A year ago York County bought a massive greenway site. Now there’s a bigger one.
Another massive York County property will be set aside for generations.
York County Council approved spending up to $138,000 for survey fees needed to place another piece of land into a conservation easement, bringing the project’s total size to nearly 3,741 acres. The property reaches from the intersection of Old Pinckney Road and Chester Highway to the western part of Hord Road, south of Sharon.
Two nonprofits, York County Forever Commission and Nation Ford Land Trust, have agreements in place with Stuck family members who own the property.
Previously, three conservation easements were approved for land owned by the Stuck family. Those parcels total 1,100 acres. The fourth piece of vacant land is nearly 2,800 acres. That one piece alone marks a watershed moment for land conservation in York County.
“This will be the largest conservation easement in the county, surpassing Worth Mountain and the Anne Springs Close Greenway,” said Steve Hamilton, former Tega Cay mayor and current Nation Ford Land Trust executive director. “And it may be the largest easement in 2020 in the state.”
According to documents submitted to the county, the 2,800 acres has 11 land parcels making up the Flying King Ranch. Property uses now are recreational hunting and timber production. It connects other conservation areas on either side. The family could allow low impact public recreation on parts of the property.
Property owners wrote on their easement application the site would be used as a greenway for the city of York. While York County will pay up to $138,000 for surveying, the owners will cover remaining legal and associated costs of almost $110,000.
Hamilton said the county cost comes to about $50 an acre for survey work, compared to $11,000 an acre to survey the now county-owned Riverbend site, a separate conservation project. In mid-December 2018 the county bought 1,900 acres along the Rock Hill side of the Catawba River for a greenway of its own. The aim of Project Destiny, as county leaders called it, was to create something on par with the private Anne Springs Close site in Fort Mill.
Hamilton praised the county’s work to set aside land for public use and conservation. At Riverbend, plans call for eventual public use with trials and river access.
“(It) was a historic and monumental decision that this council made,” Hamilton said.
Combined now with the Stuck property, there is a considerable amount of land that won’t give way to the development pressures impacting much of the county. Fort Mill has led the region in new home growth, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, and Lake Wylie and Tega Cay have experienced a residential construction boom as well.
Rock Hill and other parts of York County have major economic development projects, too, from the Carolina Panthers headquarters to Knowledge Park to Aspen Business Park to Kingsley.
Riverbend and the Stuck family site could help to balance that scale.
“This will mean that this council will have provided funding to save and protect, in perpetuity, over 4,500 acres in York County,” Hamilton said. “All of that done within 18 months. That would be a remarkable achievement.”
