Post and Courier41%
Ongoing construction in downtown Beaufort causes headaches, stress — when will it end? 27%
By Mindy Lucas41%
7/20/2026, 9:00:00 AM
Keywords: To Edit
BS Summary: This article contains 27 faulty reasoning types, including Optimism Bias, Negativity Bias, and Loss Aversion, with Anecdotal as the most egregious example at 12.4% saturation with 245 hits. Analysis detected 1,620 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,978 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 38.5% and a BS Rank of 27% (14,824 of 20,097 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 73.80% of the article peer group.
BEAUFORT — For several months, Kimberly McFann has had a front row seat to the large-scale, multi-million-dollar construction project taking place on King Street in downtown Beaufort.
From the window of her home office, which looks out over the narrow two-lane road in the heart of the historic district, she has watched work to improve stormwater drainage move along since beginning in earnest in May.
As the weeks wore on, McFann and her neighbors saw equipment and mounds of dirt and construction material pile up around them, sometimes cutting off access to yards or driveways.
This spread to entire blocks as work shut down the street in either direction.
For residents like McFann, living with all of the dirt, debris and noise is wearing thin, especially when residents don’t always know what is happening or how long it will last.
“The lack of information, to me, has made the process a little more frustrating,” she said.
The King Street initiative is one of two, large-scale road projects designed to improve the city’s stormwater drainage capabilities.
The work, managed by separate contractors and government agencies, is taking place within a roughly 10-12 block area in the downtown historic district.
The work and resulting road closures have frustrated residents, caused financial distress to area businesses and created traffic nightmares for anyone trying to drive or park downtown in the past six to eight months, residents and business owners said recently.
What’s more, Beaufort’s annual 10-day Water Festival just kicked off, leaving many wondering how the the city, now in the height of its summer tourism season, is planning to manage it all and find places for visitors to park.
“There are some frustrations across the board,” said Robb Wells, president and CEO of the Greater Beaufort-Port Royal Convention and Visitors Bureau.
The visitors’ bureau has been collecting data to track the impact of both the road closures and closing of the promenade at the Henry C.
Chambers Waterfront Park.
They have not only heard the frustration, they have seen it reflected in the data, he said.
“We have seen a slowing of the volume of people in and around downtown,” he said.
Many downtown residents and business owners say they understand the importance of the projects and their goal of mitigating the impacts from flooding.
But living with construction for months on end comes with real-life stressors, Wells and others said.
“The number one thing I’ve heard from stakeholders … is, ‘When is this thing going to end?’
” he said.
Beaufort Assistant City Manager Eric Claussen said he empathized with people impacted by the projects but the work will address longstanding problems and benefit the community.
“It is kind of cliched to say, ‘short-term pain, long-term relief,’ but that is the case here,” he said.
“We’re solving problems that have been there for a long time, but I do know how disruptive it can be to every day life.”
When it all started
One of the first projects to break ground began with a rocky start last fall after the intersection at Charles and Bay streets was closed mid-November, just before the start of the holiday season.
Work on the $11.9 million Charles/Craven Street Drainage Improvement Project, being managed by the S.C.
Office of Resilience, or SCOR, is designed to replace 125-year-old stormwater pipes and infrastructure.
The closing of the intersection, blamed on a last-minute construction schedule change, could not have come at a worse time for business owners who depend on traffic and holiday sales to remain profitable.
The intersection was eventually re-opened but ongoing work on the two projects continues to cause stress for business owners and residents alike.
Peggy Simmer, who lives at the corner of Charles and Port Republic streets, said she has had everything from raw sewage in her yard to a torn up sidewalk in front of her home.
Recently, a fuel tank was dropped off to sit just feet away from her residence.
Despite the Charles and Bay Street intersection re-opening in February, she and her husband still lost access to their driveway along Charles Street.
“They told us we’d lose access for two weeks,” she said.
“Here it is five months later.”
Simmer, who has mobility issues, has been parking at the business next door with permission.
Chain link fences have stretched for blocks down both sides of Charles Street, cutting off pedestrian and traffic access.
In January, the end of Port Republic Street directly in front of her house was also closed.
She and others along the street said they had no inkling it would be closed until it happened, despite dealing with a stream of contractors, subcontractors, state agencies, utilities and other entities involved with the project.
“There are lots of moving pieces and parts,” she said.
“But it’s incredible to me that we weren’t notified.”
Notifications and real time updates on the project’s website haven’t always kept up with the actual pace of the work, she said.
“The (notifications) have improved, but it’s not where it needs to be.”
Meantime, the couple has spent their own money on everything from plumbers to an arborist to help protect the massive grand live oak in front of their home, with roots stretching beneath Charles Street.
A community leader who has been involved in numerous projects, Simmer says the city has been “caught in the middle.”
She credits City Councilman Josh Scallate, City of Beaufort staff and neighborhood leaders who have tried to improve communication among all the parties involved.
“I’m fortunate that I know the people that I need to call when I need to call them, but it’s exhausting to have to do that all the time,” she said.
Across the street, Lorrie Anderson, who owns and operates NeverMore Books with her husband David, agreed that communication could be better.
Updates, whether they’re from the city or SCOR, only say “construction is ongoing,” she said.
“I can see that out my window every day, but when is it going to be over?”
she said.
While their store wasn’t initially impacted much by the Bay Street intersection closure, business has since dropped off, likely because of ongoing road closures and a lack of parking options.
Customers have told her they didn’t know where to park or how to reach her store.
“We want to stay in business, but we don’t have deep pockets,” she said.
“We don’t want to close just because something is screwing up traffic patterns downtown.”
Over on King Street, McFann said she endured frequent water shutoffs with little to no notice early on in the project.
She and her neighbors soon formed their own email chain in an attempt to keep each other updated.
Eventually, at least one member from the city’s public works department joined the list and has been providing periodic updates to the group, she said.
Still, the eyesore of a staging area and large equipment continues to be a daily presence in their lives.
McFann reached out to the city in March to see if it could be fenced or screened.
She was told since the project was temporary, it didn’t meet the requirements for screening.
“I don’t know what their definition of temporary is,” she said.
“It has been an eight-month project.”
Some, including Rob Wells from the visitors bureau, said Beaufort isn’t doing enough to explain what it going on in the downtown area to visitors and residents.
Increasingly, people are calling for more public communication or signs, especially in Waterfront Park where the promenade has been closed for over a year.
“Something like, “Pardon our Mess” or “300-plus years of history – it’s time for a facelift,” Wells said.
Any acknowledgement or explanation would be helpful, he said.
In the meantime, it remains unclear how parking or traffic will be managed during the Water Festival and other events to come.
The marina parking lot, which is typically closed for the festival and used as staging area, will continue to be closed this year, officials with the city confirmed.
Typically, residents and visitors fill up downtown neighborhoods where on-street parking is normally available.
This year, Wells said, things will be “a little different” with access shut down to some areas due to construction.
Water Festival planners and city officials advise people to leave earlier than normal for events or take advantage of the festival’s free shuttle leaving from the Beaufort County Government Center, at 100 Ribaut Road.
“Everyone knows downtown Beaufort has a parking issue,” Water Festival Commodore Dusty Vickers said recently.
“The best thing is to leave early and go have dinner at one of the restaurants.”
An end in sight?
Officials with both of the large-scale downtown projects have said work is expected to be completed this year due to the very real deadlines and stipulations attached by the federal government.
“We are under a tight timeline without flexibility for an extension,” said SCOR spokesperson Kevin O’Dell.
Since the Charles/Craven street project is being funded through the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, funds must be spent by Dec.
31, 2026.
That means construction must be finished by October 2026 so that SCOR can finish processing payments to vendors by the deadline, he explained.
In order to keep the project on track, the team now conducts two weekly check-in calls in addition to routine site visits and “on-the-fly” troubleshooting, he said.
The King Street project, which is also receiving a portion of its $9.5 million funding through ARPA, as well as other state money and grants, was on a different timeline due to the mix of funding, said Beaufort Assistant City Manager Eric Claussen.
That project, designed to deal with the flooding that occurred along King Street during hurricanes or heavy storms, is expected to wrap up either later this month or in early August, he said.
Claussen went on to say that it’s unfortunate that both projects occurred at the same time, also pointing to the ARPA stipulations imposed by the federal government.
“That’s one-time government funding so you want to take advantage of those opportunities to be able to give relief to residents in the community,” he said.
“Unfortunately, that meant that both of those projects had to happen simultaneously.”
There will be other projects as part of the city’s ongoing plan to improve drainage or mitigate against flooding, but residents aren’t likely to see such work on this scale happening in downtown Beaufort again anytime soon.
“With ARPA dollars sunsetting, you’re not going to see as many large projects happening concurrently as what residents are experiencing right now,” he said.
Doing their best in a difficult situation
Back on King Street, McFann said she and her neighbors were happy to hear that paving would begin soon – a sign that the project is finally entering its final phases of completion.
“It was very apparent this was a much bigger job than any of us had any idea it would be,” she said.
“But fortunately they are nearing the end.”
“Every single one of them has been really nice and as helpful as possible,” she said, adding that at times they even helped carry groceries to her door after access to her property was cut off.
“They are doing their best to make it as ‘un-terrible’ as possible,” she said.
She is also glad she and her neighbors will be getting a new street with less risk for serious flooding.
She recounts how water rose to the top of her porch step after Tropical Storm Irma blew through Beaufort in 2017, causing citywide flooding through much of the downtown area.
“It looks like it’s going to be an improvement,” she said.
“I’m looking forward to having a nice, clean, new street without all the company we’ve had for the last couple of months.”
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