New pavilion at Port Royal Sound Maritime Center a ‘showstopper.’ Public helped fund it

Karl Puckett
·3 min read

A new 9,500-square-foot event venue has risen at the Port Royal Sound Foundation’s Dick and Sharon Stewart’s Maritime Center, a popular museum and research facility in Port Royal.

The Weezie Educational Pavilion will house educational programming and festivals hosted by the foundation. It also will be available for rent for private events.

There’s no other event venue like it in the region, said Jody Hayward, the foundation’s executive director. The pavilion seats up to 325 guests, has a catering kitchen and bathrooms, and is centrally located in the county on the banks of the Chechessee River.

“It’s a showstopper,” said Hayward, noting that the foundation fielded numerous inquiries from passersby on S.C. 170 during construction. “It’s like, ‘Wow. Look at that. What’s going on there?’”

The 9,500-square-foot Weezie Educational pavilion has opened at the Port Royal Sound Foundation’s Dick and Sharon Stewart Maritime Center, a museum and aquarium along S.C. 170 where the highway crosses the Chechessee River.
The 9,500-square-foot Weezie Educational pavilion has opened at the Port Royal Sound Foundation’s Dick and Sharon Stewart Maritime Center, a museum and aquarium along S.C. 170 where the highway crosses the Chechessee River.

The $3 million project, which included the construction of the pavilion and remodeling of office space in the Maritime Center, was funded by donations. The largest donations came from the Weezie Foundation, a private foundation run by a family with ties to the Lowcountry, and Beaufort County. Each contributed $500,000. The county money came from a local accommodation and hospitality grant in 2019.

Construction of the pavilion resulted in The Lemon Island Seafood Market, which was located next door to the Maritime Center, having to move its operations to a new location off of Highway 278 in Bluffton. Lemon Island Seafood, known for its fresh and local seafood, had been renting space from the Port Royal Sound Foundation for a Farmer’s Market, Hayward said.

The pavilion, Hayward said, will bring in additional traffic, which necessitated the need for more space.

”We wished it could have worked out that they could stay,” Hayward said.

The not-for-profit Port Royal Sound Foundation’s mission is education, conservation and research pertaining to the 1,600-square-mile Port Royal Sound, the ocean channel between Beaufort and Hilton Head Island that contains almost half of South Carolina’s salt marshes.

Keeping the Sound healthy, Hayward said, is critical.

“It’s why you are here,” Hayward said. “It covers over 50 percent of our county.”

The Maritime Center, which opened in 2014, is a free museum and aquarium that welcomes visitors and school children to learn about the Port Royal Sound. It is expected to draw 30,000 visitors in 2023.

In recent years, the foundation has started ramping up research efforts as well and plans to hire a research coordinator soon.

A new pavilion at the Dick and Sharon Stewart Maritime Center provides easy access to Port Royal Sound.
A new pavilion at the Dick and Sharon Stewart Maritime Center provides easy access to Port Royal Sound.

Usually, about 3,500 students visit the center annually as part of field trips, a number that the center has reached already this spring, Hayward said. With the Maritime Center “bursting at the seams,” Hayward said, the pavilion will serve as an outdoor classroom.

“This space is really going to expand our education programming,” Hayward said.

A new 9,500-square-foot event venue at the Maritime Center in Okatie Footprint seats up to 325 guests.
A new 9,500-square-foot event venue at the Maritime Center in Okatie Footprint seats up to 325 guests.

Located in the middle of the county, Hayward said, the center also is positioned to bring residents north and south of the Broad River together for conversations and meetings about health of the sound.

Connecting people to Port Royal Sound and its importance to the Lowcountry is the bottom line, Hayward said of the foundation’s work.

“We work hard every day to be a resource for the community,” Hayward said. “I know that sounds really fluffy and all that, but that’s really why we are here.”