it.
While the community association had their sights set on saving the chapel, said Sam Seawell, Lowcountry Land Trust community lands director. After seeing the land surrounding the chapel was owned by the Coakleys, he suggested purchasing all of it and creating a park.
The nonprofit worked with the settlement community and requested $1.5 million in greenbelt funds from Charleston County, which County Council approved in late April. The group purchased the property from the Coakley family for $1.9 million and closed on July 31.
The next step is planning out the park. Seawell said it will include trails, boardwalks and recreational fishing opportunities. The chapel will be renovated to become a community center and include educational programming about the history and culture of the Hamlin Beach Community.
Seawell added the land trust will gather input from members of the Hamlin community throughout the planning phase to ensure the residents are getting what they want out of the park.
Richardson said the Hamlin Beach Community is happy to see not just the chapel being preserved, but the surrounding property being transformed.
“We prayed about it, and God delivered it to the community,” she said.
Once the Lowcountry Land Trust completes developing the park, Seawell said they’ll put a conservation easement on the property to prevent any further development, then transfer ownership to the Hamlin Beach Community Association. He estimates the park will take anywhere between a year and a half to two years to develop.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
