Let’s Keep Jekyll Island Affordable!             A Petition from Jekyll’s Visitors

             Sponsored by the Initiative to Protect Jekyll Island

                                                                    Introduction

The Jekyll Island State Park Authority Act (1950) calls for “the operation of the public facilities of the park at rates so moderate that all of the ordinary citizens of the State may enjoy them.” This unique legislative mandate has guided Jekyll’s development for more than half a century, giving millions of people who ordinarily could not afford to vacation on the coast an opportunity to do so.  Called the “people’s park,” “everyman’s island,” and the “poor man’s Riviera,” Jekyll Island, for good reason, has a very special standing among coastal resort destinations.

Concern over the future of an affordable Jekyll Island State Park has grown in recent years for a number of reasons:

• The ill-defined nature of the JIA’s guidelines on affordability, which state that the island will offer “lodging options for all Georgians” and that “a substantial number” of Jekyll’s accommodations will be affordable.
  

• The JIA’s contention that Jekyll’s affordability mandate may not even apply to private development within the state park, including hotels, condos and time-shares.
  

• The recently released JIA “Visitation Analysis and Business Plan,” which forecasts an average increase in hotel room rates from the current figure of $125 a day to $183 per day by the year 2014, a 46 percent increase.
  

• The JIA’s recent interest in a variety of high-end condo projects, including one in which the average unit would sell for nearly $1 million.
  

To help ensure that the planned reconstruction of the island’s oceanfront hotels and the addition of an unspecified number of condos do not result in the majority of Jekyll’s lodgings being priced beyond the means of average income citizens, IPJI is  collecting signatures for a “Jekyll affordability petition,” the results of which will be presented to the each of the candidates running for Governor of Georgia, to the Jekyll Island Authority Legislative Oversight Committee, the Jekyll Island Authority board of directors, and to various media outlets.

The online version of IPJI’s petition has been signed by more than 9,000 people; the print version has been hand-circulated by many of Jekyll’s friends and signed by over 8,000 people. For a print version of the petition, click here.

Our goal is to gather 20,000 signatures by the time of the gubernatorial election in November, 2010. Please help us reach this goal by signing our petition now and by encouraging others who know and love Jekyll Island State Park to do so as well.

Our petition effort will not succeed unless Jekyll’s many friends do all they can to circulate the document.   We strongly encourage everyone - Georgians and non-Georgians alike - to support this effort by sharing the petition with family and friends, neighbors and colleagues, and anyone else who might be interested in our cause.

Thank you for lending your support to the campaign to preserve and protect the people’s park,

David and Mindy Egan

Co-Directors, Initiative to Protect Jekyll Island - “The Voice of Jekyll’s Visitors” degan1@bellsouth.net

By signing your name(s) on the lines below, you can register your support for keeping Jekyll Island State Park affordable for average income folks, as the law intended. If you have not given us your e-mail address previously, please do so if you wish to receive updates regarding the Jekyll redevelopment issue. ***E-mail address will be kept strictly confidential.***

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