Berkeley County has a new way to build a subdivision, and the first one in line is designed so you never see it from the road.
The project is Sportsman Retreat in Cordesville: 147 homes from Eastwood Homes on a little over 250 acres off Highway 402 and Umbria Road. It is the test case for the county's new conservation subdivision zoning, which the Post & Courier reports County Council approved on Oct. 26, the same night the project got its first reading.
The deal works like this. Flex-1, the county's standard rural agricultural zoning, wants at least 30,000 square feet per lot when land gets subdivided. The conservation version lets lots shrink to 16,000 square feet, a bit over a third of an acre. In exchange, at least half the buildable land has to stay open for good, and wetlands, floodways and roads don't count toward that half.
Councilman Phillip Obie II has said the new rules add no homes beyond what Flex-1 would already allow. Same house count, squeezed tighter, with the leftover land kept wild.
On this site the numbers get specific. Roughly 60 acres are wetlands. The homes would sit on about 90 acres, and about 63% of the property would stay permanent open space, locked up with a legal restriction on future building. The perimeter buffer grew from 50 feet to 75 after the developer sat down with Cordesville neighbors.
The rules call for a 200-foot greenway along the road. The Post & Courier reports the county says this plan goes to 300 feet along both 402 and Umbria. That is a lot of pine between you and the rooftops, and by the paper's account the county supervisor, Johnny Cribb, built the whole concept around neighbors who didn't want to see this project at all.
Out of sight is the easy part. Two things the trees can't hide are still unsettled.
The road. The plan shows one way in and out, onto Highway 402. SCDOT counts on 402 between U.S. 17-A and Hard Pinch Road went from about 6,100 cars a day in 2021 to about 6,800 in 2025. A traffic study is underway and is supposed to land before the rezoning's third and final reading at council.
The dirt. Every home would run on its own septic tank. The state's Department of Environmental Services says each lot needs a soil test before it gets a permit, and as of September the agency hadn't received an application. So nobody can say yet whether this land takes 147 septic systems.
One more wrinkle if you own rural land in Berkeley. The conservation route is a rezoning, so it comes with public notice and hearings where neighbors get a say. Plain by-right building on Flex-1 land comes with neither. The Post & Courier reports the new district is voluntary and replaces nothing, so a builder who would rather skip the hearings and spread across bigger lots still can.
So the county now has two ways to put houses on farmland. One trades lot size for trees and a public hearing. The other trades nothing.
The Planning Commission recommended the Sportsman Retreat rezoning on Sept. 22. It still needs second and third readings at County Council, with the traffic study due before the last vote.
Sources: ABC News 4 (acreage, open space share, buffer change, traffic counts, septic, Planning Commission vote), Live 5 News (lot size, open space rules, greenway, Obie on density) and its Cordesville report (wetlands, single access road), Berkeley County's zoning ordinance (Flex-1 lot minimum) and the Post & Courier (Oct. 26 council approval, 300-foot buffer, origin of the idea, voluntary process)
