The Landings on Skidaway Island Sets A High Bar for Sustainable Communities

By Vic Williams

Every Audubon International certification program thrives on partnerships—people working hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder, fueled by experience, expertise, data and passion, who form the bedrock on every road to sustainability. Golf course superintendents, resort operators, hotel managers, parks directors, municipality decision makers, and sometimes the residents of entire communities are the partners who keep the ship of stewardship steaming along toward its destination.

Then there’s The Landings on Skidaway Island, a planned community near Savannah, Georgia. Through a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization,

Skidaway Audubon, The Landings is a partner with Audubon International on so many levels that it’s pretty much on its own level.

From the first phone call to Audubon International inquiring about golf course certification 25 years ago, The Landings has continued to broaden its stewardship horizons. Not long after all six golf courses were certified as Audubon Cooperative Sanctuaries, achieving measurable results in wildlife habitat creation, water quality and conservation, recycling, and chemical reduction, and outreach and education, Skidaway Audubon expanded its focus into more areas of environmental stewardship. In partnership with the golf course superintendents and in concert with the community’s HOA, the Landings Association, scores of community volunteers took leadership roles to expand bluebird trails, rescue terrapin turtles, plant pollinator gardens, put a birdcam on an eagle’s nest, build a community garden, halt the invasion of Chinese Tallow trees, install bat houses, offer educational programming and more. These projects continue and others have followed, as Skidaway Audubon strives for excellence in its stated mission to “enhance and conserve Skidaway Island’s natural environment and resources.”

As well, there are several organizations in this community of 8,500 people with a passion for stewardship—economic, environmental, and social—whose work contributed to the decision to go after certification as a sustainable community.

As a result, The Landings on Skidaway has emerged as the gold standard for sustainable communities everywhere and proved itself the ultimate partner to Audubon International’s team of environmental consultants. Indeed, its wide-ranging efforts have helped shape the certification program itself.

From Passion To Action

Besides overseeing “living assets,” facilities, construction, storm drains, roads and vehicle fleets, Sean Burgess, Public Works Director at The Landings Association, works with Skidaway Audubon’s board and property owners to keep his own love for the natural environment, and the community’s commitment to it, at the forefront of the operation.

That commitment feeds into the longstanding relationship with Audubon International. While the certification program’s three guiding principles—Assess, Plan, and Implement—are hard and fast for all applicants, the elements change as best practices evolve. The Landings has played a vital part in that evolution.

“One cool thing with Audubon International is the ability to be able to shoot out ideas,” Burgess says. “A lot of the programs and information they receive from different communities can be shared. ‘Such and such community created a bluebird trail—this is the real cost of it.’ That’s a launching pad to say, all right, what were the pitfalls? What should we realistically budget to make sure we’re maintaining this at a level we need? That’s been one of the big draws for us. You can feed Audubon real time results—‘this is what happened when we did this.’ They can then incorporate them into their programming for others.”

The biggest challenge for The Landings, Burgess adds, was and continues to be “capturing and reporting on all the great things that various volunteer groups and the [Landings Association] and club are doing. They all contribute to the whole. What our sustainability initiative did was to pull those distinct groups together, at least in our reporting documents, requiring everyone to communicate. It was really the first time we could see and measure the breadth of what is going on and how each group complements the other. There’s a group for everything on this island, and if there’s not, someone will step up to create it.”

Christine Kane, CEO of Audubon International, agrees that The Landings has become an indispensable partner. “What started with one golf course certification has flourished into a deep and abiding relationship that continues to improve our

Sustainable Communities program while involving and empowering Landings residents to create and manage their environment in ways that every residential and recreational concern across the country can and should strive to match.”

And strive they do. Burgess mentions developments far and near that have taken The Landings’ efforts to heart. “Larger developments in cities have incorporated some practices as far as leaving natural buffer areas,” he says. “Some of the smaller communities, 40 to 150 home sites, have a lot of our policies in place, and everything on our website is forward facing. Instead of reinventing the wheel, a lot of smaller communities that may not have the wherewithal to hire out consultants and develop a fine-tuned program have been able to emulate a lot of what we’ve done. The developer on the front end is key.”

Five Proactive Decades

The Landings’ journey to stewardship standard-bearer began in 1972 with the completion of two bridges connecting the island to the mainland. According to The Landings Company real estate website, www.thelandings.com, “The first homes were part of a master plan designed by internationally renowned landscape architect Hideo Sasaki, chairman of Harvard’s Landscape Architecture Department … [his] vision of The Landings was that the streets should resemble limbs of a tree, the houses should blend with forest growth, and the approach to the island from the bridge should resemble a green belt. Green space was a key design element and may have lent, in part, to The Landings’ designation as the first Audubon International Certified Sustainable Community in Georgia.”

From the get-go, environmental stewardship was central to what The Landings would become and the precedents it would set. “We had a couple of great board members who were very supportive and put sustainability certification into the strategic plan of the community. That gave us the green light to start developing budgets and support mechanisms to make a lot of it happen,” Burgess says. “We set up a committee and formed a great working relationship with a lot of groups on the island. Even though it’s the Landings that’s been certified, we’ve partnered with other entities on the island, The Skidaway Island State Park and the University of Georgia Marine Extension, whose leadership served on the sustainability board and provided resources and expertise.

Now, a year after celebrating its 50th anniversary, the Landings is nearing full build-out as a 4,420-lot development of 8,500-residents, a great majority of whom live on the island full time. Residents are a mix of locals and folks from traditional feeder markets like the Midwest and Northeast, as well as emerging markets like Florida. “We put Best Management Practices in place for sustainable development and really try to protect those. The original developer had the foresight to build in and around nature and really enhance what’s here. We’ve always seen ourselves as the protectors of those areas.”

FOR THE BIRDS (AND ALL WILDLIFE)

Creating and preserving wildlife habitat is priority one at The Landings. For instance, to protect the salt marsh, owners aren’t allowed to build boat docks. Instead, two marinas serve the avid boating community. Roadways and right of way areas are kept within “swale systems” to reduce runoff and promote natural infiltration areas. Landscaped transition zones create those “buffers” between development and natural areas where countless wildlife species thrive, from migrating waterfowl and Monarch butterflies to hundreds of other bird species, fish large and small and dozens of native mammals, reptiles, and amphibians. Wildlife counts and kinds vary from year to year as the community weathers rain and drought cycles. For instance, Burgess says, “We had a lot of wood storks that started visiting the island during droughts in 2007-’09. Another bird that has become a regular visitor is the Roseate Spoonbill.

“We’re usually within the top three in the region in number of species when our group does their backyard birding counts,” Burgess continues. “Citizen scientists and amazing photographers have documented every insect, from damselflies to butterflies, that inhabit one of our niche habitats where volunteers have established a huge pollinator garden. It supports different kinds of insects, butterflies and species of birds than anywhere else on the island.”

Meanwhile, occasional overpopulations of deer and feral hogs are dealt with in a humane, careful and balanced matter in conjunction with local and national authorities such as the USDA. “We annually do some mitigation in human to wildlife conflict,” Burgess says. “This is a mecca where deer from other islands are eating wax myrtle and whatever else they can find naturally. A lot of our management program is dealing with that migration. It’s not an eradication program by any means. It’s management for the overall health of the herd. Our biggest challenge is we’re the only group in the area that does it. And deer swim here!”

A Holistic Approach

The Landings’ proven practices are rubbing off on other developments throughout the Southeast and beyond. “Understanding those philosophies and pushing them forward also helps new developments that [initially] want to come in and build roof line to roof line which creates a lot more environmental problems down the road.”

That applies to new builders within The Landings, too—about 20 to 30 homes per year according to Burgess—and with full buildout in sight, adhering to proven stewardship guidelines is just as crucial now as it was when the Arnold Palmer-designed Oakridge was the property’s first golf course to achieve ACSP for Golf certification in 2000. (By 2002 all six courses were certified, and each has been recertified every two or three years since.)

“We’re starting to re-look at the development holistically,” Burgess says. “When someone wants to encroach on setbacks or open marshes, trying to reinvent the community, we must make sure we have a very strong, educated response. We are giving people the ‘why’ for a lot of the things are in place. There are parking problems, more traffic issues, and while reevaluating it, the first thing someone might say is, ‘Well, open up this right of way, cut down this buffer.’ And I respond, ‘Well, that’s not a buffer. It’s not just trees; it’s infiltration areas. They’re designed as part of the swale system and, while you just see grass and wooded areas. They’re functional.’”

The Way Forward

The next challenge for The Landings on Skidaway, and indeed all lowland communities throughout the Southeast, is preparing for sea level rise that’s well underway. “That’s gonna be a big one,” Burgess says. “We’ve had enough of these king moon tides—nine, 10-foot tides that have come in and flooded back in the streets and lagoon systems and caused a lot of havoc—that people said, ‘all right, now there is some reality to this.’ Setting all politics aside, it’s one thing we’re really going to focus on.”

So, the journey continues. Burgess is confident that The Landings on Skidaway and Skidaway Audubon, as partners with Audubon International, continue to follow the same powerful and proven path that began when the community was founded in 1972.

“About 10 years ago we had some of the original engineers and land planners out and reintro- duced everyone. We asked if we had attained their vision and what we could improve upon. They looked at everything from our covenants to our land areas. We had the Urban Land Institute out to do some reevaluation as well. We’re trying to make very smart judgments, scientifically based decisions for our future.

“We can draw on our history and the talent and expertise of our residents to partner with us. It is a huge asset to have residents with wide-ranging backgrounds and a devotion to this place they now call home.”

For more on The Landings on Skidaway Island, visit the Landings Association website, www.landings.org, or the Landings Company site, www. thelandings.com.