News

St. Helena road widening to end in June

April 22, 2008

St. Helena road widening to end in June
By BRANDON HONIG bhonig@beaufortgazette.com

After more than a year and a half of orange cones, traffic barriers and concrete dust on U.S. 21, the end of construction is in sight for residents and business owners on St. Helena Island.

Since September 2006, Columbia-based U.S. Group has been working on a 3.3-mile stretch of highway from the Chowan Creek bridge to Tomm Fripp Road. The estimated $12.9 million project includes creating a center turning lane, building about a mile of sidewalks, putting up two traffic signals, improving stormwater drainage and lining the road with bike paths.

The project originally was scheduled for completion June 30, but that date was pushed back to Aug. 25 after an April 2007 barge accident closed the J.E. McTeer Bridge and halted the widening project for several weeks. Monday, however, U.S. Group spokesman Earl Capps said he expects the project to be finished within budget in "early June."

"We're going to be done well ahead of hurricane season and be done in time for tourist season," he said. "We just basically have (to do) detail work -- a little paving, striping, stringing up some traffic signals and a lot of clean-up work."

David Eggen, manager of What's in Store, a shop in the Corners community in the heart of the construction zone, said he originally opposed the widening project because he thought it would increase vehicle speed, but now he is "tickled to death" by the improvements. He noted that the addition of traffic signals should actually slow traffic on U.S. 21.

"There are some really nice sidewalks out there now, so you're going to be able to ... park your car and go from store to store, and it will turn us into more of a small-town community again," he said. "The nicest thing I can see for store owners and people who live here is that if you want to slow down and turn, you have a center turn lane now, so you don't have to worry about that guy running into you from behind. ... Sea Island Parkway is too beautiful to go fast, and people run into each other because they're not looking."

Although he's thrilled with the results, Eggen said his business suffered during the construction.

"It has actually been a mess since they started," he said. "They've been doing a good job, but construction is construction, and it has cut our traffic down to zippo. People drive by and don't even think we're open."

The two-lane highway gets plenty of traffic, though, which necessitated the improvements, said Jim Hicks, chairman of the Beaufort County Planning Commission.

"There are 1 million people a year that go out to Hunting Island," he said. "That is a traffic load within itself, not to mention the (about) 13,000 people that live out there. So certainly it was a project that needed to be done."

Although residents of St. Helena Island supported the idea of widening U.S. 21, many of them were upset by the initial plans, which called for eliminating hundreds of trees, said Reed Armstrong of environmental watchdog Coastal Conservation League. Emancipation Oak, which is believed to have been a site of the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation, was among the trees slated to come down.

"The community sent a very strong response to the (S.C. Department of Transportation) -- they sent over 700 letters to the DOT, saying some road improvements and intersection improvements need to be done, but try to protect the trees along the way, the natural beauty of the area and the rural road that we want to have in the community," Armstrong said. "So the DOT hired an arborist, reduced the right-of-way impacts, and about 60 percent of the trees were saved that would have been otherwise removed."

Road realignments saved 148 trees, including Emancipation Oak, he said.

U.S. Group also handled the widening of Sams Point Road that was completed in 2003 after about 18 months of work. That $6.5 million project to expand the road from Rue du Bois Road to Brickyard Point and Holly Hall roads was completed within budget six weeks ahead of schedule.

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