If you don’t know this Beaufort developer, you know his buildings. Now he’s retiring
Dick Stewart, the head of a Beaufort-based real estate development company whose deals have left their mark on the historic city and kept him in the public eye for more than 20 years, is stepping down and turning the reigns of the company over to two younger associates.
The announcement that Stewart is retiring comes as 303 Associates is preparing for three major downtown projects — a boutique hotel at the corner of Scott and Port Republic streets; a three-story parking garage on the block bordered by Charles, Craven and West streets; and, a three-story apartment complex on Charles Street.
Effective March 1, Courtney Worrell and Jonathan Sullivan, 303 Associates’ partners and co-owners, took over as co-CEOs, the company said.
You might not know Stewart, but you’ve probably been inside a business located on property 303 has redeveloped and now manages. Since 1998, when 303 Associates was founded, it has invested in restoring dilapidated historic buildings and new construction in its focus on infill redevelopment and developing and managing commercial, retail, office, multi-family, and hospitality properties.
In Beaufort, 303 projects include Beaufort Town Center, Newcastle Square (Talbots store) and USCB Student Housing, all on Boundary Street. 303’s portfolio also includes the Beaufort Inn and Tabby Place, an indoor event venue, on Port Republic Street. Old Bay Marketplace on Bay Street and Port Royal Center, a professional services building on Ribaut Road in Port Royal, are 303’s as well.
The change in 303’s leadership, Stewart said, has been planned for more than a year.
Stewart’s latest projects, the large-scale parking garage, hotel and apartments in the city’s historic district, and the city’s approval of them, have sparked legal challenges from Historic Beaufort Foundation and Graham Trask, a property owner and developer, but Stewart and the city have prevailed so far.
Stewart, 72, says his retirement won’t have any impact on the progress of the projects, which are on “solid footing.” He has confidence, he adds, in Worrell and Sullivan.
What worries Stewart is the global economy, inflation and the war in Ukraine. “Those kinds of things overseas, beyond our control, make us all nervous, or they should,” Stewart said.
Going forward, Sullivan said, there will be no major changes. Sullivan said he and Worrell have been slowly been taking over management of the day-to-day operations over the past year and are “dialed into the investments.”
“We’re not developers,” Sullivan said. “We’re investors. We live here. We work here.”
Stewart, a Georgia native who moved to Bluffton as a boy and graduated from high school in Beaufort, launched 303 Associates after returning to the Lowcountry after retiring from a business career that included stints with Motorola in Atlanta and an upstart telecommunications company called MCI. He also started his own mobile radio company called Transit Communications that later became Nextel.
He was living at 303 Federal St. in Beaufort at the time.
Stewart made the decision to retire five or six years ago, he said, and has been working toward it ever since.
Supporting the expansion of the University of South Carolina Beaufort and the creating an arts district in Beaufort are two areas where he wants to spend more time, Stewart said. Stewart also was recently appointed to the Port Royal Redevelopment Commission and its mission of redeveloping Ribaut Road, which will also get more of his attention.
One of the most rewarding projects during his time with 303 Associates, he said, was renovating the Francis Saltus House on Bay Street, an 18th century merchant’s home and important tabby structure that had been closed for years and fallen into disrepair. The renovation spurred other improvements, Stewart said, that made Beaufort more attractive.
Today, Saltus House is home to the Saltus River Grill, Hearth Wood Fired Pizza, and the Spice and Tea Exchange of Beaufort.
“It’s been a lot of fun, and we felt like we made a nice set of contributions to the city,” Stewart said of 303 Associates.
