Beach Co. private dock request at Lockwood and Broad – Comments needed
One of Charleston’s largest real estate developers, The Beach Company, is seeking the state’s permission to build a private dock on the Ashley River, next to the company’s massive Jasper luxury housing complex.
Comments are being accepted on the company’s permit application by the state Department of Environmental Services (DES), through Friday, August 8.
The Preservation Society has submitted a comment opposing the permit and is requesting formal consulting party status.
We are asking PSC supporters to also oppose the permit and request a public hearing to discuss the application. (DES will schedule a public hearing if at least 20 local residents request it.)
BEACH COMPANY PRIVATE DOCK PERMIT APPLICATION
Public comment open through August 8, 2025
A NEW PRIVATE DOCK ON THE LOCKWOOD AND BROAD SIDEWALK?
If approved, the permit would facilitate the Beach Company to construct a private-use dock near the corner of Lockwood Boulevard and Broad Street, on a parcel noted as “Undevelopable” in county property records.
The dock would include a raised boardwalk stretching from the public sidewalk on Lockwood Boulevard approximately 200 feet into the Ashley River, with a large permanent shelter leading to a floating dock reserved for private use.
Not only would this disturb the fragile ecosystems that protect the character-defining neighborhoods that make up Charleston’s downtown historic districts, it runs afoul of longstanding city policy goals that discourage construction along our coastal edges and limit privatization of the water’s edge.
WE MUST ASK, ‘WHAT’S NEXT?’
Of course, this isn’t the first bad idea we’ve seen proposed for this part of Broad Street. Just steps away, the Beach Company was allowed to construct its overly massive Jasper luxury apartments and corporate headquarters at the end of a legal battle pitched against the City of Charleston, advocates including the Preservation Society, and neighborhood residents, detailed in the fall 2016 issue of PSC’s Preservation Progress magazine.
But The Jasper was just the beginning. Since then, The Beach Company has squeezed a luxury townhouse and apartment enclave onto 1.8 acres of high ground next door. Now, in the height of summer, the developer is seeking approval to build a dock into the Ashley River. With the long-term future unknown for the nearby historic U.S. Coast Guard station, we must ask, “What’s next?”
As we wrote in fall 2016, “We cannot and must not retreat in the face of unprecedented pressures from growth and development.”
Be sure to register your public comment in opposition to the dock permit before the Friday deadline.