On the day that I met Mark Permar at the Marsh House in Ocean Park , the breeze blowing in from the river was a pleasant break from the late-summer sun . Permar is an architect and community planner who has lived on Kiawah Island since the mid-1970s , and was the vice president of planning and design for the Kiawah Island Company , the team that conceived of the “ master plan ” of development that has inspired the island ’ s layout up to the current day . For the first half of the 20th century , Permar told me , the island was owned by private families and undeveloped outside of a few homesites and , eventually , a modest residential subdivision . In 1974 , Kiawah was identified by a Kuwait-backed investment group looking to reinvest petrodollars — American money paid to oil-exporting countries — who purchased the island from the Royal family . At the time , that transaction was national news . “ Imagine a foreign country in the Middle East , purchasing American soil in the Deep South to create a community … in an era where inflation was considerably more than it is now and President Nixon was resigning from office ,” Permar said . “ There was a lot of concern . It was the stuff of 60 Minutes .” The Kuwaitis assuaged some of the early angst about the acquisition when they hired a pioneering group from the Sea Pines community in Hilton Head , which included Mark ’ s wife , Diana , as a market researcher , to conceptualize , develop , and implement a plan for the island ’ s development into a resort and residential community .
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