A deal to buy Morris Island and Long Island

The tip of Morris Island will become public land, and at a lower price, under a new deal reached with The Ginn Company that will also free up public funds to purchase and preserve Long Island, a 2.5-mile network of marsh islands near Folly Beach were development had been proposed.

According to Charleston Mayor Joe Riley and city officials, developer Bobby Ginn has agreed to sell the privately-owned portion of Morris Island, Cummings Point, for $3 million. That's a third less than the price agreed upon last year, and less than half the $6.8 million The Ginn Company paid for the land in early 2006, in a deal aimed at preserving the uninhabited, historic island.

The purchase of Cummings Point would be financed with $1 million from the State Ports Authority, $1.5 million from the state Conservation Bank, $179,000 each from Charleston and Folly Beach, and $142,000 raised by The Trust for Public Land, according to city officials.

The $179,000 from the two municipalities could come from Charleston County greenbelt funds, financed by the half-cent sales tax, Riley said.

Completion of the Morris Island deal had earlier been delayed by both the need to raise funds for the purchase, and The Ginn Company's insistence that the plans for the island include a dock and restrooms. Opponents of the concept fear it would open Morris Island to tour boats.

The Ginn Company's offer to sell the land, and the Conservation Bank's $1.5 million grant toward the purchase, were both set to expire at the end of 2007, but were extended until June 30.

The county Park and Recreation Commission had said it needed the time extension to draft a master plan for the island.

Now, the lower sale price will allow the PRC to switch its $1.5 million greenbelt funds to Long Island.

According to Riley, K&A Acquisitions Group has agreed to sell Long Island to The Trust for Public Land. The asking price was not immediately available Friday afternoon.

K&A purchased Long Island in 2005 for $7.5 million and initially hoped to build 190 homes there. The number of homes proposed was scaled back to 105, then 53, which Folly Beach planners rejected.

Applications for a bridge and dock that were pending before the state Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management were withdrawn in October.

Long Island is a series of islands with 140 acres of highland stretching over 2.5 miles among James, Peas, Oak, Morris and Folly islands. The property is speckled with wetlands and is the site of an earthen fortification that Union troops built during the Civil War.

The island also was one of 25 marsh islands studied by the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources as the state weighed new rules for building bridges to those islands.

In 2006, Billy McCord, a DNR wildlife biologist, helped oversee the study and visited Long Island about a dozen times.

"Long Island had the highest diversity of birds of any island I surveyed," he said. "I would actually rank that island No. 1 of all the islands surveyed because of its value to wildlife."

Morris Island is a barrier island at the mount of the Charleston Harbor, near Folly Beach, and is accessible only by boat. The island was involved in the initial bombardment of Fort Sumter and was the site of a major 1863 battle between Confederate troops and the Union's all-black 54th Massachusetts Regiment. The battle was depicted in the climactic scene of the movie "Glory."