Closed gates trouble outsiders.

• Author: Heflin, Frank
• Position: Common-interest housing developments ban beach access in South Carolina

Private

No Trespassing.

For Members Only.

Signs like these posted on guardhouses, beachfronts, walls, and fences of the growing number of exclusive resorts and residential communities along the Atlantic coast connote welcome to some, exclusion to many. As the coast of South Carolina, where I live and work, has grown in popularity, developers have cordoned off large sections of it to boost the value of real estate.

It works. Exclusive property worth billions of dollars has been sold and developed here as "closed-gate communities." And while it has brought a windfall of property-tax revenue to many coastal governments, it also has diminished public access to the coast, increased racial tension, displaced poorer residents, and polarized communities.

"This kind of development fractionalizes communities. I call it the enclaving of America's rich," says Jesse White, an official of the Commission on the Future of the South, a regional cooperative planning agency with representatives from twelve states. "Healthy communities encourage cultural and economic diversity, common public areas. These don't, and I just think they are a bad idea."

Developers, residents, and tourists behind walls argue that they are simply exercising a basic right to privacy. "I believe in the right to develop and, as an individual, to live in a private community. People who live here foot the bill for the cost of that, and that is their right," says Ken Willis, who owns the amenities and unsold property on Fripp Island.

From the plantations of Daufuskie, Hilton Head, and Edisto islands in the Lowcountry, and the closed-gate islands of Kiawah, Seabrook, and Debordieu around Charleston, to the rows of hotels standing shoulder-to-shoulder along the Grand Strand in Myrtle Beach, the South Carolina coast is increasingly becoming a walled resource.

"Until recently, people could use the beaches without this obstacle," says attorney C.C. "Cotton" Harness of the Coastal Council. "Now the ocean is being sold as an amenity. The more you can capture of it for yourself, the better you can parlay that into profits through the sale of exclusive land, golf packages, or hotel rooms. Once the local residential population was low and the money that could be made there was too. Because it has become a valuable commodity, people now find themselves excluded."

As the large resorts and closed-gate communities have grown in number, so has the coastal population outside the gates seeking access to...