There goes the neighborhood – Harvey’s leaving Bay Street, headed for the Island
BEAUFORT – If there’s any further evidence needed that times, they are a changing, the news last week that Harvey’s barber shop on Bay Street is moving after almost nine decades pretty much closes the case.
After cutting hair at 919 Bay Street for more than 50 years and downtown for the past 86 years, Ray and Johnny Harvey have decided to move their operation across the Beaufort River to Lady’s Island near Grayco.
No more gathering place for the informed genteel of old Beaufort, no more hiding place for the Water Festival higher echelon organizers looking for a spot to get out of the July heat, no more free drinks for those hoping to see some “old faces” during the annual Night on the Town celebration.
Ray Harvey, in his interview last week with The Island News, didn’t say what’s going to happen to their valuable piece of real estate. But the immediate guess for many was that it will be incorporated into 303 Associates plans for the area. The development firm already owns the old Bay Marketplace right next door and plans for a new 3-story apartment complex behind the barber shop just got final approval from the city last week.
That just leaves the First Citizens Bank, the last actual banking institution left in the downtown neighborhood, the rest already relocated across the same Beaufort River to Lady’s Island – standing in what could be a very nice, enlarged parking lot for residents of that new apartment complex.
Time will tell on that prediction.
Nope, as Ray Harvey said, the tourism traffic has increased downtown and it’s harder and harder for his regulars to find parking spaces.
“Sometimes you just have to do things,” was what he said.
He’s got that right.
Protest crowds for 211 Charles missing as much-debated apartments get approval
BEAUFORT – Final approval for the Cannon Building, aka 211 Charles Street, was granted last week by the city’s Historic Review Board.
It was almost anticlimactic, considering the discussions and media reporting that’s occurred over the past two years about 303 Associates’ latest downtown project.
Of course, the project is still being challenged in court by the Historic Beaufort Foundation which questioned the Zoning Board of Appeals decision to grant an exception for the former one-story A&P grocery building. No date has been set for that hearing but demolition of the current structure cannot be issued until building permits for the new project are given by the city staff.
The HRB approval came on a 3-2 vote with the two minority members admitting they just couldn’t approve the 3-story, 19 apartment project which some contend is going to change the face of the downtown forever.
One of the board members, interestingly enough, apologized to the developer for taking 22 months to approve his project. Another quickly stated she wasn’t going to apologize and in fact, wouldn’t have minded if the project had taken 44 months to review and fine-tune, if it had only ended up with an improved design.
Where board meetings dealing with this project in the past have drawn crowds, last week’s meeting drew fewer than a half-dozen interested folks and they, predominately, were involved with 303 Associates.
The rest of the audience was there for the six residential projects on the agenda for new construction or renovations within the historic district.
New life may be coming to Pine Court Apartments
BEAUFORT – Speaking of “new” development, the proposed Pine Court Apartments complex is back on track.
Initial plans for the five-building, 60-apartment complex received city approval starting in 2017 with the last construction permit issued in 2020. Pretty much since then, the first three buildings have sat empty and boarded up, waiting for something to happen.
Something DID happen last week with the city Design Review Board that gave the new owners out of Mt. Pleasant approval to move forward, recognizing they’re going to have to go through the whole process again since the previous approvals had expired.
Some neighbors of the property, who have been staring at first the land clearing, then preliminary construction for the past five years, told the board they still have concerns about all that building in their backyards.
Housing plans keep rolling in
BEAUFORT – Members of the Beaufort-Port Royal Municipal Planning Commission got a plateful to consider at their monthly meeting this week.
Pointe Grande apartments, with 336 units in 14 different buildings on 21 acres between Burton Hill Road and Salem Road, was the only project on the agenda for preliminary sketch approval. But the Winter Park, Fla. developers opted to pull their project for the time being after MPC members began asking questions about traffic impact on the already compromised Salem Road.
Residents of Battery Point and Salem Road are already reeling over the recent tree cutting to accommodate Garden Oaks apartments, with 228 units, and Pulte Home’s Salem Bay projects with a proposed 325 home sites.
The MPC also got a “brief” update from the town of Port Royal which included proposed projects totaling 2,028 homes and apartments.
And, of course, one new storage unit facility.
Lolita Huckaby Watson is a community volunteer and former reporter/editorial assistant/columnist with The Beaufort Gazette, The Savannah Morning News, Bluffton Today, Beaufort Today and The Robesonian (Lumberton, N.C.). She can be reached at bftbay@gmail.com.
