Feb. 13, 2003 - Workers at the site of a $110 million hotel being built at Kiawah Island relocate a live oak tree Wednesday. Kiawah Island Resorts has set aside more than $1 million in its landscaping budget to move rather than remove at least 100 oaks and 200 palmetto trees. The hydraulic behemoth, one of just two in existence, was summoned to the East Beach area last year to help clear the way for The Sanctuary, a $110 million luxury hotel development that is rising along the nearby oceanfront. To date, the powerful machine has uprooted, relocated and transplanted some 100 live oaks, some more than a century old. 

"We haven't lost any yet," said Ted Pinckney of Edwards Development Services, project director for the hotel. 

The $1 million relocation effort isn't merely environmental window dressing, Pinckney and others said. The delicate project took more than two years to plan. "I'd say in the grand scheme of things it's one the largest tree preservation and transplantation projects in the country at the moment," said Tom Cox, whose Texas-based company, Environmental Design Inc., owns the giant spade. 

The process is relatively simple, and an experienced crew can complete about six moves on a good day. Workers assemble the spade around a tree. Once set, the individually controlled blades dig a giant root ball about 8 feet deep and 14 feet wide, which the machine lifts from the ground. A tractor then pulls the tree to a new home, where it is gently deposited. When the replanting is done, large plastic barrels with tiny holes drilled in them are placed at the tree base and filled with water, creating a simple but reliable irrigation system. 

In addition to the oaks, about 200 smaller palmetto trees have been moved rather than removed. "The developers and the architects involved in this basically declared a mandate," Cox said. "They wanted to save every tree that was savable." Kiawah Island Resorts went to such lengths for two reasons, said spokesman Matt Owen. "Environmentally, we wanted to retain as many of the live oaks from that site as possible," Owens said. "But aesthetically, we wanted to create a grand entrance that a hotel of that stature deserves. We want it to be a new hotel with an entrance that seems to have been there for years." 

The shell of the 255-room Sanctuary, the most expensive hotel ever built in South Carolina, is quickly taking shape. Set to open in spring 2004, the four-story property will include a full-service day spa, two restaurants, a $3,000-a-night presidential suite measuring nearly 3,000 square feet, and unobstructed views of the Atlantic Ocean from practically everywhere. The resort has vowed to make it a five-star, five-diamond property. In all, roughly 150 live oaks are being relocated around the hotel site, said Lee Garrard of Charleston-based DesignWorks, which is overseeing the hotel landscaping. 

"It ended up being more cost effective from a planning perspective," Garrard said. He estimated that a nursery-bought 8- to 12-inch live oak would run about $5,000, planting included. The cost of physically moving an existing tree is about $3,600. 

"You end up with a mature product for less money," he said. "And environmentally you're doing the right thing, so you're making everybody happy." Still, the transplanted trees aren't out of the woods yet. "The litmus test will be how they take the first part of the summer," Garrard said. "They should be putting out more root growth by then. That will be where the rubber meets the road." 

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(c) 2003, The Post and Courier, Charleston, S.C. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.