Safe Harbor’s ambitious Beaufort marina plan gets a trim to satisfy local residents

The people at Safe Harbor Marinas have their hands full lately with development plans for their various Beaufort County boat facilities.

While the industry giant in recreational boating is dealing with a tempest in Port Royal, they diverted attention to a meeting in Beaufort Thursday night where a dramatically downsized plan for that city’s prized waterfront was introduced.

In response to local critics, their new proposal has slashed by half the size of a marina expansion and further reduced how much the company plans to invest by 70%. The criticism of the previous, ambitious plan came from locals who saw the project as too big for the quaint marina at the city’s Waterfront Park.

This newly revealed marina plan is now roughly “an in-kind replacement” of the existing docks, said Peter Clark, Safe Harbor’s chief development officer.

Safe Harbor manages the public marina for the city including the dock space and marina store and restroom and laundry facilities adjacent to Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park . The company owns and manages 130 marinas from Annapolis to Key West and is a membership-driven model that includes thousands of boat owners who pay monthly fees for access to the facilities.

How did the need arise?

Beaufort’s docks have outlived their useful life, said Clark, and the central focus of the improvements is modernizing the marina and ensuring it is and prepared for future weather-related events, including possible storm surges.

But a previous proposal included a major expansion in the number of parking spots, or “slips,” from 80 to 146, and increasing the dock footage from 2880 to 4263 feet.

Some residents complained the sprawling docks would harm the views of the Beaufort River prompting the downsized plan that Safe Harbor unveiled Thursday.

Safe Harbor’s new design calls for keeping the same number of slips at 80. The marina will be slightly shifted farther from the shore, with its footprint maybe a little bigger because of an increase in the size of the docks, Clark said. But the docks will not be expanded to the east or west, he said, and will remain largely in the existing area of the current marina.

The estimated cost of the work has been reduced from $27 million to $8 million. It includes upgrades to the electrical system and making the marina more “structurally sound,” Safe Harbor says.

“The real message is we heard the collective voice of the city,” Clark said in explaining the smaller marina plan.

Besides replacing the docks, a new fuel system and ADA-accessible gangway are planned. The existing mooring field will remain the same.

The meeting drew a crowd of residents who looked over the latest drawings on easels and talked with a team of Safe Harbor officials.

The city also is conducting an online survey of residents who attended the meeting, City Manager Scott Marshall said.

The proposal will formally be introduced later at work session of the City Council, which has the final say over the plan.

“This is the start of gathering input from the public,” Marshall said.

Safe Harbor has gone back and forth with Beaufort and it neighbor to the south, Port Royal, for several months over its marina plans in those communities.

In Port Royal, where it is planning to build a large new marina and a housing development, the company has run into opposition over its building of large docks on the property for use at other properties. Residents have also taken issue with an initial plan to build rental townhouses on adjacent lands. In response to the complaints about the housing, Safe Harbor is now talking to different developers about different housing options.

Questions remain about path forward

Despite the smaller plan for the Beaufort marina, its future management remains somewhat murky as the city continues to grapple with how to handle a recently discovered problem with its lease with Safe Harbor. Marshall revealed last month that the City Council broke South Carolina law when it approved the lease in May 2019 without the required two public readings. To address that oversight, Marshall and the current City Council discussed an an ordinance Aug. 27 to retroactively ratify the original approval but delayed a vote on the first reading.

Some residents who are not pleased with the terms of the current lease with Safe Harbor are urging the city to use the mistake to re-renegotiate certain items that they the find unfavorable to the city, and City Council members have been receptive to that idea.

How the city should move forward with the lease on is on the agenda of a Tuesday City Council work session.

Options include renegotiating the current agreement or negotiating a new agreement, Marshall said. Until the City Council defines the path forward, “I don’t have definitives,” Marshall said.

“We do know Safe Harbor, with the current agreement, is committed to investing in improvements of the marina,” Marshall said.

Marshall is recommending that the city form a negotiating committee that includes residents.

Safe Harbor’s Clark said, “We’re happy to discuss the lease with the city.”

Survey

To complete a survey on the new marina design go to: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/YB6NKPP