Three important public meetings of the City of Beaufort are being held by Zoom today and tomorrow. All concerned citizens are urged to attend and to express your views during the Public Comment section if allowed. Click below to see agendas with links to attend by Zoom.

Today, Tuesday, April 13

5:00 p.m. Today – City Council Work Session including Executive Session to receive legal advice regarding litigation. No public comment is scheduled.

7:00 p.m. Today – City Council Regular Meeting including Public Comment. Please express your views!

Tomorrow, Wednesday, April 14

2:00 p.m. Tomorrow – Historic District Review Board Meeting including Executive Session to receive legal advice regarding litigation. No public comment is scheduled, which is peculiar. The Tribune is undertaking to find out why.

Book review with thanks to Amazon.com: Literary Beaufort: Ireland’s Final Rebellion 1919-1921 and An American Dream by Michael Gerard

Our small town of Beaufort, South Carolina, has had the good fortune to nurture gifted authors over a period of more than 200 years–William Elliott (Carolina Sports by Land and Water) and William J. Grayson (The Hireling and the Slave) in the 19th century; Samuel Hopkins Adams (The Erie Canal and many other inspiring children’s novels), Francis Griswold (A Sea Island Lady, inspired by Gone with the Wind), and Pat Conroy (The Prince of Tides and many other Lowcountry novels) in the 20th century; and now Michael Gerard from Ireland, a long-time Beaufort resident, in the 21st century.
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Life-long Beaufort resident and retired veterinarian Dr. Bill Sammons, now 80 years old, isn’t going to take the desecration of his palmetto trees lying down. On Thursday he had three of these signs made, and he nailed them onto the palmetto trees lining his homesite on Elliott Street after Dominion Energy’s tree crew arrived to saw the trees down. “They say they’re coming back with a letter to give them permission to destroy my trees”, Sammons told the Tribune as he hugged one of them. “Maybe the City Council and Dominion Energy don’t understand that I’m part of the Resistance. The Resistance is now everywhere in Beaufort, is not going away, and is going to win. Power to the people!”

Editor’s Note: If you are concerned about the direction the City of Beaufort is taking, especially in its Historic District, you are automatically a member of the Beautiful Beaufort Alliance, sponsored by The Beaufort Tribune. Click here to see the goals of the Beautiful Beaufort Alliance and what you can do to help.

Above: This ashamed Dominion Energy’ tree cutter hides his face so he can’t be recognized. These men, their elevated buckets, chain saws, tree grinders, and trucks have been all over our beautiful town for the past six weeks slaughtering every tree and limb they can get their destructive hands on. According to the boss of these men, they will return every five years to keep cutting, cutting, cutting.

Editor’s Note: If you are concerned about the direction the City of Beaufort is taking, especially in its Historic District, you are automatically a member of the Beautiful Beaufort Alliance, sponsored by The Beaufort Tribune. Click here to see the goals of the Beautiful Beaufort Alliance and what you can do to help.

Dear Editor,

For several generations, my family has been involved in the tourist attraction business in South Carolina. It has recently come to my attention that there is a newcomer to our business in Beaufort. I wish to welcome Mr. Dick Stewart. Continue reading →

Located at 801 Bay Street, the John Mark Verdier House is the headquarters of Historic Beaufort Foundation. The exterior of this house was rejuvenated in March 2021 in colors meticulously researched to be authentic to the late 18th century when this house was built. It stands within 75 feet of a proposed 55,000-square-foot, four-story Marriott convention hotel that, if constructed, will tower over the entire historic downtown (see below). Continue reading →

Two stumps are all that remain of 100-year-old palmetto trees that graced the entry to one of South Carolina’s most historic churches, St. Helena’s, which was founded in 1711, thanks to the cutting saws of Dominion Energy, the great Satan who has been intent on destroying the beauty of nature here. Palmettos all over town are falling to Dominion’s chain saws ever hour of every working day and being ground into sawdust. Continue reading →

The great brutalizer, Dominion Energy of Richmond, Virginia, has recently decimated the centuries-old oaks of our beautiful town, Beaufort, South Carolina, leaving in its wake a mangled mess of trees and an embittered citizenry. What it took centuries for nature to create, Dominion Energy destroyed in a matter of days. Continue reading →

Editor’s comment: Below is the Agenda for the City of Beaufort’s next Historic District Review Board Meeting (HDRB), to be held this coming Wednesday, April 14, at 2:00 p.m. via Zoom. Including the attachments, which are not included below, the agenda package is 250 pages! On the agenda are presentation of proposed changes to the proposed “big box” hotel and final approval of the proposed “big box” parking garage. Please note that there is no mention in this Agenda or the attachments of the lawsuit filed against the City this past  Monday alleging that the City and its HDRB have violated the City Code by failing to enforce the Code’s requirement of a zoning variance for these “big boxes”. Continue reading →

Downtown Beaufort commercial district skyline at waterfront park

The quotations at the beginning of each paragraph below are the words of local downtown developer Dick Stewart as written by him to Beaufort resident Graham Kerr in response to Mr. Kerr’s opinion piece in The Beaufort Tribune. The comments following the quotations are by the editor of The Beaufort Tribune. Continue reading →

Mr Kerr,

I graduated from Beaufort High in 1967. I recall some people saying the waterfront park shouldn’t be built. Many of the businesses in the buildings you describe have gone. There is no department store, no hardware store, no shoe store, no auto supply store, no gas station. In recent years four Continue reading →

In early 1966, I drove my black 1962 Oldsmobile Rocket 88 convertible into Beaufort to join Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 312. I was immediately struck with how beautiful it was. I have never changed my mind!

Yesterday on a fine spring afternoon I walked to the center of the Woods Bridge and took the picture of that same downtown below. Continue reading →

The City of Beaufort and 303 Associates, the largest owner of commercial properties in Beaufort’s historic downtown core commercial district, were sued today in the Court of Common Pleas by two downtown property owners, West Street Farms, LLC, and Mix Farms, LLC, for alleged violations of the City Code involving three alleged “Large Footprint Buildings” that 303 Associates proposes to construct in the area: a large hotel, a large apartment building, and a large parking garage. Continue reading →

Inquiring minds ask:  Who is Cannon? Or what is Cannon? Above is a rendering of the apartment building being planned by 303 Associates for the corner of Charles and Port Republic Streets in downtown Beaufort, according to an article published March 31 in The Island News, a local print and on-line newspaper. Click here to see the entire article.

Editor’s Note: If you are concerned about the direction the City of Beaufort is taking, especially in its Historic District, you are automatically a member of the Beautiful Beaufort Alliance, sponsored by The Beaufort Tribune. Click here to see the goals of the Beautiful Beaufort Alliance and what you can do to help.