How does a traffic counter on the Folly Road bridge log more cars crossing onto the island this year than last, while some of Center Street's longest-running businesses call it their worst summer since the pandemic? Both things are true, and the gap between them says more about how Folly Beach actually works than any before-and-after photo of the orange barrels ever could.
For most of 2026, driving onto the island meant threading past construction fencing, excavators, and a sidewalk that disappeared and reappeared block by block. The $7 million-plus Center Street Stormwater Infrastructure Improvements Project replaced pipes that had been in the ground since the 1940s, according to Folly Beach City Administrator Aaron Pope, who called it the largest and costliest stormwater upgrade in the island's history. By early August, the major digging was done. What's left this month is the finishing work: paving, streetlight replacement by Dominion Energy, rain gardens, and the reinstallation of the engraved bricks and palmettos that give the block its look.
If you live here, you already know how this summer felt on foot. What you may not know is how it looked from the data the city and its businesses were actually tracking.
The Numbers Say Busier, Not Quieter
Mayor Chris Bizzell has pointed to two figures that complicate the story residents tell themselves about this summer. The traffic counter on the bridge logged more cars coming and going this year than at the same point last year. And short-term rental occupancy on Folly, tracked through AirDNA, ran slightly higher than the prior summer despite months of visible construction at the island's only entrance.
So the people kept coming. What changed was whether they could get where they were going once they arrived, and that split created two very different summers happening on the same six blocks.
Same Season, Different Block
At Pinky's on the Beach, general manager Jeff Caudill described a season that broke records outright, with combined revenue between two properties topping a million dollars. A few blocks away on Center Street, Surfer Betty co-owner Kate Ferrara was running her beauty supply shop out of a converted pop-up camper, parked directly across from an equipment staging lot. She'd chosen that corner in April for its visibility and foot traffic. By midsummer, both had mostly disappeared behind construction fencing, and she told the Post and Courier there were days the shop brought in less than $100.
Coconut Joe's owner Perry Freeman described it as the restaurant's slowest summer since opening, not close to any prior year. At The Washout, an open patio sitting close to the street meant dust and noise scared off customers who might otherwise have lingered. Richard Brendel, who runs the boat tour and kayak company Flipper Finders near the island's entrance, said walk-up traffic thinned out noticeably, though pre-booked reservations kept the business steady enough that he used the slower months to remodel his shop.
Follywood Bar owner DJ Rich put his finger on why his year held up better than some neighbors'. His bar is built around year-round locals rather than a seasonal tourist spike, he explained, which meant the usual summer surge and winter drop-off never applied to him in the first place. Construction made it harder for regulars to get there, he said, but the bar made it through.
Line those experiences up and a pattern appears that has nothing to do with how good any of these businesses are and everything to do with geography and how their customers find them. Businesses that depend on someone deciding to walk in because they happened to be passing by took the hit. Businesses built around reservations, repeat locals, or a destination customers were already committed to reaching absorbed the disruption and, in Pinky's case, thrived anyway.
The Pier Never Had This Problem
There's a useful counter-example sitting at the end of Center Street, on the water, past all the construction. Koko's on the Pier opened March 25 in the space that was Pier 101 for years, bringing a tiki-leaning menu and branding to the historic Folly Beach Fishing Pier. It opened before construction reached its worst stretch and never had to compete with fencing or lane closures for anyone's attention, because getting to the pier was never a matter of stumbling past it. Visitors who go to the pier go there on purpose. That's a different customer relationship than the one Center Street storefronts depend on, and it's part of why the pier's season looked nothing like the corridor behind it.
What the Project Was Actually Fixing
It's worth being specific about what all this disruption bought the island, because the answer is more mundane and more useful than "a nicer Center Street." The project replaces underground pipes that hadn't been touched since the 1940s with wider stormwater infrastructure, adds curbside rain gardens and permeable pavers that let water drain through the surface instead of pooling on the road, and is designed to cut down the standing water that's followed heavy rain and king tides on this island for decades. Anyone who has watched Center Street flood after an afternoon thunderstorm knows exactly what problem this is meant to solve. The city's own construction updates describe the remaining work as finishing touches: striping, lighting, landscaping, and the detail work that turns a dug-up street back into a functioning one.
What's Actually Different This Fall
Center Street this month is not the Center Street of July, and it's also not quite the Center Street of two summers ago. The fencing is coming down in sections rather than all at once. Parking counts changed too: the project removed four parallel spots for green infrastructure but added 39 new ones within the project area, a net gain that should ease one of the island's most reliable complaints once striping is finished.
The bigger test of what normal looks like again arrives October 3, when Mermaids & Mateys returns to Center Street for a full day of live music, local art and craft vendors, costume contests, and family activities, free to attend with registration required. It's a fitting event to watch, because it will be the first sense of whether the crowds that kept crossing the bridge all summer come back to walk the block itself now that there's nothing in the way.
Mayor Bizzell has talked about wanting an islandwide celebration once the project wraps, framed explicitly as a way to bring people back to spend money at the businesses that spent a season absorbing the cost of infrastructure nobody could see. Whether that celebration lands as more than a nice gesture probably depends on the same thing this whole summer depended on: whether people come because they meant to, or because the sidewalk finally lets them wander in.
The Pattern Worth Remembering
The easy read on this summer is that construction was bad for the island. The more accurate read is that construction was bad for a specific kind of business relationship, the one where a customer discovers you by walking past, and mostly fine or better for the kind where a customer already decided to find you. That distinction didn't start this year and it won't disappear once the last brick goes back into the sidewalk. It's just usually invisible, because most summers don't come with a controlled experiment running down the middle of Center Street.
If you're the kind of person who tracks this island block by block anyway, keep an eye on how the mix along Center Street looks a year from now. The businesses that leaned hardest on foot traffic had the roughest go. Whether that changes who's still standing there next October is the part nobody quite knows yet.
If you ever want to talk through what's shifting on Folly Beach or anywhere else along Charleston's barrier islands, Charleston Beach Life is always glad to compare notes. Schedule a free consultation whenever the timing is right for you.
