At the corner of Center Street and West Ashley Avenue, Perry Freeman just closed out the slowest summer Coconut Joe's has had since he opened it, and he says it wasn't close. Four blocks away, Pinky's on the Beach was tracking a different number entirely: more than a million dollars in revenue across its two properties, a record for the business. Same three blocks of orange barrels. Same eight months of jackhammers, rerouted sidewalks, and dust that chased people across the street. Two completely different summers.
The project responsible for all of it is a stormwater overhaul that's been the background noise of island life since February: more than $7 million to replace pipes that, according to City Administrator Aaron Pope, hadn't been touched since they went into the ground in the 1940s. It's funded mostly through the South Carolina Infrastructure Investment Program, and by any measure it's the kind of work Folly Beach needed. Center Street floods on a regular basis, and the new pipes hold roughly three times the water the old ones did.
None of that explains why the disruption hit some businesses hard and left others untouched. That split is the more interesting story, and it says something about how money actually moves through this island that a summer of construction complaints doesn't capture.
A Few Blocks, Two Different Summers
The businesses that struggled share a pattern. Coconut Joe's sits on a corner where guests had to pick their way through fencing and equipment to get in. Freeman put it plainly: guests had to jump through hoops just to reach him. At The Washout, owner Greg Marshall watched people start their walk toward his patio, hit the noise and dust, and cross to the other side of the street instead, an effect he noticed was worse at lunch than at dinner, when the crews weren't working. Surfer Betty, a beauty supply shop that co-owners Kate Ferrara and Melissa Anderson opened in April inside a converted pop-up camper on the corner of Center and West Erie, picked the spot for its visibility and foot traffic. That visibility disappeared under a maze of construction fencing, and some days brought in less than $100. Down the block, Hot Pursuit Donuts owner Lesley Lewis said she was working longer hours to make what she used to make in a couple of hours each morning, and a Native Boutique employee described nightly sales that were significantly behind the year before.
What these businesses have in common isn't the product. It's the customer. Each one depends on someone walking by, noticing the storefront, and deciding to stop. Take away the sidewalk, and you take away the sale.
Follywood Bar, a few doors down, weathered the same summer differently. Owner DJ Rich, who also sits on Folly Beach's city council and helped shepherd the project through, described it this way:
"We're a neighborhood dive bar. We don't get a huge spike in the summer and drop off in the winter. We stay pretty even all year because we're a locals place for the most part."
That's the mechanism. A business built around people who show up regardless of the season, the weather, or the state of the sidewalk out front doesn't feel a bad tourist month the way a storefront that lives on drive-by visibility does.
The Pier Never Needed the Sidewalk
The clearest version of that same logic played out at the Folly Beach Pier, of all places, in the middle of the busiest construction weeks of the summer. In March, Pier 101 became Koko's on the Pier, a tiki bar and restaurant reimagined by Avocet Hospitality's design team as what staff call a "Follynesian" experience. It kept old favorites like the po'boys, fried shrimp, and she-crab soup, and added Folly Fire Shrimp, jerk chicken sandwiches, and BBQ wonton nachos served over the ocean.
Koko's is part of the Tides Folly Beach family of hospitality concepts, alongside Pinky's on the Beach and Roasted Coffee + Shop, and it plugged straight into Charleston County Parks and Recreation's Moonlight Mixer series that kicked off May 1. None of that requires a customer to navigate Center Street at all. You reach Koko's from the beach or from the hotel, not from a sidewalk lined with construction fencing. Tides Folly Beach Hotel general manager Phil Owens described the shift as less about competing for foot traffic and more about "aligning the experience to better reflect Folly Beach today." The pier didn't need the sidewalk, and it shows.
What the Bridge Counter Actually Recorded
Here's the part that should surprise anyone who assumed the whole island simply went quiet this summer. Folly Beach Mayor Chris Bizzell told the Folly Current that the traffic counter on the bridge logged more cars coming and going this year than at the same point last year, and that occupancy rates on Folly home rentals were also slightly up, according to AirDNA data that tracks Airbnb and Vrbo performance.
People kept coming. The money didn't leave the island. It moved. Visitors who might once have wandered every block of Center Street on foot instead drove in, parked near a destination they already knew about, spent their afternoon at Pinky's or Koko's, and left. The storefronts that depended on someone stumbling onto them lost that stumble. The businesses anchored to something bigger than a sidewalk, a hotel, a pier, a reputation as the neighborhood bar, never lost their customer in the first place.
What's Different Now
The city's own construction updates page currently describes the project as being in its final phase, with permanent striping, lighting, and landscaping the last items left on the list. New rain gardens and permeable pavers are going in along both sides of Center Street, and Dominion Energy has been swapping out streetlights as part of the same push. The barrels that have defined the island's entryway since last fall are finally coming down block by block.
A few things worth knowing if you're back to walking Center Street without dodging equipment:
- Koko's on the Pier is fully open at 101 E. Arctic Avenue, serving its full tiki menu and hosting live music most nights.
- Mermaids & Mateys returns to Center Street on Saturday, October 3, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., a free family festival with live music, local art and craft vendors, and costume contests. Free registration is required and space is first come, first served.
- The Folly Beach Christmas Parade is already on the books for December 12, and the island's New Year's Eve fireworks and Flip-Flop Drop will close out the year on Center Street the way they always have.
Mermaids & Mateys is really the first honest test of whether the storefront businesses get their sidewalk back the way Follywood Bar and Koko's never lost theirs. A free festival that pulls families onto Center Street on a Saturday in October is exactly the kind of foot traffic Coconut Joe's, The Washout, and Surfer Betty spent the whole summer waiting for.
The construction wasn't the story this summer. The sorting was. Some Folly Beach businesses learned they're built on people walking past a window. Others learned they were never depending on the sidewalk to begin with. Both kinds of businesses make this island what it is, and now that the barrels are finally coming down, the next few months will show which model actually holds up when the excuse is gone.
If you're already part of this island's daily rhythm and want a clear-eyed read on how these shifts play into the bigger picture of life and property here, Georgia Nettles has spent years watching Folly Beach change one block at a time. Schedule a private consultation with Georgia whenever you're ready for that conversation.
