The flyers are gone, but the nails are still there. For years the live oak at the corner of Waverly Road and Petigru Drive served as Pawleys Island's community bulletin board, and the old hardware still covers its bark. It stands about 6 feet off the pavement. Its critical root zone reaches roughly 25 feet from the trunk, and cars pulling in at the corner vegetable stand drive across those roots.
In SCDOT's newest drawing, the tree sits in the middle of a roundabout.
The public comment window for that plan closed October 15. If the arguments sound like 2017, that's because the engineering is almost exactly where it was then. The community's position has moved, though, and SCDOT has said plainly that it will listen to the community.
What 2017 settled
The roundabout first came up for funding nearly a decade ago. Its purpose was to fix an offset intersection, where the north and south halves of Petigru Drive meet Waverly Road at different points. The project manager at the time told the community that neither design under consideration would save the oak. The public answered clearly. As the Coastal Observer recounted this month, only eight of more than 100 comments supported the roundabout, and DOT delayed the project.
People with real influence tried to find a middle path. Sel Hemingway, then the county administrator and now a member of the DOT Commission, paid for an arborist study by Total Tree Care and proposed moving the circle off the tree. Gov. Henry McMaster told state Sen. Stephen Goldfinch he would look into possible solutions. Moving the roundabout had a price tag, however. The original project was budgeted at $1.8 million, and the extra right of way needed to shift it was estimated at $4 million.
So the 2017 question came out simple. The community could have the roundabout or the tree, and it chose the tree.
Same tree, different community
The engineering answer hasn't changed in nine years. Brett McCutchan, the current DOT project manager, said at the October 1 drop-in that some trees "are going to have to be removed. They're in the way of the improvement." Chris Clark, transportation director at the Waccamaw Council of Governments, told the Coastal Observer that "whether it's a roundabout or an improved intersection, it's my understanding there will be an impact."
Almost everything around the engineering has changed.
| 2017 | 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Pawleys Island Civic Club | Opposed, because of the oak | Supports a roundabout, and hopes the tree can stay |
| Public comment | 8 of 100+ in favor | Majority at the drop-in skeptical; outcome pending |
| Funding | $1.15 million allocated, then shelved | Back at the top of the GSATS intersection list as of 2024 |
| Crash picture | Pre-project baseline | 8 of 13 crashes from 2020 to 2024 happened in 2024 |
| Oak's fate under DOT's plan | Removed | Inside the center circle, with four other oaks in the right of way |
The biggest shift is the Civic Club. In 2024, club president Vincent Davis sent a letter supporting the project to the Grand Strand Area Transportation Study, the group that hands out federal road money across a three-county region. That spring, the GSATS policy committee put the roundabout at the top of its list of intersection improvements. Davis's support came with a condition. "If they can work around that tree, there would be no issues with the roundabout," he told the Coastal Observer in August 2024. The club asked whether a smaller roundabout might fit the space. GSATS executive director Mark Hoeweler replied that DOT would not do the project without removing the tree.
County Council Member Stella Mercado, who led the push to get the project back on the GSATS list, said this fall that she believes the project now has community support.
That leaves a 2026 position of "roundabout, but keep the oak," and the agency building it says that combination doesn't exist.
The case SCDOT is making in its own numbers
DOT hired Kimley-Horn in March to study the intersection. These are the figures it brought to the drop-in at Waccamaw Intermediate School:
- Traffic today: about 6,700 trips a day on Waverly Road and about 4,000 on Petigru Drive.
- Delay today: the worst wait is 25.1 seconds for southbound Petigru drivers at midday, which rates a D. Waverly rates an A.
- Delay in 2050: without changes, the southbound Petigru wait is projected to pass four and a half minutes. With a roundabout, the projection is 10 seconds.
- Crashes: 13 recorded from January 1, 2020 through December 31, 2024, with eight of them in 2024 alone. Six involved injuries, none were fatal, and five were angle crashes, the type that tends to cause more injuries.
- Projected effect: officials expect injury crashes to fall by 88 percent with a roundabout. McCutchan pointed to 32 conflict points at a four-legged intersection, compared with eight in a roundabout.
The 2024 reporting counted crashes over a different period. Since the roundabout was first proposed, there had been 16 collisions at Waverly and Petigru, according to state Department of Public Safety data. That was the most of any intersection on Waverly Road; the intersection with Highway 17 had 14.
Residents at the meeting suggested other fixes. A traffic signal or a four-way stop came up, but the study found the intersection doesn't carry enough traffic to justify a signal. DOT also showed a second design that adds left-turn lanes on every approach. It would cost more, need more right of way, and affect two homes. It also leaves the landmark oak in the middle of the reconfigured intersection. Both designs add sidewalks.
What people said at the drop-in
The Coastal Observer reported that most attendees who came to learn about the plan disagreed with it. A Litchfield man summed it up as "If it ain't broke don't fix it." A Heritage Plantation resident who uses the intersection three or four times a week said that drivers in an area with few roundabouts may struggle with one. McCutchan answered that people adjust to new traffic patterns "fairly quickly."
Neighbors who grew up near the tree talked about history. One longtime resident who lives just down Petigru told the paper the oak is "part of the history," and noted that "people are still putting posters up there." Sen. Goldfinch still backs saving it. "There are always ways to work around it," he said. "They're what give our community character."
McCutchan said most of the concerns he has heard are about the landmark oak and the trees around the intersection, the same concern raised in 2017.
The bike path is part of the equation
The roundabout is tied to another project the Civic Club has pushed for: extending the Bike the Neck path along Waverly Road. In 2024, crews were finishing the last stretch from Petigru Drive to Highway 17, replacing a sidewalk from the 1980s and connecting to the path that runs south to the South Causeway. A further extension north along Petigru Drive to Martin Luther King Road is on the county's bike path master plan. Mercado has said the roundabout will tie in with that work.
That link helps explain how a group that once opposed the project came to support it. A safer crossing at Waverly and Petigru helps the path network the club has spent years building. "We are first and foremost for safety for our community," Davis said in 2024. "A roundabout will be safer."
Where it goes from here
The cost figures depend on which report you read. The October 1 Coastal Observer story put the total at $5.8 million, including $4.75 million for construction. The October 9 story listed $400,000 for engineering, $450,000 for right of way and $2.35 million for construction. The schedule in the later report runs like this:
- Now: preliminary design. The October 15 comment deadline has passed.
- Spring: if the project goes ahead with community support, DOT buys about 0.4 acre of right of way.
- Summer 2028: construction would begin.
Step two hinges on whether the project has community support, and DOT has said what happens if it doesn't. "A potential option is we do nothing," McCutchan said. The Civic Club's Davis said it will be important for DOT to listen to the community. Updates will be posted on SCDOT's project page for the Waverly Road at Petigru Drive intersection, which has a follow button for email notices.
We drive past that oak too, and we'll be watching for DOT's next update. If you have questions about how road projects like this one or the planned Highway 17 work could change your part of the Waccamaw Neck, the Taylor Keenan Team is glad to talk it through. Start your Lowcountry search, or just start the conversation. Contact our team today.
