The face of the Boundary Street project is changing

The face of the Boundary Street project is changing.

Beaufort has parted ways with the engineer who oversaw the start of the work, which aims to redevelop a key city thoroughfare.

Senior project manager David Coleman was told at the end of May that his 18-month contract would not be renewed. His contract runs through the end of June.

Coleman was told that money wasn’t in the budget for him to continue, he said Friday. He said he was surprised his contract wasn’t extended but that he was hired to get the project started and the city was within its rights not to renew.

“It was, seriously, an awesome opportunity for me,” Coleman said. “My value as an engineer, my value as a local Beaufortonian, has gone up. I feel good about that.”

Coleman had been hired to get the project off the ground and did that well, city manager Bill Prokop said.

“It was the right time,” Prokop said. “We had to tighten our budget as well.”

Sammy Negron, who retired in January as Beaufort-Port Royal fire chief and stayed on as a part-time adviser, has stepped into a project manager role as the public face of the project. He presented a proposal to the City Council this month to award H&H Electrical Service a contract to connect electrical service from Boundary Street to adjoining properties as part of the project.

Infrastructure, Consulting & Engineering is managing the project’s contracts and will ensure the work is completed as outlined.

About 25 percent of the money for the $33 million project has been spent, and the project is about 20 percent complete, Prokop said Friday after a meeting about the project. Work is expected to be complete in early 2018.

Traffic could be moving through the realigned intersection at Robert Smalls Parkway and Boundary Street by the end of July, Prokop said. A duct bank to hold the buried utility lines is complete on the south side of Boundary Street, and work to construct curbs on that side of the road will begin soon.

Coleman was hired in January 2015 to lead the city’s infrastructure projects, including completing a new fire station on Ribaut Road and overseeing the Boundary Street project. His tenure was expected to last 18 to 36 months, the city said when he was hired.

Coleman was hired after eight years with Beaufort County as its capital improvements project manager. He worked on $160 million worth of infrastructure projects with the county, including overseeing the building of the Beaufort County Library’s St. Helena Island branch.

The Boundary Street project will bury utility lines along the thoroughfare from Neil Road to Greenlawn Drive; create raised, landscaped medians; and realign the intersection at Robert Smalls Parkway.

Work began in earnest in January, and the center median has been replaced with orange construction barrels.

The changes have irked some city residents, and Coleman had been the face of the project on Boundary Street, talking to local business owners and holding monthly meetings at City Hall to answer questions.

“This is a painful project — it’s painful at best,” Coleman said in April. “And I want the people to know that we, as a management team, are doing everything we can to keep this project headed in the right direction.

“I take a lot of criticism about this project, which is fine, but at the end of the day, everything I hear I try to run to ground and make sure I do everything I can to mitigate these concerns.”

This story was originally published June 25, 2016 at 5:18 PM with the headline "The face of the Boundary Street project is changing."