Nick Borreggine bought his house in Port Royal a quarter century ago because a real estate agent told him the old shipping port was about to be redeveloped. He believed it enough to open Shell Ring Ale Works on 11th Street, betting his business on a waterfront that was, in his own words, getting ready to be developed soon. That was 25 years ago. The brewery is still there. The port next door is still mostly vacant.
That anecdote matters because it explains something a median price never will: Port Royal's reputation as an "up and coming" market has been circulating for a full generation, tied to a specific piece of land that has not yet been built on. If you're comparing Port Royal to other Lowcountry towns right now, the town's waterfront story is not one long-delayed project. It's two separate deals, on two separate tracks, run by two separate parties, and neither one currently has a construction start date.
Two deals, two owners, one shared reputation
The first is private. Safe Harbor Marinas bought the old Port of Port Royal, a defunct South Carolina Ports Authority shipping terminal covering roughly two miles of waterfront, for $20 million in 2021. The plan, still known locally as Marina Village, calls for a new marina, boat storage, housing, retail, restaurants, and a public promenade built out over vacant land between Shell Ring Ale Works, Fishcamp on 11th Street, and Safe Harbor's existing drystack facility.
The second is federal. The Naval Hospital Beaufort sits on 127 acres in Port Royal, opened in 1949, and has spent the past two years positioned for a second life as VA health services move out. Beaufort County spent 2025 and early 2026 lobbying hard to bring a Coast Guard training center to that site. It lost.
Both stories get folded into the same sentence when people talk about Port Royal's future. They shouldn't be. One is a marina permit working its way through two different regulatory agencies. The other is a federal reuse decision that just landed on the losing side of a national site search. Buyers weighing Port Royal against Beaufort, Bluffton, or Lady's Island need to know which one they're actually pricing in, because right now the honest answer for both is: not yet.
What Safe Harbor has actually secured
Safe Harbor's marina plan has cleared real regulatory hurdles, and it's worth being specific about which ones. In May 2024, the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control issued a permit covering 141 dedicated wetslips, 1,741 linear feet of side-tie dockage, and 15 floating jet docks, plus a new 150-boat drystack building to add to the site's existing 240-boat drystack capacity. That permit was real progress. It was also not the finish line. Safe Harbor still needed sign-off from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers before construction could begin.
The relationship between the town and its developer hasn't been smooth. A November 2023 mediation session tried to resolve disagreements over how the site could be used. It didn't fully work. In March 2024, the town petitioned the Beaufort County Court of Common Pleas for an injunction, arguing that Safe Harbor's on-site dock manufacturing violated the terms of the original development agreement. The two sides eventually settled in February 2025. The settlement capped build-to-rent units in the residential portion at 15 percent, barred multi-level apartments in those zones, granted the town a parcel known as Lot G along with adjacent marsh strips in exchange for five townhome lots, secured a permanent 16-foot easement for the Spanish Moss Trail connecting into Ritter Circle and across Rebow Road, and gave Safe Harbor an 18-month temporary permit to keep manufacturing docks on site so it could actually build its own marina.
Ten months later, in December 2025, Safe Harbor held a public forum and unveiled the first official master plan renderings since buying the property in 2021. Mayor Kevin Phillips called it the first real look the public had gotten at where things were headed, and was candid about what still wasn't known. Asked when construction would actually start, his answer was that the exact date wasn't set, but that it was coming.
Here's the timeline in one place:
| Milestone | Date | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Safe Harbor acquires the port | 2021 | Complete |
| Mediation over site use | November 2023 | Did not fully resolve dispute |
| Town files injunction petition | March 2024 | Litigation |
| DHEC marina permit issued | May 31, 2024 | Complete, one of two permits needed |
| Town council settlement | February 12, 2025 | Complete, sets rental caps and trail easement |
| Master plan publicly unveiled | December 2025 | Complete, no construction date attached |
| Army Corps of Engineers permit | Pending | Not yet reported as issued |
| Marina construction start | Not announced | Awaiting final permit |
The 127 acres next door just lost its biggest prize
While the marina story played out in public meetings and a courtroom, the Naval Hospital site was working through a federal process with much higher stakes and a much faster ending.
The VA's piece of this is the more settled half. Veterans services currently housed at the Naval Hospital are relocating to a new $30 million outpatient clinic planned for the former Sea Island Apartments site on Ribaut Road, an 11-acre parcel that sat vacant for roughly a year and a half after the aging 1948 apartment complex was taken offline. As of early 2026 reporting, the VA's own schedule called for breaking ground in June 2026, accepting the completed clinic in March 2028, and seeing its first patients that September. The new facility is meant to expand primary care, mental health services, dental care, and imaging for the roughly 22,000 veterans currently enrolled in the Beaufort area.
The bigger and less settled question was what happens to the 127 acres the Naval Hospital itself sits on once VA services move out. Beaufort County's economic development corporation, its military enhancement committee, a defense community partnership task force, and the Beaufort Regional Chamber of Commerce spent late 2025 building a joint proposal to bring a new Coast Guard training center to that site, after the Coast Guard announced in November 2025 that it needed a second boot camp location to train part of an expected 15,000 new personnel. The pitch leaned on the property's deep water access along the Beaufort River and Intracoastal Waterway, and on an economic impact estimate of more than $320 million in annual activity and roughly 2,200 direct and indirect jobs. Senator Tim Scott and Representative Joe Wilson wrote directly to the Department of Homeland Security in support, and Representative Nancy Mace backed the effort as well.
On March 4, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security announced the new training center would go to the former Birmingham-Southern College campus in Birmingham, Alabama instead. Mayor Phillips said local officials were told Beaufort's bid finished second. The result is that the Naval Hospital's 127 acres remain without a defined next chapter. The hospital itself continues to operate and serve the region's military population. What changes is that the single biggest, most concrete reuse plan for that land is now off the table, and no replacement plan has been publicly announced.
What this actually means if you're weighing Port Royal
None of this means Port Royal isn't worth a serious look. It means the town's value case right now should rest on what already exists, not on what two separate landowners have said might happen next.
What already exists is real. Parris Island and Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort sit close enough that military relocation and rental demand aren't projections, they're the current shape of the local economy. The Naval Hospital keeps functioning as a treatment facility regardless of what happens to the surrounding acreage. Paris Avenue already has a walkable commercial core anchored by Shell Ring Ale Works and Fishcamp on 11th Street. The Spanish Moss Trail, the Cypress Wetlands boardwalk, and the beach at Port Royal Sands are finished, open, and not contingent on anyone's master plan.
What doesn't exist yet is the marina, the promenade, the retail, and the housing Safe Harbor has shown in renderings, and there's no confirmed answer yet for the Naval Hospital's 127 acres now that the Coast Guard has chosen Alabama. If part of your interest in Port Royal is what that waterfront could become, that's a legitimate reason to watch the town closely. It's a much less reliable reason to pay a premium today.
A few questions worth asking before you tour
Does the Naval Hospital itself close? No. It continues to provide care to active duty personnel, retirees, and military dependents. The uncertainty is about the future use of the surrounding 127 acres after VA services move to the new Ribaut Road clinic, not about the hospital's current operations.
When will marina construction actually start? As of the most recent public update in December 2025, there was no confirmed start date. Safe Harbor still needed a final Army Corps of Engineers permit as of the most recent reporting available.
Should current listings already reflect the waterfront upside? Treat any pricing built around the marina or the hospital site's future as speculative until there's a permit in hand and a shovel in the ground. The trail, the wetlands boardwalk, and the Paris Avenue corridor are the parts of Port Royal's value that are already finished.
If you're trying to figure out how a specific Port Royal property or lot fits into decisions like these, that's exactly the kind of on-the-ground read J.P. Signature Group can walk through with you street by street. Contact us and we'll talk through what's actually built, what's still a rendering, and what that means for your timeline.
