Right now, if you're walking Ocean Boulevard after dinner or taking the dog out along Waterway Boulevard before the heat sets in, you're hearing two different construction crews. Most people who live here have folded them into one general impression: the island is under construction this summer. That's true, but it's also the wrong way to think about it, because the two projects are not moving at the same speed, and the one making all the noise is actually the one that clears out fastest.
The offshore beach renourishment project started pumping sand on July 17. The Waterway Boulevard pathway elevation project has been paving in sections since earlier this year. Both are scheduled to wrap sometime in 2026. Only one of them is actually on pace to do that.
The dredge sounds permanent. It isn't.
The city's $23 million renourishment project is pulling 2.5 million cubic yards of sand from an offshore borrow site and pumping it onto the shoreline in three sections, starting at the north end near Wild Dunes. The first stretch runs past four oceanfront properties: Ocean Club Villas, Seascape, Port O Call, and Mariner's Walk. By early August, the contractor, Marinex, had moved to the section fronting Shipwatch, working inside a fenced zone about 300 yards wide and placing roughly 30,000 cubic yards of sand a day.
Do the math on that pace and the noise complaint answers itself. Crews move the work zone south at 100 to 300 feet a day. A 300-yard section is 900 feet. At that rate, the fenced, floodlit, round-the-clock work in front of any single house clears through in a matter of days, not weeks. If the dozers are loud outside your window tonight, they're likely to be someone else's problem by the weekend.
That doesn't mean access is untouched. The city has said beach access paths near Seascape and Port O'Call may need to close temporarily as crews remove old sandbags and work through sections where the beach is too narrow for pedestrians to pass safely around the construction zone. Mayor Phillip Pounds put it plainly back in July:
"The beach won't ever be closed, except a couple of the hotspots."
That's the useful frame for the rest of the season. The dredge is a rolling closure, not a standing one. Check which access path you use before you head out, expect the noise to follow the work zone south, and don't expect it to sit in front of any one stretch of beach for long.
The path project sounds smaller. It's the one still catching up.
The Waterway Boulevard project gets a fraction of the attention the dredge does, mostly because it's quieter and mostly because it's been running longer without a dramatic before-and-after. That's part of the problem. It's easy to assume a project you don't hear is a project that's on schedule.
Here's where it actually stands, according to the city's most recent public update in mid-July: paving is complete from 21st Avenue to 29th Avenue. Demolition of the old path is done from 29th Avenue to Timber Lane. From Timber Lane to 41st Avenue, the original path is still there, untouched. The full corridor runs 8,850 linear feet, about 1.68 miles, from 21st Avenue to 41st Avenue. Less than half of it has a finished surface right now.
The project is also more complicated than it looks from the outside. It's split into three funded phases: a golf course segment, the main Waterway Boulevard stretch, and a private-property section, adding up to $5.8 million in construction plus $512,000 in engineering, backed by a $980,000 FEMA hazard mitigation grant and $1.25 million in state funding. The golf course phase, handled by Truluck Construction, has already documented delays. The contractor, Wild Dunes, and the city have had to build a schedule around the golf course's playable areas, which means work outside those areas sometimes waits until the course itself is willing to accommodate it. That's the kind of coordination problem that doesn't resolve on a fixed date.
| Beach renourishment | Waterway Blvd pathway | |
|---|---|---|
| Started | July 17, 2026 | Early 2026 |
| Pace | 100–300 ft/day, clears a section in days | Partial progress over months |
| Status as of research | Working near Shipwatch, moving south | Paved 21st–29th; gravel 29th–Timber Ln; original path Timber Ln–41st |
| Known delays | None reported | Golf course phase (Truluck) already behind |
| What's driving the timeline | Contractor moving through fixed-length zones | Multi-phase funding and easement coordination |
The reason the city is doing this at all is worth knowing too. Portions of the existing path sit as low as 4.27 feet in elevation and have flooded on extreme tides more than once. The new target, 6.0 feet NAVD88, is expected to cut the annual chance of the path overtopping from essentially certain to about 3.7 percent. That's a real improvement, but only for the stretch that's actually finished. If you're walking or biking the Timber Lane to 41st Avenue section on a king tide day, you're still dealing with the old, lower path until that portion gets its turn.
What this actually changes about your week
If you're planning an evening walk, a bike ride to Wild Dunes, or a beach morning with the dog, here's what the two projects mean in practical terms right now:
- Expect construction noise on the beach to move south over the course of the week, not sit in one place all season
- Beach access near Seascape and Port O'Call is the most likely to see a temporary path closure
- The paved section of Waterway Boulevard from 21st to 29th Avenue is the smoothest stretch for biking right now
- Between 29th Avenue and Timber Lane, expect compacted gravel, which the city has said should stay walkable and rideable through the paving process
- Timber Lane to 41st Avenue is still the old, lower path, which means it's the section most exposed to tidal overtopping until its phase gets underway
One more crew is coming, just not this summer
There's a third change worth knowing about even though it won't touch you yet. The city has been working through a vendor selection process for an AI-controlled traffic signal at Palm Boulevard and the Isle of Palms Connector, the intersection most residents already associate with getting stuck getting on or off the island during a summer weekend. The system is designed to detect backups in real time and adjust signal timing to clear them, rather than running on a fixed cycle. It's not expected to be installed until March 2027, ahead of next year's tourism season, so it won't do anything for this year's traffic. But it's a sign the same instinct behind the beach and pathway work, fixing the parts of daily island life that quietly get worse every summer, is showing up in more places than just the shoreline.
That's really the throughline across all three projects. The island is investing in the parts of itself that residents feel first: the beach, the path along the water, the light at the bottom of the connector. The dredge gets the attention because it's loud, but it's the fast-moving piece. The path is the one asking for patience, because its timeline depends on funding phases and easement coordination that don't move at 100 feet a day. Knowing which is which is the difference between being annoyed by the right thing and being annoyed by the wrong one.
If you're weighing a move to Isle of Palms, or you already call it home and are curious how these kinds of infrastructure decisions tend to play out here over time, Katherine Cox has spent years watching this island change one project at a time. Book an appointment when you're ready to talk through what any of it means for your own address.
