McIntosh commission proposes revised Sapelo zoning ordinance

At a special called meeting on Friday, the McIntosh County Commission agreed to advance a proposed zoning ordinance that would limit house size on Sapelo Island to 1,550 square feet under roof with an additional 400-square-foot porch.

The revised, updated zoning ordinance for Hogg Hummock — one of the last intact communities of the descendants of enslaved West Africans known as the Gullah Geechee –will go to the McIntosh County Zoning Board for a public hearing and recommendation at the Aug. 4, 2026, meeting.

Read the draft zoning and an alternative draft that was rejected, as well as a memo from County Attorney Ad Poppell here.

Three years to get here

Friday’s meeting follows a decision by the Planning and Zoning Commission on Tuesday to table consideration of new zoning for Hogg Hummock that would have capped house size at 1,800 square feet and 35 feet tall. Although that zoning was written after the county held three listening sessions to get input from residents, loopholes in it could have resulted in larger-than-intended houses, according to Zoning Administrator Bryan Boone.

County officials hustled to keep the zoning on a schedule to be adopted before the current moratorium on building on Sapelo expires on Aug. 10. The county is reluctant to extend the moratorium again because it’s been threatened with litigation if it does, County Manager Shawn Jordan told The Current. McIntosh has spent over $500,000 on attorneys’ fees on lawsuits related to the zoning.

The zoning battle stretches back to September 2023, when the commission approved the construction of 3,000-square-foot houses up to 37 feet tall. Longtime residents feared the resulting gentrification and the higher taxes that accompanied it would drive them out of their ancestral homes in favor of wealthy developers.

What followed includes lawsuits, a referendum aborted mid-vote, a decision from the Georgia Supreme Court to reinstate the referendum and ultimately 85% of voters choosing to overturn the 2023 zoning. That January 2026 vote revoked the 3,000-square-foot zoning change, leaving the area with no zoning. The county commission has struggled to come up with an acceptable replacement ever since. And as it contemplates that zoning, a moratorium prevents any new building.

Two proposals

On Friday, commissioners contemplated two zoning proposals. Both aimed to limit house size to a traditional Sapelo standard of 1,400-square feet and to be easily enforceable. The pre-2023 zoning allowed 1,400 square foot of “heated and cooled space,” which was difficult to enforce because porches could be enclosed after inspectors left.

Boone, the zoning administrator, explained that in the 1,550-square-foot “under roof” version the commission ultimately chose, an allowance is made for the eaves. The typically 1-2 feet wide eaves on coastal homes make a roof larger, but don’t add to the livable space.

“So, in a home with at least one foot of eaves, 1,550 returns us back to approximately 1,410 square feet of conditioned space,” Boone told the commission.

Unlike the June meeting at which commissioners barely discussed the zoning in public before approving it, this time they brought forward questions they had heard from constituents at Tuesday’s zoning board hearing.

Commissioner Roger Lotson wanted to know how the historic preservation guidelines for Hogg Hummock would be enforced since were not cited in the draft.

Boone said those guidelines appear elsewhere in the zoning code and are required as part of the permitting process.

“Under Chapter 24 of our code, my office would not be issuing a permit until we had a certificate of appropriateness in hand,” he said.

Chairwoman Kate Karwacki suggested including a reference to the historic preservation guidelines within the Hogg Hummock zoning ordinance, “So there’s no question about it.” Boone agreed.

Lotson also questioned newly proposed allowable uses in the Hogg Hammock neighborhood, including residential mixed use buildings, a gymnasium or health spa, a riding stable, and “a religious meeting or other gathering in a tent or other temporary structure.”

The commissioners voted to remove the residential mix use building provision and made the tent gathering permissible by special permit rather than by right.

The rejected draft would have allowed homes of 1,400 square feet of “Gross Floor Area” defined as the total area of all floors or levels of a building. Commissioner Henderson Hope made a failed motion to accept this version. He favored it in part because of work he’s done in the Bahamas to rebuild after hurricanes. The new houses there are being built without large eaves to prevent wind from lifting off the roof, he said. And there was another reason: “I made the promise I wouldn’t vote for nothing other than 1,400,” he said.

The other draft, which Hope said he still found acceptable because it would result in a similarly sized house, passed 4-1 without Hope’s vote.

Concern over rush

Commissioners had little time to review the draft ordinances, receiving them on Friday before the 4 p.m. meeting. Residents had even less.

Josiah “Jazz” Watts, a Hogg Hummock descendant and island resident, was still processing the regulations after the 40-minute meeting.

“I want to look really look through what we are providing,” he said.

He’s disappointed the process was rushed at this late stage, nearly six months since the referendum results made it clear that residents rejected the larger homes on Hogg Hummock.

“We had all that time,” he said. “We should have been working with the people, working with the community, you know, working with the partners, stakeholders, things like that. So that’s where I’m just kind of like, okay, now we’ll start.”

Friday’s commission vote did not codify or accept new zoning for enforcement, County Attorney Ad Poppell said. “We’re simply sending it for public hearing to take the public’s temperature on what they think of this proposed ordinance.”

A previously scheduled special meeting of the commission at 5 p.m. Tuesday, July 14, will go forward for the sake of transparency, Poppell said.

“So (the public is) welcome to come,” he said. “They will be able to again voice any new concerns they have. But at the end of the day, the whole process essentially will start over as far as what they’ll be considering.”