Walk the promenade along Murray Boulevard this month and it feels done in a way it hasn't in years. No orange fencing. No detour signs sending you up King Street. Just a wide, raised walkway running from White Point Garden west toward the Ashley River, with dog walkers and cyclists moving past new landscaped medians the way they did before any of this started.
That's not an illusion. The Low Battery Restoration Project, the one that closed lanes and rerouted foot traffic around your neighborhood for the better part of seven years, officially wrapped with a ribbon-cutting at White Point Garden on February 18, 2026. Mayor William Cogswell and Councilman Mike Seekings, who has represented the district for years and pushed hard for the work, were there. So was Gulf Stream Construction president Mark Hylton, who told a reporter afterward that he'd had less gray hair when the project started. The mood, by most accounts, was closer to a block party than a government press conference.
Here's what most residents don't realize: that ribbon-cutting wasn't the end of construction on the Battery. It was the end of one project. A second, considerably larger one is already moving through design, and its first phase lands on a stretch of the peninsula you probably walk every week without thinking of it as a construction zone.
What Actually Changed on Murray Boulevard
The Low Battery job began in 2019 under then-Mayor John Tecklenburg, prompted by storm surge from Hurricane Matthew that had flowed over the barrier in 2016. It ran in four phases instead of the five originally planned and came in slightly under its $71 million budget, funded largely through the city's hospitality and accommodations taxes rather than property tax revenue.
What that money bought, in practical terms for anyone who lives South of Broad:
- Nearly 5,000 feet of seawall strengthened and a 12-foot promenade raised to roughly match the High Battery's elevation of about eight and a half feet above sea level
- New landscaped medians and a traffic-calming table along Murray Boulevard
- Roughly 1,100 feet of new storm drainage, plus tide valves designed to keep water from backing up into the stormwater system
- ADA-accessible ramps and ratios of curb cuts that weren't there before, useful for strollers as much as wheelchairs
- Fewer parking spaces than existed before construction. The final phase alone eliminated close to 70 spots along Murray Boulevard to widen the pedestrian walkway; only about 40 came back once the dust settled
That last point is worth sitting with if you park on Murray Boulevard regularly. The tradeoff was deliberate. City stormwater director Matt Fountain has said the goal was to tie the roadway more seamlessly into White Point Garden itself, which meant giving up a full lane of parking to gain sidewalk width and park access. It's a net loss of parking and a net gain of usable public space, and which side of that trade matters more to you probably depends on whether you're walking the dog or hosting out-of-town guests who drove down.
Two Different Projects Wearing the Same Name
Ask five neighbors whether "the Battery construction" is over and you'll likely get five confident yeses. That's understandable. For years, "Battery construction" has been shorthand for whatever orange barrier happened to be blocking your usual route. But the project that just finished and the project now entering design are not the same undertaking, and treating them as one is going to cause some genuine confusion later this year.
The Low Battery Restoration was a city-led repair job: fix a century-old, structurally failing seawall along Murray Boulevard before it failed outright. It's done.
The Battery Extension, formally the Charleston Peninsula Coastal Storm Risk Management Project, is something else entirely. It's a partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that's been in the works since a 2018 feasibility study, and its ambition is much larger: extending the city's existing High and Low Batteries around roughly eight miles of the peninsula's perimeter to create a continuous flood barrier. The federal government is covering about two-thirds of construction costs, with Charleston responsible for an estimated $455 million of its own. City Council signed a formal design agreement with USACE in December 2025, unlocking $20 million to begin engineering and environmental review.
As Cogswell put it at the February ribbon-cutting, standing in the same park where the Low Battery project started:
"This is just the beginning."
He wasn't being sentimental. He was describing a second, bigger project that was already moving.
Where the Next Construction Zone Actually Lands
Here's the part that matters if your daily loop includes the eastern side of the peninsula. Rather than starting where flooding is worst, along low-lying Lockwood Drive on the Ashley River side, the Corps and the city chose to begin the Battery Extension's first phase on a shorter, simpler stretch between the High Battery and Waterfront Park, roughly from East Bay Street to Adgers Wharf.
That segment includes reworking Hazel Parker Playground and its adjoining dog park, the small green space near the Carolina Yacht Club that a lot of South of Broad dog owners treat as their default stop on the Cooper River side, especially when Colonial Lake or the full Battery loop feels like too much on a weeknight. The plan also adds a new gate to allow access to the Charleston Harbor Pilots building and the residence at 2 Concord Street, the former Navy degaussing station.
The reasoning for starting here instead of Lockwood is straightforward, even if the optics raised some eyebrows locally. It's a shorter length, a simpler design, and an early cost estimate under $40 million, which makes it a project the city can actually afford to start now while the far more complicated Lockwood phase, which envisions an offshore rainwater impoundment in the Ashley River, works through years of additional design and permitting.
None of this is imminent in the way the Low Battery closures were. The Corps and city are still in the preconstruction, engineering, and design phase that began in fall 2025, and a Post and Courier report from late July 2026 suggested construction could realistically begin as soon as 2027. A meaningful piece of that timeline depends on Charleston County voters. Cogswell is asking the county to dedicate $225 million from a transportation sales tax referendum on this November's ballot toward the Extension's local funding match.
What This Means for Your Walk This Fall
For now, the takeaway is simple: the loop you've missed for years is back. Murray Boulevard to White Point Garden to East Battery Street toward Rainbow Row is fully walkable again, wider and higher than before, with ramps that make it easier to push a stroller or navigate with a cane than it's been in decades.
The dog park by Hazel Parker Playground is not going anywhere this fall or likely even this winter. But it's no longer a permanent fixture on the map either. Once design work firms up and the funding question gets resolved at the ballot box in November, that corner of the neighborhood, not Murray Boulevard, becomes the next place you'll see barriers go up. If you've gotten used to a familiar route with your dog or your morning coffee, it's worth building in some flexibility before the next phase of construction starts affecting that stretch near the water.
The Battery has always been part fortification, part park, part neighborhood edge. It's also, apparently, part relay race. One leg just finished. The baton is already moving to the next one.
If you're thinking about what any of this means for a home along the Battery or elsewhere South of Broad, from flood resilience to how these public projects tend to shape long-term property values in historic waterfront neighborhoods, William Means has spent decades watching this exact stretch of Charleston change one seawall at a time. Reach out when you're ready to talk specifics.
