City narrows 8 options to 3, looking at $100 million price tag for repairs
By Delayna Earley
The Island News
Faced with a choice of eight possible options, Beaufort City Council members met on Wednesday, Sept. 23, with the Waterfront Advisory committee to listen to and discuss a presentation for fixing the promenade of Waterfront Park along the Beaufort River.
The promenade was closed in July 2025 when it was deemed unsafe for people to continue walking on it, and it was blocked off with fencing.
Bill Barna with McSweeney Engineers, presented eight possible options to the meeting attendees of how to best proceed with moving forward in fixing the promenade.
Option 1 is to do nothing, which Barna said was not a good option.
Option 2 states that the city could have the existing platform repaired, but there is no guarantee of how long the repairs would hold and accessing some of the pilings is difficult and sometimes impossible.
Option 3 is simple — demolish the existing platform and build a new one that is the same shape and size but would be updated to fight against flooding.
Another option – No. 4 — is to replace the existing backfill that covers the relieving platform with a lighter material that would ease the pressure on the pilings, but this is not a permanent fix.
Option 5 suggests rebuilding the platform, but smaller.
In Option 6, the relieving platform, that is often mistaken for a seawall, would be replaced with an actual seawall and backfill.
Option 7 suggests replacing the platform with a floating structure.
Lastly, Option 8 involves building a hybrid structure that would have fixed floating docks that could be both environmentally friendly and aesthetically pleasing.
City officials narrowed the scope and focus to three of the proposals that had been presented – rebuilding a new relieving platform (Option 3), building a seawall instead of an overhang (Option 6) or building a hybrid structure that would involve floating docks (Option 8).
Understanding that this is going to be a very large financial undertaking for the city, there are other factors that come into play when making decisions about what option to choose, such as whether they want commercial vessels such as cruise ships and shrimp boats to dock at the promenade.
While the high estimated price tag – more than $100 million accroding to City Manager Scott Marshall — is frightening for many, the city will be applying for grants and has begun discussions with officials in Beaufort County about adding Waterfront Park repairs to a future County penny tax referendum.
The project will likely take up to five years to replace the current infrastructure or repair it so that it is deemed safe for pedestrian traffic again.
Delayna Earley, who joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
