By Bill Rauch
There’s been some weird stuff going on in Beaufort lately.
For example, there’s a building project called Pintail Pointe now under construction at 2233 Boundary Street.
What’s weird about that?
It’s being built right on the right-of-way of the so-called “parallel road” that was designated by the Beaufort City Council as a key part of the Boundary Street Master Plan.
So, there’s a building being built right where a road was supposed to go? How did that happen?
According to city council members who were there at the time, the permit was as much as issued before they were told anything about it. In fact, they say, when they were first told about the Pintail Pointe project, they were also told that it was so far along that if they tried to stop it, the city would be sued for millions.
That’s weird. When there are controversial permits under consideration, city managers always give council members – either one-by-one or in executive session – a heads-up. But this building permit wasn’t just controversial. It was clearly contrary to the expressed wishes of city council who had not only designated the right-of-way, but had also for years in planning sessions expressed their support for building the road.
That’s really weird.
Not since Jack Miller in 1988 has Beaufort had a city manager who took an official action that was contrary to the expressed will of council.
Who was this city manager?
Bill Prokop. But when I called the present city manager, Scott Marshall, and asked him to call Prokop – who left town a while ago – and ask him if he would talk to me about the substance of this column, he told me Prokop didn’t want to talk to me.
That’s weird. When he was city manager, Prokop always took my calls.
The problem here is that 2233 Boundary Street puts the city’s motorists into a real pickle. The Boundary Street Master Plan called for Boundary Street to be beautified, and it has been. The replacement of the unattractive and dangerous “suicide lane” with the planted median might slow traffic down some, the planners said, but that will be more than compensated for by the additional capacity provided by the parallel road.
According to the traffic engineers, the stretch of Boundary Street between the Chick-fil-A and City Hall is Boundary Street’s (and the city’s) most heavily traveled roadway, so this is important. This is the bottleneck.
There was once another new corridor planned that was going to relieve traffic on Boundary Street too. It was called the Northern Crossing. But Beaufort Mayor Billy Keyserling weirdly sat on his hands and watched the seed money for that project get spent in Bluffton.
Meanwhile, according to Beaufort County’s Building Codes Department, Beaufort County issued to Lady’s Island developers 3,640 residential building permits in the 14 months between October 25, 2021 and December 31, 2022.
According to the County’s Codes and Public Information people, that is the only data the county has on Lady’s Island residential building permits. It is plenty enough to be scary. That’s 260 new houses being permitted on Lady’s Island every month, or about 8.5 houses per day.
If a house equals two-and-a-half trips per day, as planners calculate, that’s about 21 new trips per day … every day, month after month. A couple of thousand trips here, a couple of thousand trips there, and pretty soon you’ve got a traffic jam.
Here’s another weird one.
The guy who was negotiating with Pintail Pointe’s developer, according to councilmembers, was the city’s Director of Community and Economic Development and its Zoning Administrator, David Prichard. Because the parallel road right-of-way had been designated in the Boundary Street Master Plan, Prichard could have threatened the developer with the city condemning the right of way. City councils try to stay away from eminent domain. However, Prichard could also have traded density for the right of way. But he offered neither the carrot nor the stick, councilmembers say they were told.
It’s weird the way the city rolled over so easily on the parallel road.
Or is it?
Perhaps it’s a coincidence that 303 Associates, the real estate development firm, has always opposed the Boundary Street Master Plan’s parallel road proposed alignment, and they have instead favored an alignment that goes along the east side of Albergotti Creek. This is because, Dick Stewart confirmed to me recently, the creek-side alignment would facilitate 303 Associates’ stated goal of opening up their Beaufort Plaza to the water.
Readers may remember that David Prichard’s wife, Vanessa, worked as a leasing agent for 303 Associates while her husband was the City’s Planner and Zoning Administrator. This perceived conflict of interest raised eyebrows. When they were asked, the South Carolina State Ethics Commission said David Prichard should no longer review 303 Associates’ projects.
In the wake of that ruling, City Manager Prokop did not stand up to a working group to examine Prichard’s pipeline. Had he, the working group might have found that Prichard was in the process of permitting a project that was contrary to the expressed wishes of council.
But, according to council members, Prokop made no effort to look back over Prichard’s work. That was weird.
And it is also weird that when I asked Scott Marshall to ask David Prichard – who has also left town, but for whom City Hall undoubtedly still has a contact number – if Prichard would like to be interviewed for this column, Marshall told me that in his opinion it would be “inappropriate” for City Hall to reach out to Prichard.
There is absolutely nothing inappropriate about such a request. In fact, such efforts are common courtesies to former officials.
Moreover, pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request to the city, I have now been waiting since Dec. 1, 2023 for several documents relating to other approvals given during Prokop’s last days on the job.
That, too, is unusual, weird, and it suggests stonewalling. Well-run governments get FOIA requests by reporters back in no more than 14 days, and it is customary for government officials to ask reporters for their deadlines and to try to get the reporters what they need by their deadlines which may be in just hours.
Mayor Phil Cromer has his work cut out for him. In his campaign, Cromer said transportation would be a focus area for him. There is no greater transportation challenge facing the city today than revisiting the parallel road, identifying a new right-of-way, and securing it.
But, having been a very good and professional city manager himself, Cromer’s greatest challenge will be to get the weird stuff cut out, and to bring back to Beaufort’s City Hall good government and professionalism.
Bill Rauch was the Mayor of Beaufort from 1999 to 2008 and has twice won awards from the S.C. Press Association for his Island News columns. He can be reached at The RauchReport@gmail.com.
