That empty restaurant visible from Hilton Head bridges has a new owner — taxpayers

Beaufort County paid $2.2 million last week to purchase a parcel of highly visible waterfront property in greater Bluffton that, over the years, has been the subject of a series of legal disputes between the county and the land’s owner.

The land, which is in the Buckingham Landing neighborhood and visible from the bridges to and from Hilton Head Island, is home to an empty octagonal-shaped building that has been the short-lived location of two different seafood restaurants.

The county-funded Daufuskie Island ferry service has been using the property as a boat landing for more than a year.

County Council voted to purchase the land at its June 25 meeting, but the motion to approve the sale only referred to the land by its property ID number and the name of the bank that owned it, not by its other common associations.

No public announcement about the sale was ever made, something that at least one council member finds problematic.

“I would offer new advice to the county on transparency,” said Councilman Rick Caporale, whose district includes the Buckingham Landing community and the land being sold. “I feel a press release announcing the sale would have been a better way to let the public know.”

Caporale said residents who live in the area have expressed concern that the county never notified them of the sale, something the county’s interim administrator disputes.

Interim county administrator Tom Keaveny confirmed on a phone call Friday that the purchase closed July 27. When asked if he felt the Council’s vote on the property was sufficient in providing public notice of the sale, he said yes.

“I think it satisfies the public’s knowledge,” he said.

Keaveny also said he had spoken to Buckingham Landing resident Ronald Broome, who Keaveny referred to as a leader in the Buckingham community, on July 16.

He said he called Broome to inform him of the pending sale with the hope that Broome would inform his neighbors of the transaction.

The Island Packet could not reach Broome after calling a number associated with his name and address.

The county has a long history with the property’s former owner, Wilbert Roller, who along with his family owned the land for nearly 50 years before the land was foreclosed on late last year by Queensborough National Bank & Trust.

After a number of lawsuits related to land use, the county settled with the Roller family in 2009, allowing them to build a restaurant on the property as long as it did not interfere with public access to the county’s nearby boat ramp.

The county has been paying $10,000 a month to rent the dock on the property for the Daufuskie Island Ferry, Council Chairman Paul Sommerville said.

He said the purchase was made in order to ensure a permanent location of the Daufuskie Island Ferry port, since Hurricane Matthew destroyed its old location at Palmetto Bay Marina. The county began using the dock in February 2017.

“We were out of options (for the ferry),” he said. “We were lucky we had this sitting.”

The buildings on the land — one of which housed the former Sea Trawler and Sunset Bay restaurants and the other, which currently offers restrooms to ferry patrons — will remain standing, though their purposes may change, according to Keaveny and Sommerville.

Although the fate of the former restaurants’ facility remains unclear, Keaveny explained that zoning laws prohibit it from reopening as a restaurant.

“Personally, I feel the future of Beaufort County is tied directly with its relationship to the water,” Sommerville said. “I’d like to see USCB or the Waddell Mariculture Center use (the former restaurant) as a research facility.”

He said he thinks the Council adequately communicated the planned purchase of the land to the public, but understood the community may feel differently.

“We had to move on acquiring this when we did,” he said. “If it had sold (to someone else), we wouldn’t have had anywhere else to put the ferry. But we’re always going to be criticized for something.

“It’s up to the individuals to be the judge,” he added.

This story was originally published August 3, 2018 at 2:58 PM.