Beaufort is located on a large island, Port Royal Island, totally surrounded by deep and wide waterways. The marina was originally the site of the steamboat dock which was built off the marsh before the Civil War (1861-1865) in front of the Sea Island Hotel, itself built in the early 1800s,  which was replaced in 1960 by the Sea Island Inn. The steamboat ran between Beaufort and Savannah, also between Beaufort and Charleston, before vehicular bridges to our area. The first bridge crossed Whale Branch from the mainland to Port Royal Island before 1940. It made automobile access possible for the first time from Beaufort to Charleston and Savannah, but the trip was more than two hours. The steamboat continued to be viable almost until the second bridge about 1960 crossed Broad River to Bluffton and Savannah (and later to Hilton Head), which cut the driving time to those places from two hours to less than one hour (and for the first time made it possible to drive to Hilton Head).

It was only after World War II (ended 1945) that sufficient automobiles came to Beaufort to make downtown parking an issue. Amid much controversy the city in the 1950s allowed the marsh in front of Sea Island Hotel to be filled with material dredged from deepening the channel of Beaufort River to create the downtown waterfront parking lot, imaginatively called Freedom Mall with a public band shell to mask its true commercial purpose. John Griffin, a member of city council, was granted a lease by the city to build a filling station on the street side of the parking lot and a small dock for passing boats along the water side.

There were no zoning or historic preservation laws in the 1950s and early 1960s to protect the marsh and waterfront in this area although numerous verbal public promises were made by city officials. The community was lulled to believe that the filling station, parking lot, and little dock were for the community and would never be allowed by the city to get bigger. “Just let us do it this one time for downtown parking and for John Griffin”, they said.

Beaufort was a small town where people trusted each other. Nevertheless, the citizens had become concerned that these “improvements” had the potential to commercialize the downtown waterfront and destroy Beaufort’s unique waterfront character. Then Mayor Henry Chambers in the early 1970s spearheaded obtaining millions of dollars in Federal funds to create the downtown waterfront park. The ostensible motive was to extend the beauty of the waterfront from the residential bluff eastward behind the ugly waterfront commercial blocks to the bridge. Thus the economic potential of the downtown shops could be enhanced and the waterfront made more beautiful as a public park.

Until then those commercial blocks facing the waterfront were nothing more than broken-down barnacled docks attached to the backs of retail shops facing Bay Street. As part of the Federal project, improvements were proposed to the Freedom Mall parking lot and the Griffin dock. The Griffin dock lease was renewed by the city and the Griffin family was allowed to expand the size of the dock on the promise they would demolish the filling station and the dock would get no bigger than proposed.

Then it became apparent that Henry Chambers, the mayor, also proposed filling in the marsh to expand the parking lot westward in front of the residential houses. It was this proposal, together with the realization that the dock could be further expanded later on, that truly alarmed and aroused the citizens. This is the area into which Safe Harbor is now proposing to expand and extend its private, commercial dock, shown below.

During these years Historic Beaufort Foundation had been created by Riley Gettys, Helen Harvey, Wyatt Pringle, and others who were concerned that Beaufort was losing its historic residential architecture. Concerned citizens also founded Beaufort County Open Land Trust, the primary purpose being to protect the community open space along the waterfront and marsh from the bridge westward, shown above. Among other things city council was persuaded to zone the entire area as community open space including the parking lot, the dock, and the marsh.

Since the 1970s there have been several major attempts to circumvent the zoning and the covenants on this city property. One was attempted in the 1990s or early 2000s by the chamber of commerce to build an office building in the parking lot. That was quashed by outcry from thousands of citizens and visitors.

Another was an attempt around 2015 spearheaded by erstwhile Mayor Billy Keyserling to convert the parking lot into a multi-purpose agglomeration of apartment buildings, condominiums, restaurants, and retail establishments a la the downtown Greenville SC riverfront. When it became known that the project was going to be funded with money from Chinese investors, and the city was presented with a legal opinion that the irrevocable land covenants and the U.S. Landmark District designation prohibited such development activities, the project collapsed.

Then came the city’s back-door 40-year marina “lease” to Safe Harbor, with massive private-parking expansion possibilities to reduce and even eliminate the public parking. This was done without public scrutiny under the cloak of the Covid scare in 2019. This has now been followed by the recent revelation that the city failed to obey even the most elementary requirements of state law by failing to adopt an ordinance when it “approved” the lease in 2019.