From The Blog

KICA/TOKI ARB Work Group Summarizes Community Feedback to Preliminary Report

Since publishing its Preliminary Phase 1 Report on June 14, the work group has collected more than 90 online comments from community members (view comments) and held a community meeting on June 20 (video).

The work group can summarize the results from its own analysis and from feedback received from the community as follows:

• A system of architectural control is absolutely necessary to maintain the beauty and existing world-class character of Kiawah that has been positively influenced (with some more recent exceptions) by the existing ARB regime.
• Architectural control should be performed by an entity that is accountable to all homeowners, rather than just a private party, to avoid conflicts of interest and ensure equal treatment of all private and commercial property owners.
• The community wants clearly written and well-communicated architectural and landscaping standards that are fairly and equitably applied, and enforced in a consistent and transparent manner.
• The culture of the ARB should be centered around the benefit of the broader community, and various process improvements are needed to assure better service for community members.
• Short-term process improvements within the ARB and between the ARB and property owners are necessary to better serve property owners as the key customers of the ARB, clarify the authority of the ARB, provide better governance and certainly provide better communication and transparency and a high degree of reliability on approvals made at the beginning of a project.
• The transition of the responsibility for architectural control from the developer control to community control is a topic of high interest in the community.

The work group is planning to continue meeting throughout the summer to formulate specific proposals for an improved architectural control system on Kiawah and will be requesting additional community feedback in the coming months.

—-

In reply to the group’s efforts, the ARB provided the following statement:

The Kiawah Island Architectural Review Board appreciates the joint work group’s input and looks forward to gaining additional insight as their efforts continue. The ARB encourages KICA to pursue a survey exclusive to ARB to better assess community outlook and identify improvement opportunities. In the interim, please share any specific concerns regarding the ARB process at [email protected].