Personal Injury Attorney in Port Royal, SC

The popular Lowcountry Food Truck Festival is coming back to Port Royal again this weekend. And you’re going to love it.

The big day-long fundraising event, now in it’s 7th year, has quickly become a local favorite. It’s part festival-part carnival…with an extra large dash of kids’ fun.

The annual Lowcountry Food Truck Festival offers 21 different food trucks of all varieties from all over the area, including from Savannah and Charleston, selling their best fare, along with live music, arts & crafts vendors, and a kid’s zone.

Enjoy lots of different food varieties including southern style comfort food, wings, seafood, Asian cuisine, Latin food, BBQ, Polish cuisine, and even alcohol-infused popsicles for the grown ups.

Here’s the list of participating food trucks…so you’ll definitely see that there’ something to please everybody’s palates:

Philly Boyz Chazitos Latin Cuisine G’ma on Ice Papa’s Kitchen Sweet Spice Daskin Wagon Royal Tasty Avenue Food Truck Bennett’s BBQ and Smokehouse The Sno Bar Truck All About That Bean & Boba Kona Ice of Hilton Head Golden Sun Gullah Express Food Savvy WillYum’s Wings Tacos El Padrino LowCo Grub Okan Lowcountry Kid Grill Taco Butts Smokin Gringos

Live music on the big stage at this year’s event will be provided by Campfire Tyler, followed by Broke Locals.

Paris Avenue in Port Royal will host the event all day long on Saturday, April 5th from 11am to 7pm.

Bring the kids….and your appetite. We’ll see you this Saturday!

Visit the Lowcountry Food Truck Festival Facebook page to see all of the different food trucks that will be there and to start mapping our your day full of fun.

For more Beaufort SC events, visit our Event Calendar.

By Delayna Earley

The Island News

The Town of Port Royal has announced that Sands Beach will be temporarily closed effective immediately as they begin work on the Causeway Project.

The beach will remain closed until the work is completed, which they expect will be on or around April 25, 2025.

The town’s post on its social media pages about the closing was immediately met with mixed comments from citizens, some who were excited about the changes being made and some who were angry about the lack of notice.

The causeway is being built to solve a problem of access to the beach when the tide is high.

High tide has been known to trap visitors on the beach, and the daily influx of water has caused portions of the road and parking lot to have large holes.

To address the problem, the town is constructing a 150- to 200-foot-long timber bridge that will rise and fall to accommodate tides and provide a safe walkway for both pedestrians and vehicles.

This will join the boardwalk, observation deck and boat ramp that already exist at the location.

According to Town Manager Van Willis, this is a more permanent solution than trying to fix the road and parking area, which is difficult since just fixing potholes requires permits from the state because of the marsh and surrounding environment.

Retaining walls will also be built that will allow the town to legally grade uneven areas without having to get a permit.

The project is being funded by the American Rescue Plan Act, ARPA, which guaranteed funding to local municipalities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The expected cost of the project will be $1.5 to $1.6 million.

While the causeway is being built, access to the boat landing will remain open, according to the Town of Port Royal.

Delayna Earley, who joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at [email protected].

By Lolita Huckaby

PORT ROYAL

Two weeks ago, The Island News headline announced, “Port Royal, Safe Harbor reach agreement.”

Those who have watched the evolution of development at the former S.C. Ports Authority property for the past four decades were a little skeptical but willing to accept that maybe, just maybe, the proposed marina project and accompanying commercial and residential projects might actually take place.

Well, hold on there.

Word came late last week, via the internet, that lo-and-behold, the international Safe Harbor Marinas, LLC is being sold by Sun Communities to an even larger conglomerate, asset manager Blackstone Infrastructure for $5.65 billion.

Since Safe Harbor, which purchased the Port Royal waterfront property in 2021 for $20.5 million, owns and operates 138 marines across the county, no one seems sure yet what the sale will mean for its local entities, which also include the lease of the city of Beaufort marina and the Port Royal Landings marina.

Port Royal leaders haven’t indicated they even heard one peep about the pending sale during those extensive mediation meetings they had with Safe Harbor recently to reach the most recent apparent agreement.

In the cases of the Port Royal property and the City of Beaufort Marina, there are legal documents binding on the different parties. Of course, the city’s lease agreement with Safe Harbor signed in 2019 has now been questioned in a lawsuit filed in November by a new nonprofit Protect Beaufort.

While the impact of this latest sale works its way down the corporate chain, it’s a sure bet the lawyers are going to be busy.

In the meantime, local citizens, particularly those in Port Royal whose may have bet their futures on development of that project, will have to continue to wait.

Blackstone’s public relations did issue this statement, for what that’s worth:“Our approach to infrastructure investing is one that focuses on responsible stewardship and stakeholder engagement to create value for our investors and the communities we serve. ”

We shall see.

Get ready for Lafayette

BEAUFORT – It’s March and the Marquis de Lafayette is coming to town.

In case you’ve missed the massive planning effort that’s underway to produce a re-enactment of the Lafayette’s visit to Beaufort 200 years ago, it’s definitely happening.

Led by the Historic Beaufort Foundation, the City of Beaufort and a host of other organizations and individuals, the program, which has been in the planning stages since last summer, will include multiple lectures around town, a fancy-dress ball and a potential cast of hundreds.

On March 18, the actual date of Lafayette’s arrival in 1825, there will be a procession from the waterfront through downtown Beaufort to the Verdier House on Bay Street, where the French visitor greeted his hosts.

Well-known historical interpreter Mark Schneider will be portraying the Marquis.

Lafayette’s “Farewell Tour of the Nation” began in Staten Island and included 24 states. His South Carolina stops included Cheraw, Camden, Columbia, Izzard’s Plantation north of Charleston, Charleston, Edisto and ended in Beaufort.

For more information, or to get involved, contact the folks at Historic Beaufort Foundation or take a look at historicbeaufort.org.

Lolita Huckaby Watson is a community volunteer and newspaper columnist. In her former role as a reporter with The Beaufort Gazette, The Savannah Morning News, Bluffton Today and Beaufort Today, she prided herself in trying to stay neutral and unbiased. As a columnist, these are her opinions. Her goal is to be factual but opinionated, based on her own observations. Feel free to contact her at [email protected].