Promenade closure: Beaufort’s business owners message to visitors: ‘We’re still open’
Bonnie Carpenter and her pair of distinguished retrievers strolled through Beaufort’s bucolic Waterfront Park, where time stands still on the warm summer day. She paused for a moment to watch a group of men play boccie ball on the immaculately kept grounds. Nearby, children played or licked ice cream cones. Clanks rang out from the rigging of bobbing boats moored in the adjacent marina.
“It’s absolutely gorgeous,” said Carpenter, who is just passing through the easy-paced historic city of 14,000 residents. She is traveling aboard a 72-foot boat on a trip from Jupiter, Fla. to Charleston.
Shop and restaurant owners: We’re still open for business
In the wake of this week’s decision by the city of Beaufort to fence off the park’s prominent promenade, downtown shop and restaurant owners in the tourist-dependent business community are fearful visitors like Carpenter will opt for other coastal destinations in the weeks and months ahead.
The seven-acre park remains available to the public and the businesses are open.
But the closure of the 35-foot wide, 1,200-foot-long promenade was a bombshell.
It followed a recommendation from engineering consultants, delivered on Friday to immediately close the platform to pedestrians until it can be fixed or replaced because it is failing “and can’t be relied upon to safely carry loads in its current state.”
A structural analysis showed significant deterioration in many of the hundreds of long concrete piles beneath the 35-foot-wide promenade. Those piles, which are 12 inches in diameter and reinforced with steel, are part of a supporting structure known as the “relieving platform” beneath the walking deck.
The timing couldn’t have been worse, the closure announced just four days before the beginning of busy July 4th weekend and just weeks before the start of the city’s celebrated 11-day Water Festival, which is headquartered at the park.
“It was not a fun decision,” City Manager Scott Marshall said Tuesday afternoon at the park after city officials met with representatives about the fate of the Water Festival, which is still scheduled.
However, Marshall added, it was not a difficult decision to make. “The engineering report was clear: No pedestrian traffic on the promenade.”
From shock to action
The news was akin to a gut punch for downtown businesses who rely on the foot traffic the promenade provides.
But by Tuesday, resilient business owners and leaders, while still frustrated, were countering with the message that Waterfront Park, and the businesses that operate in its shadow, remain open even though one section on the water’s edge is closed.
“Now it’s back to business: What do we need to do?” said Cheremie Weatherforde, who owns SugarBell, a women’s clothing boutique.
The immediate worry of Weatherforde and others was that the closure of the promenade would be incorrectly interpreted by visitors as a shutdown of the entire waterfront.
Ashlee Houck, who heads the Beaufort Area Hospitality Association, said businesses are now expanding marketing efforts to explain to visitors that the city’s bedrock downtown businesses remain open, along with the park, which continues to offer views of the Beaufort River - even with the closure of the promenade deck.
“It’s just the initial shock of pulling that Band-Aid off,” Houck said. “I think that Watertfront Park is a phenomenal background to downtown, but the true heart and soul is the businesses.”
What makes the park special?
The 7-acre park, a meticulously landscaped green oasis dotted with palmetto trees, anchors the downtown and borders blocks of shops, businesses and banks. When it was completed in 1975, it restored a working waterfront on the Beaufort River and revitalized the downtown.
Today, it’s considered the city’s “front porch” and a major meeting hub and venue for festivals and concerts.
Penny Federspill, leaning against her golf cart awaiting her next customers, described the park and its promenade as an “institution.”
“It is a gentle reminder of when times were slower,” she says.
One of its draws is the experience of walking along the promenade alongside the river or pausing to sit in one of the swings while gazing over the water. But now the feature that helped to revitalize the downtown needs revitalizing and it will carry impacts for downtown businesses.
Robb Wells of the Greater Beaufort-Port Royal Convention and Visitors Bureau says the Water Festival alone has a $7 million economic impact along on the area. The indefinite closure of the promenade has business owners worried, but he adds, “The park is not closed down.” Water Festival officials say the show will go on but likely with a different footprint.
“Without that river running through it, Beaufort is just another landlocked town,” Wells says of the importance of the river and Waterfront Park to the city. “Outside of Hunting Island State Park, it’s one of the top visitor draws.”
What went wrong?
Shutting down the promenade was not expected, Marshall said. However, he added, city officials were not caught off guard by the poor condition of the relieving platform.
A routine five-year inspection in April 2024 showed many of the pilings were cracked and in danger of buckling or already broken. Some are not even visible because so much silt has filled in underneath the park.
That inspection prompted the city to hire an engineering firm to conduct a major analysis of the structural integrity of the entire 50-year old park, including the relieving platform and the seawall, Marshall said. The structural analysis of the relieving platform, delivered Friday, is just one part of the bigger study. Marshall said he hopes to have the entire study by August. That study will lay out options on what can be done to fix the problems, how long it will take and the cost.
“This is just the next step in the process,” Marshall said.
Concerns remain
The normally busy promenade along the Beaufort River, where the visiting Carpenter had walked her dogs on previous days, was empty Tuesday afternoon as city workers continued to put the finishing touches on the chain link fence that will keep pedestrians from wandering too close to the compromised area. .
Carpenter, who chose to walk her dogs on a different path located on the opposite end of the park farther from the water, called the city’s decision to close the waterside walking path “unfortunate” but “a good safety measure” given the circumstances.
“I don’t want to be diving into the water,” Carpenter said with a laugh.
Business owners aren’t lobbying against the city’s decision to close the promenade for public safety reasons.
“Hey, things break,” said David Previglian, the owner of Kilwins, an ice cream shop and confectionery on Bay Street. “That’s life.”
Chocolate churned in a machine behind him and waffle cones sat on the counter as customers stepped in and perused the flavors before ordering.
The closure of the promenade, he said, “is going to have an impact for sure.” But how much of an impact still isn’t clear to Previglian despite the “unfortunate” timing. If the Water Festival goes on as usual, Previglian says, “we’ll be fine.” But business owners then must wait and see what the long-term solution for the park will involve.
“It comes down to what the plan is to get it repaired,” he said, “and how long will it take. That, I think will be the impact.”
Marshall, the city manager, says whether the repairs will involve tearing up the entire park or be more targeted is just speculation at this point. “I don’t know what the solution will ultimately be yet,” he said.
Perspective: keeping visitors safe
Weatherforde, the SugerBell women’s clothing boutique owner, says the decision to close the promenade came as a shock to many businesses. “My phone has been ringing off the hook,” she says.
As for her own business, she’s already had a few cancellations for fittings from parties that heard about the closure and incorrectly believed they would not be able to enjoy the waterfront. “A lot of people, in my opinion, are going to cancel plans,” she said.
But Weatherforde remains positive, adding the situation requires perspective. “We’re talking about peoples’ lives,” she says.
Small business owners in Beaufort, Weatherforde adds, know how to pivot. They’ve survived hurricanes and even a pandemic during which “we couldn’t even smile at our customers” because of the required face masks. During COVID-19, Weatherforde said, she turned her store into an online warehouse and in 48 hours doubled her business.
“If there’s anything small businesses know how to do it’s solving problems,” Weatherforde said. “We can’t wait for city government to cure us.”
She hopes that the city’s ultimate repairs for the park will be thoughtful toward the business community, which understands “we are fighting the elements.” The real battle in the months ahead, says Weatherforde and others, will be against any misinformation about the status of the park and downtown.
“Waterfront Park is not all of downtown,” says Wells of the Greater Beaufort-Port Royal Convention and Visitors Bureau, “and downtown is not just all Waterfront Park. But they are connected.”
