Proposed Sheriff’s Office headquarters in Okatie called ‘huge opportunity.’ Here’s why
Beaufort County has moved a step closer to consolidating the Sheriff’s Office headquarters with other county services in an Okatie complex that’s been decades in the making and promises “huge opportunity” for local law enforcement, officials say.
The plan for the $25 million project calls for the county to purchase two parcels from the Cooler family for about $5 million, where construction would begin on a centralized hub for a number of government facilities, County Administrator Eric Greenway said.
Known locally as the “Cooler tract,” the 97-acre property is located at the intersection of North Okatie Highway and S.C. 462, just south of the Beaufort-Jasper Academy for Career Excellence.
The county’s Community Services and Land Use Committee unanimously approved the plan this week. The County Council will vote on the proposal after its third and final reading March 27.
There currently is no timetable for when the project will be completed.
A ‘one-stop-shop’ for county services
Sheriff P.J. Tanner described the benefits of a relocated headquarters using two main words: centralization and consolidation.
The new headquarters wouldn’t fill the entire 97 acres of land immediately. Tanner said his ideal vision for the Cooler tract is a “one-stop-shop” for county services, with possible additions including a magistrate court building, a juvenile detention facility, an EMS office and a Solicitor’s Office substation. The only option that’s off the table is a prison — “because no one wants a prison in their backyard,” Tanner said, referring to residents of the nearby Oldfield neighborhood.
The county Detention Center would stay where it is in Beaufort, for now.
Perhaps most obvious, the new headquarters would move county law enforcement’s hub across the Broad River, closer to Bluffton and Hilton Head — Beaufort County’s most populous municipalities. Tanner said the proposed location is much closer to the center of the county, which would allow easier access to law enforcement services for a larger number of citizens.
The new building would also allow police to merge its many locations into a smaller, more efficient set of facilities. Tanner said the Sheriff’s Office currently uses 12 properties scattered across the county to keep operations steady. Maintaining that spread is critical in a county spanning 923 square miles, he added.
If the Cooler tract is approved for purchase, Tanner hopes to condense operations into only three buildings: the new headquarters in Okatie, the current headquarters in Beaufort and the Hilton Head Island substation, the latter two currently acting as the department’s northern and southern division substations, respectively.
Tanner emphasized that the new location wouldn’t be an attempt to “move away” from communities in northern Beaufort County. Instead, a centralized headquarters operating in tandem with two substations would allow for equal and efficient policing of the entire county, he said.
“I don’t want people in northern Beaufort County, especially in St. Helena, Lady’s Island, Seabrook or Sheldon, to think that we’re moving away from them,” Tanner told the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette. “In reality, we’re just moving to the center of the county, and utilizing the substations ... keeps us in the communities throughout Beaufort County.”
The proposed Okatie facility also includes what Tanner calls a “consolidated communication center,” a dispatch office encompassing all emergency services for Beaufort, Jasper and Colleton counties. Under the combined system, calls would no longer need to be transferred between separate offices, allowing for quicker responses across all three counties’ law enforcement and first responder crews. The new dispatch center would be especially helpful in organizing hurricane evacuation across the greater coastal area, Tanner said.
While the current Sheriff’s Office headquarters in Beaufort would still be used as a northern-end substation, Tanner said a new headquarters would free up about 19,000 square feet of the 20,000 square-foot building on Duke Street, providing new space for other county government services.
Tanner hopes the eventual reorganization efforts could include an expansion of the Beaufort County Detention Center, a facility he says the community has “outgrown to some extent.” Since the construction of the prison in 1992, the county’s population has more than doubled, skyrocketing from about 90,000 to almost 200,000 residents today, according to U.S. Census data.
A historical deal in the making
With approval from the Beaufort County Council, the county’s purchase of the Cooler tract would bring an end to decades of deliberation and over a century of family ownership. Joe Cooler says the property has been in his family for more than 130 years.
Using the land as a site for law enforcement facilities is hardly a new idea. Tanner recalled a proposal he made to the County Council over 20 years ago, one of his many attempts to acquire the Cooler tract for the Sheriff’s Office. Until this year, the county made no advancements to purchase the land.
The decision is long overdue, Tanner said. Approval of the proposal would mark the first major expansion of Beaufort County office space since 1989, he said, when the county constructed its office complex in Beaufort.
Greenway added that the land acquisition would block any further attempts of development on the Cooler tract, which has been under “development pressure” for years.
The city of Hardeeville applied to annex the land in 2020, planning to use the property for residential and commercial developments, but was quickly met with backlash from Beaufort County residents. A petition against the annexation garnered nearly 500 signatures, citing density concerns and the health of the nearby Okatie River.
Although the Cooler tract is zoned as “rural” land, which typically bars construction of office space, Greenway said a provision of the Community Development Code allows the county to use any land for “public service use” as long as a public meeting is held allowing community members to discuss whether the usage is permissible.
Citizens will be able to review project plans for the Cooler tract and ask questions during the meeting, although a date has not yet been announced, according to a press release.
“In a nutshell, I think it’s a great opportunity for the county to create a campus of consolidated resources in the form of public safety,” Tanner said. “And I think it’s a great location for us to do it.”
This story was originally published February 19, 2023 at 6:30 AM.
