Three-Year Anniversary of IPJI:

Accomplishments and Concerns

Overview:

People with big bucks and political connections always get their way, so say the cynics who claim “you can’t fight City Hall.” While there’s no denying that special interests and backroom influence often hold sway in Georgia politics, it is also true that the Initiative to Protect Jekyll Island State Park has shown that “City Hall” can take a licking if enough people push hard and long enough to affect change. IPJI’s members—by providing valuable input through surveys, petitions, and commentaries dealing with the Jekyll development issue; contacting lawmakers about Jekyll legislation; and sending countless letters to the press and internet forums—have shown that an all-volunteer grassroots organization starting from scratch and without experience in civic action can indeed make a difference. If you think these are just hollow words, just ask yourself, “How would Jekyll Island look today and where would it be heading if IPJI had not existed?” 

Proof of the Pudding: Original Town Center Plan                       Revised Town Center Plan

Accomplishments:

• Jekyll’s environmentally fragile south end is now protected from further development, thanks to Senator Jeff Chapman’s April 2007 amendment of House Bill 214. Letters, emails and phone calls to Georgia’s lawmakers from thousands of IPJI’s supporters helped tilt the balance in HB 214’s favor.
  

• The mega-town center plan proposed by Linger Longer Communities and backed by the JIA has been drastically reduced, allowing Jekyll’s open beachfront north of the Convention Center to be preserved, and preventing the island’s central maritime forest being criss-crossed by an intrusive road network. IPJI’s input at JIA board meetings, Linger Longer’s town hall forums, and the State Legislature played a significant role in Linger Longer’s decision to scale back its initial town center plan. 
  

• The proportion of Jekyll Island’s undeveloped/developed land has been recalculated, showing that, contrary to what the JIA had been claiming, 55 rather than 108 acres remain eligible for development before reaching the 35 percent development cap imposed by law. IPJI first drew attention to the need to recalculate the island’s land area early in 2008, and then consulted professionals in the field of remote sensing and mapping to determine if the JIA’s land area figures were accurate. After IPJI announced its investigation of this issue, the JIA commissioned its own study, which concluded that the Authority has 53 fewer acres available for development than previously claimed. 
  

• Loggerhead turtle nesting zones on Jekyll’s beach are now protected by a modern beach-lighting ordinance. Loggerheads require beaches to be fully dark at night to nest successfully, yet, as of 2008, the JIA was still relying on a beach-lighting ordinance that had been written in 1981 and had allowed lights from beachfront business operations to flood the beach in several spots at and north of the Jekyll’s Convention Center.  Environmental authorities had repeatedly notified the JIA of lighting violations but nothing was being done to correct this damage to loggerhead nesting success.  IPJI brought this problem to the public’s attention; urged the JIA to remove the offending lights at the beachfront; and proposed a new Beach Lighting Ordinance, based upon the highly successful models used in Florida.  Subsequently, the offending lights were either extinguished or completely removed, and the proposed new Beach Lighting Ordinance was officially adopted by the JIA, after review and revision by experts in loggerhead ecology [click here to read the Ordinance].
  

Current Concerns:

• The JIA’s adoption of a Jekyll Island density study which claims that the island can sustain a 150 percent increase in its built environment and a peak season population of 15,000 people per day without adversely affecting Jekyll’s character or natural systems.
  

• The JIA’s habit of giving multi-million dollar incentives to developers to build on prime oceanfront land, a practice which deprives the JIA of income from new development projects and makes more and more development appear necessary to meet the Authority’s revenue goals.
  

• The trend toward high-priced accommodations for Jekyll Island. Average daily room rates are forecasted to climb to $183 by the year 2014, a 47 percent increase compared to the rates for 2008-2009.
  

• The JIA’s granting Linger Longer the right to gain operational control and bottom-line financial responsibility for the Park’s facilities and amenities, which may, in effect, result in Jekyll’s privatization.
  

• The JIA’s approval of design guidelines for new construction on the island which allow for five- and six-story structures and a density level out of step with Jekyll’s traditional character.
  

• The JIA’s failure to adopt a conservation plan to identify Jekyll’s environmentally-sensitive areas and protect them from the adverse effects of development.