Carolina Shores Residents Won The Zoning Fight. The Golf Course Homes Are Getting Built Anyway.

In January 2026, neighbors packed the Carolina Shores Town Hall to fight a plan for 120 homes on the shuttered Carolina Shores Golf and Country Club. In February, the town commissioners agreed with them and voted 3-1 to deny it. By April, NewsArgus reported that the developer had a special use permit to build on the same land anyway.

That sequence is the whole story, and it is worth sitting with if you are comparing Carolina Shores against other Brunswick County towns. The instinct is to read a zoning denial as a wall. Here it worked more like a filter. The fight residents won determined how dense the development would be and what infrastructure came with it, not whether homes would appear on the old fairways at all.

What The Neighbors Actually Voted Against

The Carolina Shores Golf and Country Club closed for good in November 2024 after decades of operation. In August 2025, owner Philippe Bureau brought the town a plan to rezone part of the former course, a property reported at roughly 150 to 156 acres, from Conservation Recreation District to Planned Residential District, clearing the way for 120 homes and 19 stormwater retention ponds. Residents showed up at every step. They raised flooding, traffic, and property value concerns at a January town hall, and Zachary Ferguson, who bought his home across from the 13th hole in 2022 partly for the golf course access, told reporters he and his neighbors weren't convinced the revised plan addressed any of it.

The Carolina Shores Planning Board recommended against the rezoning in a late January vote. On February 9, 2026, the town's board of commissioners agreed, denying the request 3-1 after residents packed the hall again. Commissioners cited the town's Coastal Area Management Act Comprehensive Plan and the public comment record in their decision. Resident John Billmyer, who moved to the neighborhood in part because of the golf course, called it a relief, though he still hoped for something other than what came next.

How The Project Moved Forward After The Rezoning Denial

Here is the detail that gets lost in the headline about a denied rezoning: the developer later pursued a different application. According to My Horry News, Conservation Recreation District, the designation that governed the golf course for decades, already permitted a swimming pool, a golf course, a publicly owned recreational facility, a conservation area, and accessory structures.

According to WECT, by February 17, 2026, Bureau was pursuing roughly one home per one-acre lot on the property. The Town of Carolina Shores granted the special use permit on April 14, 2026, allowing construction of approximately 109 homes on one-acre-or-larger lots.

The rezoning fight residents won decided the shape of the development. It did not decide whether development happened.

Why The Retention Ponds Disappeared

The homeowners who fought hardest against the first plan were worried about flooding and stormwater. The version that got approved has no comparable retention pond system, and that isn't an oversight. Under North Carolina law, properties built on one-acre-or-larger lots don't trigger the same stormwater management requirements that denser subdivisions do. The 120-home plan needed 19 retention ponds precisely because it packed more rooftops and pavement onto less land. The 110-lot version doesn't need them, because the math of runoff per acre changes when the lots get bigger.

That is the part worth sitting with if you're evaluating property near this parcel, or near any similarly zoned land elsewhere in the county. Winning a density fight can mean losing the engineered infrastructure that would have come with density. Fewer homes per acre sounds like a win on its face. Whether it functions as one depends on what the site's natural drainage was already doing before anyone built on it, a question no vote in a town hall answers on its own.

A legal dispute ran alongside all of this. According to WWAY, Bureau's team filed suit against the town after the February rezoning denial and voluntarily dismissed it after pursuing about 110 one-acre lots via special use permit.

What This Means If You're Comparing Brunswick County Neighborhoods

The lesson here isn't specific to golf courses. It's about how much a zoning label actually tells you before you buy near land that isn't built out yet.

• Read what a zoning category permits, not just what it's currently used for. The former golf course's zoning history shows why that distinction matters.
• Ask how the public-hearing process and approval criteria for a special use permit compare with those for a rezoning.
• Check lot-size minimums against stormwater rules for the county, not just the zoning district. A one-acre floor can change the infrastructure a builder is required to install, which affects what happens to runoff on your street during the next heavy rain.
• Look at whether a town has an active Residents Liaison Committee or comparable group. Carolina Shores residents organized formally enough to submit comments citing specific sections of the town's CAMA Comprehensive Plan, and that kind of engagement is itself a signal about how a community responds when land use changes are proposed.

None of this means Carolina Shores is a riskier or safer bet than any other Brunswick County town. It means the useful diligence question isn't "is this land protected," it's "what does the existing zoning already allow, and who has shown up to enforce or contest it before."

A Few Direct Questions

Is the golf course definitely being redeveloped now? As of the April 14, 2026 special use permit approval, yes. The plan calls for roughly 109 homes on one-acre-or-larger lots, and the developer's earlier lawsuit against the town was voluntarily dismissed by early August 2026.

Will the new homes be built at the density of a typical subdivision? No. The approved plan keeps every lot at one acre or larger, which is meaningfully lower density than the 120-home plan that was denied, and it's the reason the project didn't need the 19 retention ponds that plan required.

Does this only matter if I'm looking at homes near the old golf course? Directly, yes, since the zoning and permit history applies to that former course, reported at roughly 150 to 156 acres. More broadly, the sequence is a useful case study in how a town's zoning code, its permit process, and its residents' willingness to organize actually interact, which is worth understanding before you commit to any Brunswick County neighborhood built around a shared amenity.

If you're weighing Carolina Shores against Calabash, Sunset Beach, or another Brunswick County community and want to talk through what a specific parcel's zoning history actually means for your purchase, Hank Troscianiec & Associates can walk through the local record with you. Schedule a free consultation and get a straight answer before you write an offer, not after.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.