New roads, pavement and a pavilion? A glimpse of what Hilton Head’s US 278 will be like
Although Hilton Head Island is months away from learning the state’s final plan for the U.S. 278 corridor, officials provided a glimpse of what the island’s biggest infrastructure project this decade will look like.
S.C. Department of Transportation project manager Craig Winn said SCDOT is zeroing in on a plan for U.S. 278 that will keep the highway’s current footprint. He said the additional lanes will be added to the north of the existing highway, where the town owns more land.
The plan, he said, requires SCDOT to acquire rights of way to some privately owned land in the Stoney community, but that it will require no relocations of homes or residents. Winn said the plan would require two businesses to relocate, but he did not name those businesses.
In addition, Winn presented drafts of community signs and a pavilion dedicated to the Stoney community, which once acted as Hilton Head’s “downtown” for Gullah Geechee natives. The town has now bought most of the land in the Stoney area to make way for the highway.
The pavilion would be created at the intersection of Squire Pope Road and U.S. 278, and include information about Stoney and Gullah culture. The idea for the pavilion came from focus groups with the families who live in the Stoney area and leaders there, he said.
Two new roads would be constructed in the corridor to help people access their homes and a cemetery without crossing multiple lanes of traffic. Winn showed plans for an access road to the Stewart family’s land near the Crazy Crab and a paved road that leads to the Jenkins Island cemetery north of the highway.
The plan also includes a pathway for pedestrians and cyclists.
Winn said that to improve the intersections along U.S. 278 and reduce crashes, left turns may be limited.
Although Winn did not present a specific plan, Town of Hilton Head Island Town Council members said limiting turns onto Squire Pope Road would inconvenience families who live down that road or those accessing Hilton Head Plantation’s Cypress gate.
“It seems as if our quality of life here on Hilton Head is being defined by the delays or the congestion aspect that we have on the corridor,” Ward 1 representative Alex Brown said. “That’s not the definition when it comes to the citizens of Hilton Head. There are changes to intersections, all of which will impede or disrupt areas outside of where the new highway will touch.”
Once SCDOT presents its plan at the public hearing in May, the town council will review the plan.
Timeline problems
Meanwhile, the town has launched an all-out effort to prepare its sole entry and exit point for the $240 million construction project.
Town leaders heard updates on Wednesday from SCDOT, its independent engineering firm and its internal land planning staff. All three entities appear to have different timelines for revamping four miles of U.S. 278, the island’s largest infrastructure project this decade.
The date that determines the project’s timeline is the impending announcement of the “preferred alternative” — SCDOT’s plan for the area that stretches from Moss Creek to the entrance to the Cross Island Parkway. The decision was originally scheduled for September 2020, but Winn said the announcement of the preferred alternative will be in May. Along with that announcement will be a public hearing, which he said is tentatively scheduled for May 20.
At the same time, an independent engineering firm hired by the town and Beaufort County is reviewing SCDOT’s methodology and alternatives to make sure they didn’t miss anything. The firm is working with an oversight committee of residents and has analyzed other alternatives, funding, traffic data and whether the demand for U.S. 278 will grow as SCDOT expects it to.
HDR, the firm contracted by the county to review all the plans and information, expects to have a draft report by the end of March, Phillip Hutcherson told the council on Wednesday.
The town is also in the process of hiring a land planning firm to help design an entrance to the island that is welcoming to drivers and less intrusive to the businesses and families who own property at the base of the bridge in the historic Gullah Stoney community.
Staff announced Wednesday that three firms have bid for the work. But a land plan by an outside firm could take six months, which leaders said is too long given the other timelines from SCDOT and the independent engineering firm.
All these concurrent efforts have some residents asking why land planning and independent engineering reviews didn’t start earlier.
“A frustrated public is asking, ‘When will the construction mess end?’ No one knows. ‘What improvement was this expected to provide?’ Town Council never asked for quantitative data. ‘Why didn’t Town Council get an independent second opinion?’ Politicians short circuited this by deliberately neutering the consulting contract so that it produced little useful data,” former County Council member Steve Baer said in a memo he circulated to town leaders and media.
“Where was Hilton Head Island Town Council in all of this?” Baer asked.
This story was originally published March 12, 2021 at 4:30 AM.
