By Tony Kukulich
Beaufort County officials stole the thunder from residents gathered at a Public Facilities Committee meeting ostensibly to protest a proposed traffic reduction plan that threatened Crystal Lake Park on Lady’s Island.
The committee, chaired by District 11 Councilmember Stu Rodman, instead approved a plan that appeared to have come out of the blue that left the park unscathed. The plan, referred to as Option 0, will result, if approved by county council, in the widening of the Sea Island Parkway to four lanes from the Woods Memorial Bridge to Walmart.
The county developed five options—referred to as Options 1 through 5— intended to improve traffic flow in the area of Beaufort High School as part of the Lady’s Island Traffic Improvement initiative.
After an initial review earlier this year, two plans were dropped.
Discussion of the remaining options was planned for the Aug. 22 committee meeting. Consensus among the council and staff was that aspects of each plan were problematic, not the least of which was the intent to send school traffic through Crystal Lake park as envisioned in Options 4 and 5.
“Every single option impacts somebody or some stakeholder,” Assistant County Administrator Jared Fralix said at the committee meeting. “There’s really not a great option in any scenario.”
It was during conversations with Beaufort County School District officials that talk turned to Option 0. School district officials expressed their preference for it because it had the least impact on its school campus, explained Candace Bruder, director of communications for the district.
Expansion of the Sea Island Parkway had been proposed at least as far back as 2018, but was dropped from the five options due to an insurmountable problem. The Woods Memorial Bridge will remain a two-lane bridge. However, public opposition to the other options was gaining momentum.
“Friends of Crystal Lake were not thrilled with Options 4 and 5, and they gave a lot of feedback to the council and to the staff,” Ophardt said. “That’s how Option 0 came on the table.”
District 4 Councilmember Alice Howard, who is not a member of the committee but was participating in the meeting, embraced Option 0 after noting that a number of constituents had reached out to her with concerns about the county’s plans.
“I really like this idea,” Howard said. “I don’t know about other council members, but my phone blew up this weekend when people saw this agenda, and rightly so.”
Speaking to the committee, County Administrator Eric Greenway endorsed Option 0 as the best way forward, and Rodman agreed, though he suggested the committee delay a vote on the matter to allow the public more time to consider the proposal.
“What I’m hearing is people like what is being proposed as Option 0,” Rodman said. “That may take away what a lot of you are here for and concerned about. There might be another group of people who might be opposed to Option 0 that are not here.”
Fralix concurred with Rodman and requested the committee provide direction that the staff return to the committee in September with a more fully developed proposal. Rodman appeared prepared to go that route until Greenway interjected and admonished the committee to take action.
“Moving the traffic issue to a four-lane corridor is a no-brainer,” Greenway said. “There’s no modeling that you have to do with that. If the engineers, Jennifer Bragg and Jared Fralix, said that if we made this four-lane section, it makes the Beaufort High access issue go away, then I’m willing to take that to the bank because I have confidence in their abilities.
“We can have another meeting and tell you all that again, and give you the numbers if you want us to do it. But at some point someone’s going to have to make a motion so that we can move this issue forward and so that we move the other projects forward that are on this same agenda.”
District 2 Councilmember Paul Sommerville sided with Greenway and made a motion to approve Option 0. It was seconded by Howard, leading to a unanimous approval by the council, who had only moments earlier argued that more time was needed for public review of the plan. Option 0 was approved by the committee without a cost estimate, an estimate of the number of businesses or residences that will be impacted by widening of the roadway or even a sketch of the intended project.
“We don’t have the total cost value yet, but it will be a significant cost,” Fralix said.
Acceptance of the plan to expand the Sea Island Parkway was not universal. Chuck Newton of the Sea Island Coalition said the plan fails to materially improve traffic on Lady’s Island.
“Option 0 takes us right back to the beginning,” Newton said. “We again refuse to make a decision and it takes us right back to where we were in 2017. … It really accomplishes very, very little in terms of getting traffic off the Sea Island Parkway.”
The Beaufort High School Access Realignment project is one of nine projects nestled under a $30 million initiative to improve traffic on Lady’s Island. Funding for the Lady’s Island Corridor Traffic Improvement initiative came from a 1% sales tax that was approved by county voters in 2018. The measure was used to raise $120 million dollars for traffic improvement projects across the county. It remained in effect until late 2021 when the target amount of tax revenue was collected.
In addition to the Lady’s Island projects, traffic improvements projects along the U.S. 278 corridor to Hilton Head Island received $80 million. The remaining $10 million was earmarked for sidewalks and pathway improvements.
Tony Kukulich is a recent transplant to the Lowcountry. A native of Wilmington, Del., he comes to The Island News from the San Francisco Bay Area where he spent seven years as a reporter and photographer for several publications. He can be reached at tony.theislandnews@gmail.com.
