Downtown Hilton Head Island, SC

• Where: Coligny Circle, where Pope Avenue meets North Forest Beach Drive, 29928
• What is there: Coligny Plaza, the beach, Lowcountry Celebration Park and the Pope Avenue restaurants
• Parking: Free lots at the plaza and the beach park
• Without a car: The free Breeze Trolley, in season

Where Is Downtown Hilton Head?

Downtown Hilton Head, in the sense most visitors mean, is the Coligny area: the few blocks at the south end of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, around Coligny Circle, the roundabout where Pope Avenue ends at the beach. There is no main street of old storefronts and no courthouse square. The island was built from the late 1950s as a set of planned resort communities, most of them gated, with shopping centres strung along the main road between them, so the town never grew a centre in the usual way.

Coligny became the stand-in because it has what a downtown has: a lot of shops and restaurants in one place you can walk around, a public beach at the end of the street and people out in the evening. Coligny Plaza opened there in 1956 with the island’s first grocery store, and it is still the heart of it. Ask a local for downtown and this is where they will send you, though some will say Shelter Cove, which is covered below.

What Is in Downtown Hilton Head Island

Coligny Plaza

Most of downtown Hilton Head’s shopping is in the plaza: more than 60 shops, restaurants and bars around open walkways and a lagoon, most of them independent. There are swimwear, surf and T-shirt shops, gift and candy stores, a toy store, a Piggly Wiggly, the Coligny Theatre and a string of ice cream counters, plus seafood, breakfast places, a daiquiri bar and live music. Our Coligny Plaza restaurants and shops at Coligny Plaza pages list every one.

Pope Avenue

The road into Coligny from Sea Pines Circle is the other half of downtown Hilton Head, lined with restaurants in small strip centres within a few minutes’ walk of the beach. On the corner of Lagoon Road, Nakama does sushi across from the park, and Capri Pizza is on Lagoon Road facing the plaza. Heading back up Pope Avenue are Plantation Cafe (on Pope Avenue since 1974), Watusi for coffee, Hinchey’s for Chicago food and sports, Amigos and Al’s Aloha Kitchen at number 70, and Side Hustle Brewing and The Bank, a beer garden in a former bank, at number 59.

The beach and the parks

Coligny Beach Park, across the circle from the plaza, is the island’s most popular public beach, with restrooms, showers, a splash fountain, swings and lifeguards in season. Next to it on Pope Avenue, Lowcountry Celebration Park opened in 2020 on about ten acres with an adventure playground built around a pirate ship, a seasonal splash pad, a lawn and pavilion, and the Sandbox Children’s Museum. Our playgrounds guide covers it with the island’s others.

If you are picturing a seaside boardwalk with arcades and rides, downtown Hilton Head does not have one. The boardwalks at Coligny are the wooden walkways that carry you from the beach park over the dunes to the sand.

After dark

Evenings are when Coligny feels most like a downtown. On the beach itself, the Tiki Hut at the Beach House, open since 1977, is the island’s only beachfront bar with live music, and Pool Bar Jim’s is a short walk up the beach at the Sea Crest. In the plaza, the Frosty Frog, Big Bamboo and FISH have live music on many nights in season, and the ice cream lines stay long until the shops close.

Staying downtown

The hotels closest to the circle are the Beach House, on the oceanfront next to the beach park, and the Courtyard by Marriott on Pope Avenue. For a villa or house you can walk from, see our Coligny Beach rentals and the wider Forest Beach rentals pages. For a longer lease, there is no apartment complex at Coligny; our Hilton Head apartments guide lists the nearest, including WaterWalk beside Shelter Cove Towne Centre.

Parking and Getting Around

Parking downtown is free. The plaza has its own surface lots, and the beach park’s lot at 102 Pope Avenue is the only town beach lot with no charge, no permit and no time limit. Both fill up on summer afternoons and evenings. On the busiest days the overflow is at the USCB campus, 1 Sandshark Drive, with a free shuttle to the beach on summer weekends; the Coligny Beach parking guide has the details.

Once you are there, everything is walkable: the plaza, the beach and the Pope Avenue restaurants are all within a few blocks, and one of the island’s bike paths runs along Pope Avenue. In season the free Breeze Trolley stops at the beach park (Stop 10) on its South Island Route, which runs between Coligny and Shelter Cove. Our getting around Hilton Head guide covers the rest.

Shelter Cove, the Other Hilton Head Downtown

The other place that gets called downtown is Shelter Cove, in the middle of the island on Broad Creek. The enclosed Mall at Shelter Cove stood there from 1988 until it was torn down in 2013 and rebuilt as Shelter Cove Towne Centre, an open-air centre with Belk, Kroger and a run of shops and restaurants, a park behind it with summer concerts, movie nights and a Saturday market, and the WaterWalk apartments beside it. The marina and its charter boats are across the road.

The two feel different. Coligny is the beach-and-ice-cream downtown, busy with visitors in flip-flops. Shelter Cove has the everyday shopping, a supermarket and a department store, plus dinner by the water and free events in the park. The trolley links them in season if you want to see both.

The Nearest Real Downtown: Old Town Bluffton

Hilton Head has no historic downtown. For a downtown in the traditional sense, with old streets, cottages and a church, cross the bridges to Old Town Bluffton, about 20 minutes from the island. Calhoun Street runs down to the May River past galleries and restaurants, and the Old Town restaurants are a good reason to go for dinner.