Hilton Head:
Where collectors belong
We came to Hilton Head for the same reasons you did.
Live oaks draped in Spanish moss. Salt marshes stretching to the horizon. Gated communities like Sea Pines, Palmetto Dunes, and Wexford, full of people who could live anywhere but chose to be here.
Once a year, the Concours d'Elegance takes over. More than 500 machines on display. More than 21,000 collectors, enthusiasts, and spectators descend on the island, flying into the private airport, lining the fairways with rare iron. It's one of the largest gatherings of its kind in the country, 25 years running.
Three Cars. That's It.
In 2017, we came to Hilton Head looking for a place to retire. We found a house in a gated golf community, a beautiful property in a beautiful setting. But there was a problem. We don't play golf. Never have. Our passion was cars, and that wasn't going to change.
It didn't take long to realize we weren't alone. We kept meeting collectors in the same situation, successful people with serious collections and nowhere to put them.
Around here, garages max out at two cars, maybe three. Doesn't matter how big the house is or how much land you're sitting on. You're capped at two or three. On the property, on the street. That's the rule.
So what do you do when you have five cars? Ten? Fifteen?
We dug in. 2,100 vintage and exotic cars within a mile of Bluffton. Nowhere to put them.
The idea took shape. Not storage. A private club for car people. Somewhere your cars belong. Somewhere you do too.
CarVillage USA was born. A country club for you and your cars. An extension of your home.
The Land
Finding the property took another year. Dozens of sites, wrong zoning, wrong location, wrong feel.
Then a foreclosure. Five acres in Bluffton, bank-owned. Six months later, we closed.
Surveys, soil testing, town meetings. We proposed a $25 million project.
Then the town dropped a moratorium on self-storage. Too many ugly buildings from the big brands. They'd lumped us in with them.
The Fight
Eighteen months with lawyers. Appeal after appeal.
We made the case: This wasn't storage. It was a private club, like a boat club, like a golf club, built for car people. An extension of your home, surrounded by people who get it.
Meeting after meeting. Finally, the town agreed. CarVillage USA became the only approved car condo community in Bluffton.
The Design
So we redesigned. Completely. Multiple rounds with the design board until we landed on a Lowcountry cottage look they'd approve.
A quarter million dollars in design fees. Blueprints, engineering, groundwork, everything fully engineered and permitted. Permits pulled. Ready to break ground.
With approval in hand, we started designing. The original vision was too modern for the town of Bluffton. Villas with balconies facing a central courtyard. Clean lines, bold angles.
The Stormwater Hit
South Carolina rolled out new stormwater requirements.
We had permitting with deeded rights to divert stormwater into an existing retention pond on the adjoining property. But now there were new requirements. Expensive rain gardens, extensive landscape reengineering. Price tag: $1.5 million. We were already a million deep in soft costs. Now this.
The math was getting hard. But we had SC DOT permits for the entrance and deceleration lane on Route 170, permits that took a year and a half to get. If we didn't break ground, we'd lose them.
But we had more than permits. 5 units sold. Multiple social memberships. 2 years sponsoring the Concours d'Elegance and the Lowcountry Driving Club. The interest was real. We broke ground.
We were building the entrance when we hit something. A fiber optic cable, six inches underground. It should have been forty-eight.
This wasn’t just any cable. It carried hospital data from Savannah to Atlanta. We couldn’t touch it.
The Setback
Four months. All heavy equipment demobilized. The project shut down while we chased the cable company, worked out a solution, bored ten feet underground, spliced in a new line.
When it was done, we finished the lane, the paving, the curbs, a new bicycle path. We were back on track.
Then we did the math.
The Hard Choice
Stormwater requirements. Town-mandated redesigns. Highway corridor landscaping. What started at $500,000 per unit was now pushing a million.
An offer came in. We took it. Not for profit, for sensibility.
Sometimes you walk away so you can come back stronger.
What We Kept
We walked away from the site. We didn't walk away empty-handed.
We had the only approved car condo zoning in Bluffton, and it was transferable to another location. A first-of-its-kind horizontal property rights document in South Carolina. All the permits, legal structure, and engineering, all ready for the next site.
This wasn't failure. This was foundation.
What's Next
A normal person gives up. A car addict finds another gear. New site. Same vision. Better product.
If this story speaks to you, there are two ways in.
Own a villa. Or join the club.
"The winner ain't the one with the fastest car. It's the one who refuses to lose."
-Dale Earnhardt Jr.