But with the closing and pending redevelopment of the Port of Port Royal, Port Royal is a town about to change.
"I remember when Isle of Palms was just an isle of palms and Mount Pleasant was a filling station," says David Kell, a homeowner in the town's Old Village and direct neighbor to the Port of Port Royal. "That's the transition point Port Royal is at now. This project is huge. It governs the future of the town."
Kell hopes the port redevelopment will give Beaux, his friendly Australian shepherd, some more walking space.
"I've seen the value of this house double in just the three years I've been here," Kell says from the living room of his three-bedroom, two-bath, Ninth Street home. "This is Charleston 35 years ago."
Gov. Mark Sanford signed legislation in September 2004 calling for the Port of Port Royal to be closed by the end of this year, and Tuesday, Ports Authority officials said their redevelopment plan for the property was finished.
But aside from the governor, no one outside of Charleston has seen the plan. Sanford reviewed the blueprint in December and a later revision but still reserves some criticism.
"How much open space, how much green space, how much open access to the water does the public have?" Port Royal Mayor Sam Murray says, echoing the governor's concerns. "It's been long overdue, and I'm looking forward to get (these questions) down."
Harry Butler, the Ports Authority board member spearheading the redevelopment, contacted Murray on Wednesday, but a date for town officials to see the plan hasn't been set.
"We don't have a firm date at the moment," Murray said, adding that he expects another call from Butler on Monday or Tuesday.
The state's redevelopment plan for the 40-acre port complex includes residential, commercial and ample public waterfront access, Butler said last week.
High hopes
In the dining room at Moondoggies Café on 10th Street, where rustic wood walls mimic a ship's interior, two Marines chat over sweet tea and sandwiches and a dozen older women in groups of twos and fours share stories. Some flip through a stack of photographs. Outside, just down the street, an 18-wheel semi rumbles at the port gate.
"If the state's plan comes anywhere close to the town's master plan, it will be real nice," says Jeff Harris, a co-owner in the new restaurant, which opened in April. "I know the town would like to keep with the Lowcountry architecture."
Part of the what stands on the port property today is decidedly not Lowcountry architecture.
At the end of London Avenue, an industrial building, the Port Royal Dry Stack Marina, stands several stories high, surrounded by a chain-link fence.
"The dry stack has been our sole contention because it blocks the view," says Murray. "It's a pretty large, huge building and 95 percent of the citizens were concerned with its location."
Members of the Port Royal Redevelopment Commission have said their first move will be tearing down the building. The Ports Authority built and owns the building.
The dry-stack business owner, Bobby Glover, who also owns Bluffton's Coastal Concrete -- once an importer at the Port of Port Royal -- could not be reached for comment for this story.
It's the type of business Port Royal officials don't want in town, but the Eleventh Street Dockside Restaurant on the other side of town, a privately owned building on Ports Authority owned land, many want to keep.
"This is what they want more of," Dockside owner Tom Oliva says of his restaurant. "They want more businesses and retail operation like ours."
Murray describes the restaurant, shrimp docks and seafood market as an integral part of the Old Village -- considered the area that runs up Paris Avenue from the port property to Ribaut Road and is bounded by the Beaufort River and Battery Creek -- and with better organization and some renovations envisions the area as a thriving "seafood village."
Oliva says that with or without redevelopment, his business is thriving and he can't imagine anything on the port property hurting it.
"Anything that gets more development down here is going to bring more people," he says. "People go where there are more things to do."