Posts Tagged ‘Compass Rose Park’
Charles Fraser Walks the Gator at Compass Rose Park
Jim Chaffin speaks at the dedication of the Charles Fraser Statute 'Walking the Alligator' at Compass Rose Park, Hilton Head Island
The Charles Fraser bronze statue ‘Walking the Alligator’ was dedicated at the Compass Rose Park on Hilton Head Island to an audience of about 250 people on Heritage weekend, 10:oo am, April 17, 2010. Mr. Fraser founded the Sea Pines Company in 1956. In March,1962 a picture of him at age 26 was published in the Saturday Evening Post walking beside an alligator and the photograph created great publicity for the new development. In 2002, Mr. Fraser died in a boating accident.
The statue was produced by the Community Foundation of the Lowcountry and by private donations to the Public Art Fund. The statue is just over six feet tall and was sculpted by Susie Chisolm of Savannah, Georgia. The alligator measures ten feet and was sculpted by Darrell Davis of Texas.
One of several speakers at the dedication worked with Mr. Fraser for ten years as a Senior Manager at Sea Pines Plantation. Jim Chaffin is now a Partner of Chaffin/Light, an internationally-recognized community development company. His comments are presented here in full.
It was a beautiful morning on Hilton Head Island for the dedication.
“Well, it looks like Charles is still in charge of the weather for Heritage Week, doesn’t it?
I’ve been asked to share a few reflections on the life and personality of the iconic man whose likeness we will dedicate today. It is a daunting task….not because of difficulty in finding enough to say…but figuring out what to leave out – so that we are not here at sundown!
A sampling of descriptive adjectives from former Sea Pines Company associates and friends includes:
Larger than life Pioneer Brilliant Inquisitive Challenging Visionary Friend, mentor, advocate Innovator, transformer, catalyst Dreamer, optimist Courageous Persistent
……Most newspaper and network obituaries of Charles Fraser described him as a brilliant visionary.
Brilliant? Yes. But not just intellectual depth and weight, but also breadth – and that voracious appetite for knowledge. He was a virtual data and idea sponge! Is there anything he wasn’t curious about….except perhaps small talk?! You got a taste of Charles’ mind if you were talking about boring, mundane superficial subjects….’cause he flat left you – mentally, and sometimes physically. Anyone out there have that experience?
Visionary? No doubt. He so often saw what others didn’t see.
But, how easy it is to assume that his brilliance and his vision defines the man. Not to me. He gave us other gifts. Few of us can be brilliant…. fewer still, I submit, can be truly visionary. But we can learn from and try to emulate his courage, persistence, philanthropy, faith, humor, ….and an insatiable thirst for new ideas and the sheer joy of sharing them.
• He was a passionate student of human nature and particularly how they pleasured themselves – both historical and contemporary leisure pursuits. It was not just the master plan and architecture (which he was passionate about) but it was the software, the experience of being in a place…thus the rocking chairs, the treehouse and playground and Greg Russell singing in Harbour Town. • He loved to say it was smart to be “second, first” or to have the intelligence and “moxy” to copy a great idea – - - • He did however dare many times to be first – in what at the time was a cultural and economic “backwater” environment. Consider: o protective covenants and deed restrictions that controlled what people could and could not do on their homesites o approving what trees could and could not be removed o controlling the size and mass of homes and requiring landscape blending colors o pushing the main road back (i.e. Sea Pines Drive) 4 or 5 lots deep from the ocean o walkways every 500 ft of beach to connect all residents to the beach (36 walkway easements at 50 ft each or 1850 cumulative beach front – how much would 20 oceanfront lots in Sea Pines be worth today…..) o setting aside a “managed” nature preserve o first condominium regime in South Carolina o created Camp Sea Pines – so children became a major motivation for vacationing here (or as our marketing tag line proclaimed, “allowing families to take separate vacations together”) o bike trails in late 60’s – [The property owners thought Charles was irrationally eccentric on this issue – yet today there are three times as many residents and guests riding bikes as there are playing golf!!] o A major PGA tour stop on this small isolated island? There were less than 3000 people living here that Thanksgiving when the first Heritage Classic was played (It and the lighthouse were labeled Frasers follies by smaller minded detractors) o Nationally televised tennis tournaments? …same audacity to dream that! o European chefs and flambe’ carts in Carolina Low Country? How many of you fellow old-timers had your first bananas foster or cherries jubilee at the Plantation Club? o First Montessori school in South Carolina (Mary Fraser – you deserve the credit for that idea) o And who else would have a budget line item labeled “fun and sizzle”? o on and on..
….a combination of vision, courage and persistence.
But, most of all, and especially during the last 18 months of economic challenges, I have remembered Charles’ confidence in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. His unbridled optimism, no matter what he was going through, particularly in difficult times.
I never heard him complain about difficulty or set-backs.
He is the mentor that taught us all the simple Chinese philosophy: knock down nine times, get up ten.
And I never heard him gossip about others who may have been more economically successful.
He simply always had a new idea, a new concept – another dream to follow. And I would submit that Charles lived as George Bernard Shaw suggested; “ I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”
And — hand it on he did! I would say to you that Charles’ legacy is not just these magnificent human settlements, these natural places that are easy to photograph and document, but rather the future generations he mentored to carry on his vision and his dreams —In fact no one in the land use or development industry – no one – “peopled” the industry more than Charles. But most of all, it was his challenge – sometimes his cajoling — his fervent hope for us that we create our own visions, and dream our own dreams and have the courage and tenacity to follow them wherever they lead us.
May this wonderful statue send the same message to Hilton Head Islanders for generations to come. Don’t ask what Charles Fraser would want for this community. Create your own visions, dream your own dreams about what Hilton Head should be and live like today….and 20, 30, 50 years from now…and have the courage, tenacity, and passion to make the vision reality.
That is the legacy Charles Fraser would cherish! ”
Richard Kadesch, Owner/Broker-in-Charge
The Gated Community Specialist ®
Go Gated Realty ®
Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Rich@gogated.com www.GoGated.com 1-800-333-5025, Cell 843-684-2933 Read Some of My Clients’ Success Stories
Hilton Head Island's New Coligny Beach Park
Children play in the new interactive fountain at the Coligny Beach Park
The Coligny Beach Park Redevelopment Project was completed this summer on Hilton Head Island’s most popular public beach access, the 1.5 acre beach park at the Coligny Circle in Forest Beach.
The wide and beautiful public beach access in Forest Beach
The highlight of the beach park renovation is the new interactive fountain with 26 synchronized water jets at grade level that squirt to varying heights at varying times. Little children love them!
Foot showers and benches at the beach access
The renovated park is beautiful with a wide, new promenade from the entrance where the fountain is located to the beach. The promenade has patterned wood and concrete with embedded plaques of sea animals along the way. Along the promenade are new large restrooms, new showers, a picnic shelter and pergolas with swings on two elevated platforms for viewing across the dunes to the ocean.
A new restroom at the Coligny Beach Park and in front, an embedded plaque
The 1.43 million dollar renovation is part of the Town of Hilton Head Island’s Bridge to the Beach Redevelopment plan, a strategy of Town-built projects, policies and programs meant to stimulate private redevelopment in the area.
A family enjoys the Coligny Beach Park
Hilton Head Town Manager Steve Riley wrote about the park in Our Town, A Newsletter of the Town of Hilton Head Island this summer, “We hope that projects like this will spur or revitalize businesses and pedestrian use. If you look at the widely successful Pope Avenue pathway improvements, the significantly utilized new Compass Rose Park, Coligny Circle roundabout improvements, coupled with Coligny Beach Park’s re-birth, you will begin to understand that we mean business when if comes to redevelopment.”
The beach is wheelchair accessible at the Coligny Beach Park
The renovation of the Coligny Beach park is a great success and the high quality and beauty of the new park will bring pleasure to both townspeople and visitors for many years. When you are here to see Hilton Head homes and villas for sale, check it out.
Richard Kadesch, Owner and Broker-in-Charge
The Gated Community Specialist ®
Go Gated Realty ®
Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Rich@gogated.com
www.GoGated.com
1-800-333-5025
Read Some of My Clients’ Success Stories
Hilton Head Island’s Compass Rose Park Opens and Honors Charles Fraser, Sea Pines Developer
The family of Charles Fraser, Hilton Head Island Town officials and approximately 75 townspeople were on hand for the opening of Hilton Head Island’s
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The ribbon cutting ceremony for Compass Rose Park. From L-R: Town Mayor Tom Peeples, Charles Fraser’s brother Joe, grandson Samuel, daughter Laura Lawton, widow Mary Wyman Stone Fraser, nephew Joseph Fraser III and Town Manager Steve Riley
Compass Rose Park at the corner of Pope Avenue and New Orleans Road on Saturday, April 26, 2008 at 10 am. Charles Fraser had the largest collection of maps of South Carolina in the country. A French map had a north-pointing fleur de lis and compass that Mr. Fraser chose it as the symbol for the Sea Pines Company that he started in 1957. Charles Fraser died in December, 2002 in a boating accident in the Turks and Caicos. He was 72 years old.
At the opening ceremony, Hilton Head Mayor Tom Peeples spoke about how the Park’s location had been a restaurant and auto repair shop before the site was purchased by the Town. Joseph Fraser III, Charles Fraser’s nephew spoke and remembered Charles Fraser as a visionary and an innovator, a developer who used protective covenants as part of his community’s plan and who blended nature’s colors and materials with dedicated open spaces, required landscape planning and site planning for houses around specimen trees, who formed community associations and architectural review boards and was the first to adopt ‘T’ streets in a development.
Joseph Fraser III said, “It is fitting that the Compass Rose Park is here on Pope Avenue because all of the land across from Compass Rose Park was once Sea Pines Plantation. The Park is a gathering place where everyone can be reminded of our development history and because boggy gut, at the eastern end of the park, is the headwaters of the 600-acre Forest Preserve which is perhaps the Sea Pines Company’s greatest gift to Hilton Head Island. Along Pope Avenue there are several churches for which the land was donated by The Sea Pines Company, a tangible reminder of Charles Fraser’s commitment to building a strong Island community. Charles understood that he had a duty to be a good steward of the land. Today, because of his vision and the hard work of the early development pioneers and by the continuing efforts of the Town and many of its citizens, we are all able to enjoy this Island paradise. Today Hilton Head Island is a more complete community and a better place to live, work and play than ever before in the modern development era. Just as the Compass Rose was the early symbol for the development of Hilton Head Island, I suggest that today we should adopt it as a symbol that points us towards the future we envision for Hilton Head Island. Appropriately, the Compass Rose Fountain right over here is named Pointing the Way.
Charles Fraser’s grandson Samuel on the Spinning Rose Fountain.
It should challenge us to make our Island an even better place by continuing protect our natural environment, by continuing to improve our infrastructure and public spaces, by continuing to support our schools all programs for our children and by continuing our strong tradition of supporting our non-profit sector with our time and dollars and by including these organizations in our estate planning to build endowments that benefit the Island long after we are gone, and by continuing to improve the vacation experience for our resort guests.
It should also challenge us today to support the Public Art Fund and the Community Foundation of the Lowcountry. Charles understood the importance of public parks and gathering places. He also understood the importance of art in these places. The alligator statue at the Plantation Club and the Seward Johnson Lunch Break statue in Harbortown are two of the earliest examples of public art on the Island. The Public Art Fund will be leveraged by the Community Foundation by contributing one dollar for every three dollars raised by the community, businesses and foundations. The artist has been selected for the first statue which will be here in Compass Park of Charles Fraser Walking the Alligator. It will be on the grass to my right and it should be completed sometime next year.
I want to particularly thank the Heritage Classic Foundation and the Hilton Head Island Foundation Fund for their very generous donations for this park. As the Public Art Fund grows, additional works of art will be added to our Hilton Head Island collection. Finally, I’d like to thank the Public Art Committee for their time and hard work. It has been a privilege today to speak about our compass rose.” The Design of Compass Rose Park
The Park is an artistic combination of plazas, gazebos, fountains, waterfalls and landscape – a unique and distinctive accomplishment by the Town of Hilton Head Island and Architect Ed Drane who received many compliments from those who attended the Park’s opening. Pointing the Way
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The Reflecting Pond and Bubbling Spring
fountain is located at the entrance to Compass Rose Park that is also defined by a sturdy wood trellis that arches over the Park entrance. The fountain with a bronze compass rose sculpture that once adorned the first security gatehouse to Sea Pines is easily seen from passers by on neighboring Pope Avenue. Behind the fountain is the Plaza comprised of three patios with canvass-topped gazebos that surround the Reflection Pond with a Bubbling Spring, reminiscent of the artesion wells of Hilton Head Island for which pumps were not needed. The Plaza with the Reflecting Pond is an inviting place for visitors to stop, relax, meet friends and enjoy the Park. A waterfall from the Reflection Pond feeds The Spillway, inspired by old rice and cotton mills that had spillways and water wheels. At the end of The Spillway another waterfall transitions across black tile to a stream that flows under The Gazebo at the end of the Park and into the Lily Pond at the headwaters of the boggy gut.
The Spinning Rose Fountain sits besides the path that runs from the entrance to the Park to the Gazebo at the Lily Pond. It is a granite block inscribed with the fleur de lis that points north while the elevated compass spins on water power. Architect Ed Drane explained that it’s there for fun and visitors are expected to sit on the compass and enjoy the ride. Panels that Tell the Story of Sea Pines Will be Added to the Park Events of the Sea Pines story will be told on panels with words and photo images to be placed on six of the Plaza walls of Compass Rose Park. Included in.jpg)
The Stream flows under the Gazebo to the Lily Pond at the headwaters of boggy gut.
approximately 24 panels will be tributes to Charles Fraser’s architectural design, construction philosophy, restrictive covenants, architectural review board, commitment to quality and preservation and respect for the environment; acknowledgements of the contributions of his brother Joe and internationally famous landscape architect Hideo Sasaki; the building of the swing bridge to the Island in 1956 and the construction of the Hilton Head Inn; the construction of the Sea Pines Ocean Course, the first golf course on Hilton Head Island and the subsequent construction of the Harbourtown Golf Links designed by Jack Nicklaus and Pete Dye; the first Sea Pines Heritage Golf Classic won by Arnold Palmer and the incorporation of the Town of Hilton Head in 1983 with one of its goals to preserve the Sea Pines vision for all of the Island.
A Bronze Statue of Charles Fraser Walking the Gator Will Be Added A popular photograph of Charles Fraser dressed in a suit and tie and wearing straw hat while carrying a walking stick and walking beside an alligator was published in the Saturday Evening Post and achieved national attention for Sea Pines and Hilton Head Island at a time when neither was well known. A bronze statue of the image will be located on the lawn of Compass Rose Park in 2009 and will also be the first project to be funded by the Public Art Fund. A plaque will be added to the Plaza near the statue will say: “This statue is based on the picture of Charles Fraser on a casual jaunt with an alligator as it appeared in a special edition of the Saturday Evening Post on “People on the Way Up.” It caused a media sensation and gave Sea Pines national attention for the first time. It’s donation to the Town by the Community Foundation of the Low Country, Inc. will be made possible by the generous donations of many who give to their Public Art Fund. The artists are Susie Chisholm for the statue of Charles and Darrell Davis for the alligator.“.jpg)
Pointing the Way Fountain
The Hilton Head Public Art FundThe Community Foundation of the Lowcountry has established a matching gift program for public art projects. The Public Art Fund will be leveraged by contributing one dollar for every three raised by community members for public art projects throughout Hilton Head Island. The vision is to use the fund for multiple projects over many years. Along with the Town of Hilton Head Island, the community foundation’s goal is to bring art into the public realm and introduce it into the lives of the community, engage and uplift the viewer, add to civic pride and enhance the unique place that is Hilton Head Island.
The Public Art Fund is a unique fund of the Community Foundation of the Lowcountry, a nonprofit 501 ( c ) 3 organization. All contributions to the community foundation are fully tax deductible as allowable by law. Depending on your situation, should you want to make a gift to the Fund or for more information, please contact Emmy Rooney, Vice President for Development and Donor Services at the Community Foundation: 843-681-9100 or erooney@cf-lowcountry.org. The Community Foundation of the Lowcountry is located at 4 Northridge Drive, Suite A, P.O. Box 23019, Hilton Head Island, S.C. 29925. Their website address is www.cf-lowcountry.org.
Richard Kadesch, Owner and Broker-in-Charge
The Gated Community Specialist ®
Go Gated Realty ®
Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Rich@gogated.com
www.GoGated.com
1-800-333-5025
Read Some of My Clients’ Success Stories