Charleston-area beaches face SC-wide anger for attempts to restrict access to visitors
Three barrier islands near Charleston have spent the last several months slowly choking off public access to their beaches, creating an uproar around the state over who deserves the right to use South Carolina beaches: islanders or outsiders.
South Carolina closed public access to its beaches, all of which the state owns, at the start of the pandemic in an attempt to slow the spread of COVID-19. But after Gov. Henry McMaster reopened the beaches in late April, Isle of Palms, Sullivan’s Island and Folly Beach took a more gradual approach, issuing their own emergency orders to restrict public beach access and reduce the number of non-residents coming in.
After physical checkpoints onto the islands were removed, Isle of Palms and Folly Beach both restricted parking capacity, while Sullivan’s Island banned beach chairs and coolers. The island governments have since removed those orders.
Last week, however, Isle of Palms leaders voted to eliminate all public parking on the landward side of Palm Boulevard, a state-owned road that runs along the island’s beaches.
The vote passed 7-1 last Tuesday night, with many City Council members saying that people illegally crossing the street all along the boulevard created a public safety issue.
“If you have people crossing the street at potentially 150 different places where they’ve parked because many people don’t pay attention to the crosswalks … I think it creates a cascade of safety issues that even though maybe no one has been hurt yet, we don’t want to find ourselves in that position,” council member Susan Hill Smith said.
Charleston-area residents and other South Carolinians have been challenging arguments like Smith’s for months, however. Michael Barnett, who created a petition attacking the Isle of Palms’ parking restrictions in August, said he felt the council manufactured arguments about public safety arguments simply to cut off beach access to outsiders. His petition, which calls on Charleston County Council to stop giving money to the three beach towns until they cease restricting beach access, now has more than 9,000 signatures.
“You can tell what their agenda is, and the fact that they said, ‘Well, we’d still love to have golf carts park on the land side of Palm Boulevard,’ which essentially is residential only because only residents use golf carts,” Barnett said. “See, this isn’t really about safety. This is about figuring out and manipulating the system and figuring out a way to eliminate parking on a state road — and sneaking it in as a safety issue.”
South Carolina’s Department of Transportation quickly rebuked the council in a letter sent to them last Wednesday morning. Department Secretary Christy Hall said the council’s argument about public safety was not supported by any evidence. She reiterated that only SCDOT had the power to eliminate parking in a state right of way, invalidating the council’s vote.
“Over the past several months, during the public health emergency, the South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT) has afforded the City of Isle of Palms wide discretion regarding the regulation of parking along state-owned highways,” Hall wrote. “However, the most recent discussion by the City to permanently eliminate parking along the state-owned highway(s) is a different matter. I am of the opinion that the public has the right to park along the state-owned right of way, unless SCDOT identifies a safety related issue.”
Isle of Palms’ chief of police also softened the public safety argument, saying that while jaywalkers do create a hazard, it had not been a major problem his department had noticed.
Councilman Ryan Buckhannon, who chairs the city’s public safety committee, was not at the Tuesday meeting.
“From the law enforcement side, I think anytime we can say that people were not crossing the road, it would obviously be safer,” police chief Kevin Cornett said during the council meeting. “However, the statistics would show from us that we have not had incidents involving any unsafe practices. Basically, there has not been a collision that I could find that has resulted from somebody crossing the road inappropriately or vehicles driving inappropriately.”
The only “no” vote came from council member John Moye, who questioned the council’s recent decisions to place greater and greater restrictions on parking.
“I’d like to at least entertain the discussion as to whether we should continue making incremental changes and evaluating after we make such changes,” Moye said. “We just voted on parking last month.”
He also noted that the elimination of parking on the landward side of Palm Boulevard would affect residents as well as tourists. “Folks who have been kind of considering that part of their parking for years will no longer be able to use that,” he said.
Dozens of people emailed the council ahead of the meeting, attacking their upcoming vote, which had long been expected to pass because of little to no opposition outside of Moye.
“Greatly amused to hear all but one of you shot yourself in the foot charging for parking,” Charleston resident Christopher H. Smith said in an email to the council prior to the meeting last Tuesday. “Neither my family nor myself will go to the beach, shop or eat in an IOP restaurant until you short sighted fools come to your senses. Want to speculate on how big the drop in revenue will be? My guess is near 50%.”
Growing backlash
After Isle of Palms City Council restricted non-resident public parking this summer, the backlash from nearby communities was swift.
A Facebook group called Charleston Area Public Beach Access and Parking Group formed in mid-July, and grew to nearly 10,000 members.
The group’s mission of advocating for accessible beaches has evolved into the Charleston Beach Foundation.
The group filed a lawsuit in August against Isle of Palms after the barrier island sought to temporarily block non-residents from using more than 750 parking spots near the beach, leaving just 10 free spaces.
Hundreds of the group’s members signed onto the case, seeking to stop Isle of Palms from moving forward with its parking restrictions. Isle of Palms officials said the reduction was intended to help reduce the spread of COVID-19.
A judge refused to block the island’s actions, saying the rules were an inconvenience rather than an irreparable harm.
Despite the loss, the foundation’s director, Lee Rowland, said the organization is determined to make sure future generations have free and open access to South Carolina’s public beaches.
“This foundation, in my opinion, is a legacy that will last longer than anybody in office right now,” Rowland said.
Rowland moved to the Lowcountry 20 years ago, living first on Goat Island, a small island accessible only by boat, and later on Isle of Palms. She now lives in Mount Pleasant, just minutes away from the Isle of Palms Connector.
As the mother of a 9-year-old daughter, Rowland said the beaches have been a place where they can feel grounded, especially when the pandemic hit and took away almost every normal aspect of life.
“We are not fighting just to get back what we lost this year, and we’re not fighting even just to reverse some of the old decisions. This is going to be an ongoing challenge that is going to continue to come up,” Rowland said of the debate surrounding public beach access and parking.
A broader Issue
Frustration over beach access restrictions is not exclusive to Isle of Palms. Charleston-area residents and other South Carolinians expressed irritation at Folly Beach’s and Sullivan’s Island’s attempts to limit beach access and use as well.
For Michael Barnett, who has gone to all three islands for years, recent efforts to limit beach access are classist, seeking to take away a privilege all South Carolinians help pay for with taxes.
Barnett lives in Mount Pleasant, within walking distance of Sullivan’s Island, so beach access isn’t much of a problem for him. But he said he wants to do what he can to preserve access for everyone else, too, especially people who might not be able to afford to drive far or spend a lot of money on a vacation.
The islands “shouldn’t be getting away with this,” Barnett said. “There’s a lot of people out there who are from Goose Creek, Summerville, Moncks Corner, the more inland cities. … These families enjoy using these beaches, and they’re from less affluent areas and they were never going to speak up for themselves.”
He specifically took issue with a comment made by Isle of Palms Mayor Jimmy Carroll, who during last week’s council meeting, directly stated that residents of Summerville, a town 36 miles away, should consider vacationing elsewhere.
“That was an abhorrent comment to make — elitist, arrogant snobbery,” Barnett said.
A week after S.C. DOT denied the city council’s plan to permanently eliminate parking spaces on the land-side of Palm Boulevard, Caroll insisted in an interview with The State that every decision has been made with public safety in mind.
Carroll, who said he was surprised by the letter from S.C. DOT, said transportation officials should come and see the traffic congestion for themselves during the busy spring and summer seasons. Then, he said, they will see how dangerous Palm Boulevard has become for motorists and pedestrians alike.
“There has been unbridled growth across the tri-counties,” Carroll said, referring to Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester counties. “People need to start thinking about the future because there’s going to be a lot more growth that’s coming and a lot more cars.”
Nearby Mount Pleasant has seen a population boom. Earlier this year, the U.S. Census Bureau listed Mount Pleasant as the 12th fastest-growing large city in the United States.
On Isle of Palms specifically, Carroll can see the impacts of this nearby growth in the steady uptick each year for police and first-responder calls, along with trash pick-ups.
“We had the biggest month ever in trash dumps this past July. That costs us money to take care of all that stuff. Most day visitors don’t pay a penny out here. Paid parking is something that is inevitable and it is coming,” Carroll said.
While the Charleston Beach Foundation may be going after the Isle of Palms as its most urgent issue, Folly Beach and Sullivan’s Island are still top of mind.
On Friday, the foundation sent a letter to Folly Beach and Sullivan’s Island. The two-page letter summarized the actions that have taken place after Isle of Palms sought to limit public access to its beaches during the pandemic.
“Our group prefers to work with you in a collaborative manner to arrive at sensible modifications designed to minimize COVID-19 transmission without sacrificing the citizens’ right to public access to public property,” the letter stated. “We hope you will give us an opportunity to work with you in this respect instead of adopting the Isle of Palms’ model of open contempt for beach visitors.”
This story was originally published September 29, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Charleston-area beaches face SC-wide anger for attempts to restrict access to visitors."
