After a lengthy fight in the Capitol and with residents on the coast, a public-private partnership to remake state-owned Jekyll Island has backed away from plans to place hotels and condos on a massive parking lot that for decades has given Georgia vacationers access to a popular beach.

Instead, the acreage will be changed to include a park and an environmental conservation center, the latter originally planned for elsewhere on the island. The condos and hotels will be relocated.

"After conferring with our revitalization partner, Linger Longer Communities, we have made the decision to limit use of this area to those public purposes and not development of accommodations, such as hotels and condominiums," according to a letter from Ben Porter, chairman of the Jekyll Island Authority, to House Majority Leader Jerry Keen.

The island authority now plans to "re-establish native growth and improve the dune structure" in the area as well, Porter wrote.

The decision announced Wednesday affects just a small portion of the $352 million effort to upgrade island facilities, many of which have lapsed into disrepair.

But it delivers a happy ending to a short and strange chapter that saw local residents, annual vacationers and environmentalists banding together to save an admittedly unattractive and crumbling piece of pavement -- located just north of a convention center that is also unattractive and crumbling.

The letter was released in order to fend off more legislative attempts to restrict Jekyll developers, in the final days of the current session of the General Assembly. None has been successful, but the efforts have generated thousands of telephone calls and e-mails to lawmakers since January.

"This was simply the right thing to do," said Sen. Jeff Chapman (R-Brunswick), who led the fight to reduce the footprint of Jekyll Island's redevelopment. "We're very excited for the public."

State Rep. Debbie Buckner (D-Junction City) took up the cause in the House. "We're very happy, and it wouldn't have happened without the thousands of people who called and e-mailed," Buckner said.

Critics of the development, fearful that it would put Jekyll out of the price range of many Georgians, had argued that the parking lot symbolized the commitment made by the state when the island was purchased, to keep it accessible to "people of average income."

On Jekyll Island, residents David and Mindy Egan are co-directors of the Initiative to Protect Jekyll Island, which boasts an e-mail list of 7,000 supporters, a mix of environmentalists, island residents and vacationers.

"I have to admit everybody's thrilled," David Egan said. While Egan did not discount the impact of public opinion, he said the change in plans might have had more to do with the federal regulation of beach property.

In his letter, the authority chairman, Porter, said the state Department of Natural Resources "has recently established" that the stretch of beach in question is covered by the Georgia Shore Protection Act.

"Permits will be required for any redevelopment of this area," he wrote.

Egan said Jekyll authorities and Linger Longer, a development firm with major Republican ties, probably realized that court challenges to those permits could tie up the redevelopment project for years.

Efforts to contact Porter and a spokesman for the Jekyll Island Authority were unsuccessful Wednesday.

Both Egan and Chapman, the state senator from Brunswick, said they would have to see new blueprints of the development plans before they could declare victory.