Developer plans smaller, less expensive Jekyll re-do

After a year of uproar, the developer responsible for revitalizing state-run Jekyll Island has unveiled a plan that seems to satisfy critics. The plan isn't as large or as expensive as the company's original concept.

When developer Jim Langford first presented his vision for Jekyll Island's future over a year ago, his ideas sparked outrage. Today, he found himself accepting praise from some of his fiercest critics. What changed in a year? Langford says, he listened.

"We put a plan out there knowing that it was a concept plan, knowing that we needed to talk to public, needed to gather input and make changes in the plan and that's what we did," Langford says.

Langford's company, Linger Longer, originally designed a massive and luxurious redevelopment of an aging state park better known for modest and low-key vacations. The concept was to "upscale" the island, leaving critics like island resident David Egan wondering if state officials had Myrtle Beach or Hilton Head in mind for Jekyll.

"The plan, oddly enough, looks very close to what people were suggesting over a year ago," Egan says. "I think most people will find it a moderate plan and a good step forward for Jekyll. It's just a shame that there were so many hard feelings created along the way."

The plan is smaller and less expensive than Langford's original concept. The total developed area has shrunk by two-thirds. Retail space has shrunk by half. The total price-tag has gone from more than $300 million to about $100 million. A parking garage is out and so are plans to limit public beach access, a move opposed by Brunswick State Senator Jeff Chapman.

"Open beach parking, the accessibility to the general public, the day visitor, to come from any part of Georgia and park and have access to a state park beach is to me very important and that appears to be in place," Chapman says.

Addressing fears that quote ordinary Georgians would be priced out of the new Jekyll, the plan drops the average night's stay from the conceptual $183 to the planned $137. An entire village of luxury condos has been eliminated while putt-putt golf and a playground have been saved. These and other plans made island store owner Van Hart optimistic that tension created over the past year would go away.

"I felt all along that if the naysayers would just give it some time, then the people involved in it would do the right thing," Hart says.

Those naysayers, however, today took credit for pushing the developer to change his concept. They also said they would be watching closely at what the plan looks like in writing. Today's bullet point presentation and unanimous vote were far from final, though Jekyll Island Authority Executive Director C. Jones Hooks says, they are the new basis for everything to come from here forward.

"This is the plan. This is it, today," Hooks says. "And who knows what the future holds."

Public hearings and a final vote are scheduled by the end of the year.