Boundary St. project changes the look of Beaufort – here’s what’s next

Beaufort’s look is changing.

Boundary Street is expected to be finished by March. The two-year road project buried utility lines and added landscaped medians in an effort to beautify a key commercial corridor and city entrance.

Multiple downtown streets have been revamped in recent years to encourage building in vacant areas and restoration of older homes.

New homes have gone up on Bay Street, a new inn built a couple of blocks away, older commercial buildings renovated and a new multipurpose building rising on Bladen Street.

And more work is on the way.

Here’s what’s planned:

▪ Beaufort residents could at some point walk freely down Bay Street one evening a month, shopping and enjoying a drink with the road closed to traffic.

Visitors would have little trouble finding a parking spot. Shops would stay open late enough to cater to an after-dinner crowd.

Those are the possibilities as city consultants begin work to develop a plan for energizing the downtown area. The group met with business owners and other city leaders this week and eventually will offer a strategy for growing business downtown.

Preliminary findings were shared Friday.

“One of the things we’re hearing is shoppers now have so many options – they can shop online; they can travel to Bluffton; they can travel to Charleston,” said John Williams, a public relations and marketing executive contracted with the city and member of the consultants team. “We have to be sure downtown Beaufort remains a fulfilling experience and not some place to rush in, buy something and leave.”

▪ Supporters of the Spanish Moss Trail want to connect the walking and biking path to downtown Beaufort. The trail could run down Depot Road, cross Ribaut and down Bay Street to the marina parking lot.

A staging area might be proposed in the marina lot, the trail to follow the seawall and work up the bluff to Bay Street, said Dean Moss, director of Friends of the Spanish Moss Trail. The trail then could follow Bay Street where there now is parking along the bluff, the bike traffic separated from cars by a planted barrier.

The concrete path would return where there is room in the right of way, leading down Depot to the trailhead.

The Atlanta-based PATH Foundation is developing a plan and expected to report back to the trail’s board within weeks.

There’s no engineering or cost estimate for the potential project. The city and state transportation officials would have to take the lead once there is time and money, Moss said.

“Everybody kind of agrees we really need to make a safe and inviting way for people coming from the trail to get to downtown Beaufort and for people downtown to get out to the trail,” Moss said.

▪ When Boundary Street work is done, some of the leftover money generated by a special tax district then would be directed to a road project on Greenlawn Drive.

There is not a yet a timetable for that work, City Manager Bill Prokop said.

The road off Boundary Street adjacent to Beaufort Town Center is an area slated for new development and includes a recently built 56-unit affordable apartment complex.

This story was originally published January 18, 2018 at 2:20 PM with the headline "Boundary St. project changes the look of Beaufort – here’s what’s next."