Beaufort County won’t widen Sea Island Parkway after all. Here’s why it reversed course
A Beaufort County committee has killed plans, for now, to improve access to Beaufort High School by widening a stretch of Sea Island Parkway to four lanes, which would have displaced a significant number of property owners.
The 9-1 decision by the Public Facilities Committee to abandon the high school access plans came after residents and business owners filled the County Council chambers to complain about the impacts. The county also decided against pursuing another option to address traffic congestion, which would have affected Crystal Lake Park and also received push pack from residents.
The high school access options were developed as part of $30 million worth of improvements that are planned in the vicinity of the Sea Island Parkway and Lady’s Island Drive/Sams Point Road, to improve traffic flow.
Voters approved the $30 million in funding for several projects in a 2018 penny tax referendum
In the wake of the committee’s decision, the original projects identified in the referendum will continue, said Jared Fralix, assistant county administrator for infrastructure, but not the major access options for Beaufort High School that the county later developed.
But the estimated cost of the Lady’s Island corridor work is now more than $42 million. County officials said they plan to apply for state and federal funding to make up the gap.
Widening Sea Island Parkway from two to four lanes from Woods Memorial Bridge in Beaufort to its intersection with Sams Point Road/Lady’s Island Drive sparked opposition from residents and business owners who said it would affect their property.
On Monday, the County Council chambers were so full that Chairman Stu Rodman said some people would not be allowed in because of fire code restrictions.
Nancy Ware, who owns commercial property along Sea Island Parkway, told members of the committee to look for a long-term solution to traffic problems, like a bypass.
“Putting a Band-Aid on a gushing wound,” Ware said, “will not help.”
The Rev. Andrew Trapp of St. Peter’s Catholic Church criticized a second high school access option the county had developed, this one impacting a portion of Crystal Lake Park. That plan would have cut through a soccer field owned by the church, Trapp said, which church officials found “alarming.” They also were frustrated, Trapp said, that nobody from the county had reached out to the church.
“As of right now, from the little we do know,” Trapp said, “we would be very much opposed to a road coming through the back portion of our property.”
The sales tax for infrastructure work expired this year after raising $120 million: $80 million to help overhaul the bridges leading to Hilton Head Island, $30 million for the Lady’s Island corridor improvements and $10 million to improve county sidewalks and paths.
The Sea Island Parkway is the second of nine road improvement projects in Lady’s Island corridor identified in the 2018 referendum. The project is critical because it directly affects the other seven road projects and a few pathway projects. The first project was a right-hand turn lane on Sams Point Road onto Sea Island Parkway, which was completed earlier this year.
“We just need for you all to do something,” Administrator Eric Greenway told committee members. “We’ve studied this to death. We’ve allocated a lot of county resources here and we’ve made zero progress on this issue.”
Rodman, the committee chairman, said there was too much opposition to the high-school area options, and the costs too high. Small-scale improvements to that stretch can be made, he said, in the course of regular business over time.
Councilman York Glover was the lone no vote. He asked how the county was going to address the traffic problems on Highway 21, or Sea Island Parkway.
A third bridge to Lady’s Island would be one way, Fralix said, but that’s not an immediate solution, he added.
Building a third bridge, Greenway said, would violate the Lady’s Island plan, a multi-jurisdictional planning effort to create a comprehensive vision for Lady’s Island, which says building a third bridge should be postponed for as long as possible.
The county initially considered several options to realign the access to the high school. They involved changing the entrance and improved or new neighborhood roads to improve traffic flow. But neighbors objected because those options required using some land in Crystal Lake Park. Instead, to improve traffic flow in the vicinity near the high school, the county chose the four-lane Sea Island Parkway option.
Council Paul Sommerville made the motion to take no action on the access to Beaufort High School and move on with the other projects, saying “I don’t think we’re ever going to get consensus on that intersection.”
This story was originally published September 20, 2022 at 12:01 PM.
