City’s announcement comes only days before start of 2025 Beaufort Water Festival
By Mike McCombs
The Island News
The City of Beaufort is closing off a 40-foot-wide section of Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park, effective Monday, June 30, over public safety concerns.
The announcement was made just after 6 p.m., Sunday, June 29, less than two weeks before the start of the 2025 Beaufort Water Festival. The opening ceremonies are scheduled for Friday evening, July 11.
According to the City of Beaufort’s release, “Following a recent engineering assessment, an approximate 40-foot-wide section of Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park will be closed, … The closure primarily targets the water’s edge side of the park that rests on the park’s relieving platform.
“This decision was made following a through structural analysis of the park conducted by McSweeney Engineers and JMT. The analysis indicated structural concerns and identified significant deterioration and overstressed piles within the platform structure.”
City Manager Scott Marshall told The Island News on Sunday evening that one of the components in its engineering consulting contract is a conditions assessment. The engineers delivered that assessment at about 6 p.m., Friday in a meeting with City officials.
Echoing the City’s news release statement, Marshall said City staff has worked since Friday to put together the appropriate safety measures “consistent with recommendations from the engineering assessment.”
Marshall said this included meeting with Water Festival officials on Sunday morning to discuss the partial closure of the park’s impact on the event.
“We met with them this morning,” he said. “It was a productive meeting.”
The pavilion will remain available, while the day dock and playground will be inaccessible until further notice.
Marshall said the closure wasn’t necessarily inclusive of the entire playground, “but until we can properly fence it off,” it will be closed.
City staff will continue to work with engineers to determine how or if these portions of the park may be opened moving forward. Staff and the engineers are to meet again this week for more recommendations. Marshall couldn’t be specific, but he said there was a chance some details of the closure could change.
“We hope to clarify some items,” he said.
One thing is clear – the park won’t fully reopen for quite some time. Marshall admitted that any repairs to or replacement of the park’s platform structure could and likely will be “years away.”
While it’s clear some action has to be taken, the City and the engineers haven’t reached the point in the process where it’s clear what that will be yet. And even then, it’s unknown how much it will cost or exactly how the City will go about paying that price.
But despite knowing the park would likely be closed for some time when those questions are answered, said Marshall, the City did not anticipate a closure of any part of the Waterfront Park at this time.
“I can only say based on the information we’ve been given before we got this report, I can tell you we did not anticipate having to close the park before repairs or total replacement,” Marshall said. “We were left with very little choice after the analysis. We’ve got to err on the side of safety.”
How we got here
Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park opened in 1979, changing the face of downtown Beaufort.
The relieving platform is the 46-year-old Waterfront Park’s supporting structure. The seawall and promenade essentially rest – or floats — on roughly 570 pilings.
In June of 2024, a team of divers with McSweeney Engineers inspected the seawall and relieving platform as part of its regular five-year inspection. The ensuing report revealed “severe deterioration” — a handful of pilings were damaged beyond repair, and nearly 50 more showed signs of moderate to severe deterioration.
After previous inspections, some pilings had been reinforced with “jackets,” to extend their life expectancy. According to the report, those prior repairs were still intact.
After the report, the City stopped visits by large cruise ships and began the processes of hiring engineering consultants and identifying sources of funding for what is certain to be a long, multi-million-dollar process, whether it be to repair the structure or rebuild it altogether.
City Council members were told at a meeting that a “catastrophic” collapse was unlikely, that these type of structures commonly fail slowly without a collapse.
Earlier this year, the City formed a Waterfront Advisory Committee (WAC) to help “shape both short- and long-term policy decisions that the City Council must make,” according to Marshall in a news release at the time. “These decisions will directly impact the future vitality and sustainability of one of our region’s most cherished public waterfront recreational assets.”
After the WAC’s second meeting June 23, Marshall told the committee their could be additional information from engineering surveys coming forth before its next scheduled meeting in September and that the group may have to meet again sooner than planned.
Will the Water Festival go on?
The 12th DragonBoat Beaufort Race Day was held Saturday in the park and will likely be the last event on the promenade for some time.
Given the short amount of time between when the City received the conditions assessment and the start of the event, Marshall said he made the call to allow the event to go forward.
“We were less than 12 hour from the event,” Marshall said. “I felt like that was the right call at the time.”
As for the Beaufort Water Festival, the Waterfront Park is the centerpiece of most of the main events.
Commodore Todd Stowe was not available for comment Sunday evening, but Program Coordinator Dusty Vickers said there wasn’t really much Festival officials could say right now.
The Beaufort Water Festival issued a statement on its Facebook page later Sunday evening.
“All festival events are continuing as scheduled at this time,” the statement reads. “We remain in close coordination with the City of Beaufort and are committed to prioritizing the safety of our attendees, staff, and volunteers.”
Signage and barriers were to be installed early Monday morning to clearly mark the areas of the park that are off limits to the public. According to the City’s release, areas marked as “no trespassing” will be strictly enforced.
Assistant Editor Delayna Earley contributed to this report.
Mike McCombs is the Editor of The Island News and can be reached at TheIslandNews@gmail.com.
