After 3 years of sitting idle, Beaufort’s old bowling alley site is getting a new look

A plan has finally been approved for a highly visible piece of property along Beaufort’s Ribaut Road that once was home to the city’s sole bowling alley.

In the new plan for the property at Ribaut Road and Firehouse Lane, recreation is no longer in the mix. Instead, up to 28 commercial office spaces will front those roads while personal storage units will be hidden in the back. Two apartments will be constructed on the second floor as part of expansions planned at the old bowling alley building. But the old maple bowling lanes will get a new life as the flooring for a condominium that’s also planned for use by owners Doc and Andy Burris, who own the property.

The father and son received final approval for the project by the Planning Commission Monday.

They give a nod to the former use of the property in the name of their company — Gutterball LLC — but Doc Burris says the dilapidated building and site is being overhauled into what he calls a “lifestyle community” named Ribaut Station.

The mixed-used development will be anchored by 28 lower cost commercial offices that will range in size with some as small as 10 feet-by-10 feet. Each office will have access to a conference room, break rooms, restrooms and even a recreation center that will feature a golf simulator and other games including race car driving and trap shooting.

The bowling alley was built in the late 1960s and early 1970s. After the bowling alley closed, Burris said, a plumbing company initially bought the property for its plumbing supplies but that plan didn’t work out because of city code restrictions.

After Doc and Andy Burris bought the site, they met with Station 300, a bowling alley and recreation center in Bluffton, about the possibility of building something similar in Beaufort but an agreement couldn’t be reached. “Fun parks,” Doc Burris said, have never really caught on in Beaufort.

“Then we had the challenge of redevelopment of a dilapidated structure to meet codes and that’s what we did and that’s why it was approved,” Burris said. “It’s a community center. It’s not a self-storage facility. The main focus is Ribaut Station. It’s a lifestyle community.”

The property owners are now taking applications from tenants for the commercial space, which can be built to order, with construction is set to begin by Nov. 1.

Residents have been eager to find out what will be built on the property since the bowling alley closed, Doc Burris said. “Oh my goodness,” he said, noting people drive through the parking lot daily.

The father-and-son team, who have redeveloped other run-down properties in the area, originally planned a self storage but that use became secondary once the developers found out about the city’s code requirements, Doc Burris said.

In Beaufort, self storage is only allowed in a T-5UC zone — where the bowling alley property is located — if it is part of a multi-story building located 300 feet behind a road, or if a liner building is constructed between the storage and the street, said Curt Freese, the city’s community development director. The addition of the second-story apartments and the liner buildings changed the project into a mixed use plan, which now meets city code, he said.

The existing bowling alley building will be expanded to allow for the apartments. The commercial office space be located within ‘”liner” buildings that will front Firehouse Lane and Ribaut Lane. Liner buildings are retail or business structures built to camouflage an unsightly use.

Doc Burris says the architecture planned in the project will make the buildings “look like a bank.” Landscaping around the facility including the planting of trees will also spruce up the property, he says.

The Community Bowling Center closed in August of 2021. At the time of its closure, it had been owned by Love House Ministries, a church on Parris Island Gateway. The closure of the center, which also offered laser tag, left no other general public bowling options north of the Broad River. Bowling centers are located at Marine Corps Recruit Depot on Parris Island in Port Royal and at the Marine Corps Air Station in Beaufort. Civilians can bowl at those locations but only if they have an affiliation with the base.

The church, which owned the property for eight years, put the property up for sale following a sharp decline in business after the COVID-19 pandemic.

The approval of the personal storage project in Beaufort comes as the nearby town of Port Royal is trying to reign in personal storage units after some residents complained the area has too many fronting major corridors in the town. The Town Council earlier this month unanimously approved an ordinance that would remove personal storage facilities as a permitted use inside the so-called “T4 Neighborhood Center-Open Zoning District.”

Another large personal storage project is getting underway on Ribaut and Waddell roads in Port Royal, just down the road from the Beaufort project on the old bowling alley property. It was approved prior to the town’s recent storage unit restrictions. That project calls for 100,000 square feet of self storage.