In the midst of hectic summer season, local businesses are feeling the impact of ongoing sidewalks project
Going to a spa is supposed to be relaxing, a getaway with tinkling music, lavender aromas, and calming balms. Tucked away in the back of the first block of E. Ashley Avenue, Folly Beach MediSpa is supposed to be an oasis where clients can leave their car and troubles out on the street. Especially at the height of the tourist season.
Unfortunately, the parking spaces have been shoveled away, and trucks, articulated loaders, Bobcat earthmovers, and helmeted roadworkers are outside, filling the air with dust and noise.
For weeks, road work contractors have been hammering away at building a stretch of sidewalk at the behest of the city that won’t be ready for a while.
Jason Coates has been doling out massages at the spa for the past few years, and because of Covid, says this year was the first busy one. Until, that is, earlier last month when the work crews and their vehicles showed up.
Now, with the roadway often closed, vital walking and driving traffic has been choked off, cutting into the spa’s business. And when clients do book an appointment for one of the varieties of services Coates and two others offer, they must find free parking elsewhere and walk through the dust and rubble.
“The first week, I definitely noticed a difference,” says Coates who had five less client appointments than the week before. “And then little by little, more ‘dead’ days seemed to stack up,” lining up with the start of work outside.
What clients that did make it in, he says exit in a blissed-out daze “into a war zone.”
Coates says he heard the work out front will continue until mid-August. Coates says he understands the work needs doing, but laments the timing, and notices that the work didn’t start in-season in front of other local businesses.
Next door at Folly Beach Family Dental, office manager Tanya Shadburn, tells similar tales of patients struggling to get a parking spot, and then exiting into a dusty construction site. But, she says a dentist office being a destination and not a seasonal business dependent on foot traffic has softened the blow.
According to a letter from the contractor sent to city director of public works Eric Lutz, the company had been delayed over 100 days due to circumstances beyond its control. Lutz says this is the first phase of constructing the multi-use path from 2nd West to 2nd East along Ashley Avenue, and that the previous winter and spring, a different company constructed a similar path on West 2nd from W. Indian to W. Arctic avenues.
There are no other sections that have been awarded construction contracts at this time from the city, according to Lutz, adding that similar issues have visited other projects in the past year.
Lutz says that the unfortunate timing is part of the unintended “sequence of the project and just so happens that they are in their current location now.” Mayor Tim Goodwin understands the businesses’ concerns, and hopes they understand the situation and complexity of the project.
“This is a multifaceted construction drainage project with sidewalks being put in that requires state DOT work being done,” says Goodwin. Further complicating the project is getting all the contractors involved in the different phases of the project lined up and scheduled. Goodwin likens the calendar juggling the city is faced with to home construction in the current super-heated real estate market. “You just can’t pick and choose when you’re going to build a house; you have to go out and find a contractor and work around their schedule when you build anything from a regular house to the Taj Mahal to the Capitol Building.”
Goodwin expects to hear a louder chorus of complaints later when the city can continue with the paths down Center Street, when drain lines are dug up in front of businesses and replaced “and that whole side of the world is interfered with.”
“I’m sorry. That’s just the way it works in today’s construction environment,” says Goodwin, adding that when it comes to contractors that if “you can get’ em and they’re good, you get them when you can get them.”
Two lots down from Folly Beach MediSpa and Folly Beach Family Dental, Andy McClellan has seen the number of drivers willing to pay to park in the lot he’s run for his dad for decades drop off drastically since the work began. And he’s 100-percent in favor of the project because of the long-term enhanced safety it brings.
“I sat here and saw a guy hit and killed last year as he walked in the street,” says McClellan. “The timing might not be the greatest, perhaps. But it’s not so great for the city for people to walk out in the street.
