Auto MechanicNear Folly Beach, SC

FOLLY BEACH, S.C. (WCBD) – The Arctic Avenue Plan officially started being discussed in 2021, and on Thursday, there will be a public meeting where community members can give their input about the changes they’d like to see made to Arctic Avenue.

The City of Folly Beach is discussing plans to make several improvements to one of the city’s most active two-lane roads.

“What our proposal is saying, ‘Hey, lets make this officially a one-lane, one-way street with parking on one side and a pedestrian path on the other,’” Folly Beach Mayor Tim Goodwin said. “So people can have a place to walk, place to park and you still have a place wide enough to safely go down the street in your vehicle.”

Thursday’s public input meeting will be the second after the first one was held in June earlier this year.

Goodwin says consultants who were hired to carry out this project will show neighbors the two alternatives they’ve come up with for the city’s commercial and residential districts.

“They’ll show them all the drawings and proposed parking areas and non-parking areas and walking paths and all that,” he said. “Then, they’ll get feedback from the citizens like they did the first time.”

All that feedback will be considered before a formal proposal is presented to city administrators and city council.

“Then what we have to do is we have to take that and turn it into the Department of Transportation (DOT) for their approval,” Goodwin said. :It could take two years to be approved, just depends on how fast DOT wants to work.”

Katie Zimmerman with Charleston Moves says the development process leading up to this point has been phenomenal and she’s optimistic because the time and attention to detail the design team has put in.

“I mean a lot of the time,” Zimmerman said, “with a lot of these projects, there are no walking audits that are done, and they’ve done two. So, they’re really taking their time and collecting as much data and going out and seeing the user experience, which is really admirable.”

Goodwin says no matter which alternative is chosen, or how long it takes to implement the changes, he just wants to make sure it’s what’s best for everyone.

“For something like this that’s going to be around for a long time hopefully,” he said, “it takes a while to get it right because you definitely want to get it right the first time.”

The public input meeting will start at 5:00 p.m. Thursday at Folly Beach City Hall.

FOLLY BEACH – Hurricane Hugo brought one of the best-known art canvases to Folly Road — the Folly Boat. People would paint their anniversaries, create artwork and write other memories on the boat until it washed away during Hurricane Irma. Around the same time, the concrete path at the Lighthouse Inlet Heritage Preserve started to gain popularity in a much larger canvas.

(Clicking on any video link constitutes consent to collection and sharing of your personal video viewing data with various Post and Courier partners.)

Charleston County Parks bought the Lighthouse Inlet Heritage Preserve from the U.S. Coast Guard in 1989, the same year as Hugo. In 2009, the property was honored as a preserve. Remnants of a concrete road and a few structures were left from the former Loran station that leads to a boneyard beach and views of Morris Island Lighthouse.

The site was occupied by Union troops during the Civil War, including those who fought at the Battle of Fort Wagner on July 18, 1863. The unsuccessful assault by the 54th Massachusetts regiment of African American soldiers was made famous in the movie “Glory,” which also came out in 1989. Though “Glory” wasn’t filmed here, the hit Netflix show “Outer Banks” filmed at this 80-acre preserve.

The Folly Boat was returned years after its disappearance (though in a different spot), but the Lighthouse Inlet became a place to paint and express creativity. The county park attempted to clean up the path various times, but immediately after it was covered again in paint.

Parks spokeswoman Sarah Reynolds said they just don’t have the resources to be out there and enforce the graffiti ban. They do, however, respond and paint over explicit or negative messages.

Graffitiing the path remains illegal, but artists still go out and paint it constantly. The Folly community leans both ways on the matter. Some are in favor of leaving the graffiti path as is and others think it takes away from the natural beauty.

Local mural artist Riivo Kruuk said, “It’s an integral part of the art world in Charleston.” Kruuk painted the mural on Mount Pleasant’s hotdog restaurant Skoogies after asking the owner if he could do it for free. He moved here in 2020 from South Florida and noticed a difference in street art from Charleston and there. When he came across the Lighthouse Inlet, he said, there was hope.

Kruuk said he doesn’t like it when people trash the preserve or paint on trees. He thinks it should be like the graffiti wall in Goose Creek, which allows artists to express themselves for their community.

FOLLY BEACH, S.C. (WCIV) — The debate on short-term rentals is once again heating up on Folly Beach. Residents say proposed amendments approved earlier this year could add dozens more rentals to the area.

Folly Beach residents voted to cap short-term rentals to 800 in February. It was nearly a year-and-a-half-long debate that seemingly came to a close.

But now, residents are worried new amendments to the ordinance proposed by city councilmembers could increase the number of short-term rentals beyond the cap approved earlier this year.

READ MORE: South Carolina Attorney General to host bond reform discussion in Charleston

The first amendment would allow short-term rental owners who were not renewed by the deadline this year, but paid taxes on the property previously, to have a chance to apply for license renewal.

The second amendment says if an investor got a short-term rental license approved for a construction project before the ordinance was passed on February 7th and hasn't received their certificate of occupancy, they could get approval for a license after the deadline as well.

Right now, there are dozens of rentals on the waitlist. Folly Beach residents say this would only create more of a backlog and could open the door for many more short-term rentals on the island.

“It just means if you pay your taxes, you could then get a license. It could be hundreds more, and basically take us to the same position we were before the cap, where there was no limit on short-term rentals," said Ann Peets, president of the Folly Beach Residents Association. "It takes it back to them being really a dominant force on the island over the residents."

WCIV

Councilmembers DJ Rich, Billy Grooms and Adam Barker proposed these amendments. News 4 reached out to each one of them for comment but did not receive a response.

Peets and other residents plan to propose some alternatives at the city council meeting on Tuesday, which they believe could help clear the backlog.

Peets says since there are already tons of homes on the waitlist, promoting alternatives like 72-day rentals or long-term rentals on the island could cut down on the number of investors aiming to get STR licenses.

TRENDING: Music Man's BBQ owner Gene Cribb passes away

But more importantly, she says the city could avoid these headaches by just having more transparency of its enforcement. Peets claims it would shorten the waitlist and also improve compliance throughout the island.

“We want to see them move to the next phase where that enforcement really is starting to happen, where they are going in and basically issuing violations when they happen, not just nice warnings that don't result in anything and that really rewards the people that do a nice job in terms of property management," Peets said. "They can have a great investment rental that is a good community player and really moves it, moves them up in the list and makes them thought of most positively on the island."

Folly Beach mayor Tim Goodwin says to stay in good standing and adhere to the enforcement of the ordinance, owners must keep business and rental licenses up to date, know who they rent to, and avoid violating the city’s strike system.

The amendments will have their first reading at the Folly Beach city council meeting Tuesday night at 7 o'clock.

The debate over short-term rentals is taking shape across the country. Locally, Sullivan’s island and James Island have both discussed short-term rental bans at recent council meetings.

Nationally, Dallas became the first city to ban short-term rentals last week.

Folly Beach’s name may never seem more fitting than when one learns about a fresh legal battle playing out there — a battle that ultimately will decide if taxpayer-funded beach renourishment opens the door for public land to be converted back into private property whose owners may then build new homes on lots previously under water. The city and its allies should ensure this doesn’t happen.

Unfortunately, that will be a challenge because of Folly’s dynamic nature and unique history. More than a half century ago, Folly Beach had a road, Benke Drive, that ran between East Ashley and the ocean’s edge on the island’s easternmost end; this part of the beach was growing, and lots on both sides of Benke were platted and sold off. By the early 1980s, however, the sands shifted, and Benke was lost to erosion, and its lots were under water. A few years later, however, a sandbar migrated across Lighthouse Inlet and attached itself to the northern end of Folly, and some lots along Benke were high ground again. And the state baseline was drawn through the yet-undeveloped Benke Drive lots, allowing development on 28 of them.

Fourteen of these lots were built upon, and it’s no surprise that these homes — built between East Ashley and the beach — are among Folly’s most threatened, and the most likely to end up costing taxpayers once they fall into the ocean. The fate of the 14 remaining, undeveloped “super-beachfront” lots is now the subject of a fresh legal battle, as some owners have sought to capitalize on their freshly elevated status following the island’s 2018 beach renourishment.

To block them, the city of Folly Beach, the Coastal Conservation League, the nonprofit Save Folly Beach and several local homeowners filed a 2019 lawsuit challenging the ownership of this taxpayer-created land. Although a local judge ruled they did not have standing to bring such a challenge, the South Carolina Court of Appeals reversed that decision and ordered the case to proceed at the trial court level. That’s an auspicious step but likely only one of many to come before this matter is settled for good.

At the very least, we hope our courts continue to recognize that these groups should have standing to question this critical environmental decision. And it is critical, with implications far beyond the 14 lots on Folly Beach. As Amy Armstrong, executive director of the S.C. Environmental Law Project that represented the plaintiffs, explains: “As we have sea level rise and we have lands being converted to public trust land as they’re eroding away and going below the water, can you convert public land, with public money, into private property? It’s kind of crazy when you think about it in those terms.”

While this issue emerged first on Folly, the precedent set here will reverberate elsewhere as more coastal communities renourish their beaches more often due to sea level rise and stronger, more frequent storms. Our state’s Public Trust Doctrine says the state owns all land below the mean high water mark and holds this land in trust. A previous Supreme Court ruling has noted beachfront property owners take their title “at risk of loss to the State by natural forces,” but the courts haven’t settled what should happen when unnatural, sudden forces (like renourishment) shift our shoreline.

Locals realize Folly Beach actually received its current name (it originally was “Coffin Island”) from an old English word meaning “dense foliage,” not because of any association with a lack of good sense, prudence or foresight. But if we allow new homes to be built on its rapidly shifting sands right next to the water’s edge, the latter definition would fit all too well.

Click here for more opinion content from The Post and Courier.

Get a weekly recap of South Carolina opinion and analysis from The Post and Courier in your inbox on Monday evenings.

FOLLY BEACH, S.C. (WCBD) – Warm weather and plenty of sunshine was a welcoming sign to the crowds of people enjoying the Labor Day on Folly Beach. But the heavy foot traffic and recent high tides come only days after Folly Beach saw significant dune erosion after Tropical Storm Idalia.

A coastal consultant with the city of Folly Beach told News 2 that the dune erosion they faced from Idalia was worse than Hurricane Matthew back in 2016 and could have lasting impacts through the winter.

On Monday beach officials set up cones to create a path for rescue vehicles and to prevent people from setting up too close to the dunes.

The assistant manager at Folly Beach County Park, Sam Colgate, said in the past three days, even with minimal space, they’ve seen thousands of people at the county park alone.

“From Friday to today we’ve had about 5,000 people here at Folly Beach County Park, it’s been pretty busy, especially for after a storm,” she said. “This week especially we’ve seen a lot of people setting up camp right against the dunes, I’d say for the most part people are very respectful,” said Colgate.

Dune protection continues to be a priority for Folly Beach after Tropical Storm Idalia removed about 15 feet of dunes in some locations that separate the beach from homes and the island itself. And according to coastal consultant Nicole Elko, it’s leaving the city in a vulnerable spot for the rest of the hurricane season.

“We basically have no protection if another storm were to come by this season,” said Elko.

Folly Beach has plans to renourish its dunes but that will happen after hurricane season.

“Folly Beach hasn’t been renourished since 2018, so this winter the contract will be awarded for the next renourishment, so that is certainly coming just in time, not to get us through this hurricane season but to get us through the next one,” said Elko.

Beach officials want to remind folks to stay off the dunes, especially after the recent erosion

“We definitely want folks to be respectful and not go up in the dunes, they are a natural barrier, kind of help us for lots of reasons out here,” said Colgate.