Georgetown County, S.C. — A stretch of coastline that once had blueprints for thousands of new homes and a sprawling resort hotel is instead on a path toward permanent conservation, after the Georgetown County Council unanimously backed the effort earlier this month.
The property in question, known as Arcadia East, covers roughly 3,492 acres along the east side of U.S. Highway 17 between DeBordieu Colony and the Prince George community. Conservation groups say it’s the largest remaining undeveloped coastal landscape left in South Carolina — a rare thing to find along a stretch of shoreline that has seen steady development pressure for decades.
The land isn’t new to big plans. Back in 2002, Georgetown County approved a development proposal for the tract that would have brought more than 2,400 homes, a 500-room resort hotel, and additional commercial and office space to the Waccamaw Neck corridor. That plan never broke ground, and now the property is headed in a very different direction.
Under the current proposal, the nonprofits Ducks Unlimited and the Open Space Institute — working alongside the South Carolina Office of Resilience — would purchase and temporarily hold the property while state funding and remaining approvals fall into place. Once that process wraps up, ownership would transfer to a state partner for permanent, long-term protection. Officials involved in the effort say they expect the acquisition to be finalized in early 2027.
County officials who championed the resolution point to more than scenery as the reason for the push. Taking the tract off the development table is expected to ease long-term traffic and density pressure along Highway 17, one of the Waccamaw Neck’s few major corridors, while protecting habitat that supports local wildlife. County Council member Bob Anderson, whose district includes the property, has said the potential loss of the land to large-scale development was something that had weighed on him for years.
Arcadia East doesn’t sit in isolation, either. The tract borders the nearly 4,000-acre Arcadia West property and sits close to Hobcaw Barony, another protected coastal research reserve — meaning its conservation would help knit together a larger network of protected land running through this part of the Carolina coast. That network already includes the Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge and other preserves in the broader Georgetown-Horry county region, part of a years-long push by state and conservation groups to shield the Waccamaw River watershed and surrounding coastline from unchecked growth.
For now, the resolution passed by the County Council is a required procedural step in the state’s broader review process. The deal isn’t finalized yet, but for a community that has watched the Grand Strand’s development line creep steadily south, the vote marks a significant shift for one of the last large, untouched pieces of coastline left in the state. Marsh Coast Online Radio will keep following the Arcadia East conservation effort as state approval and funding move forward.