Charleston Regional Development Alliance

Berkeley, Charleston & Dorchester Counties

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Ambitious redevelopment project announced for Charleston

Aug. 1, 2003
Charleston Post and Courier
By John P. McDermott
Nearly 300 acres of some of the most polluted industrial sites in the Charleston Neck area will be cleaned up for development of high-density housing, businesses and parks in what would be the largest privately funded revitalization project ever proposed in the city.

Real estate developer Robert L. Clement III heads two affiliated investment groups that are spending $22 million to buy the 288 acres north and south of the Rosemont neighborhood.

The mostly vacant industrial properties stretch from the former Roper North Hospital site to a narrow tract just west of Ashepoo Street.

All but two of the 10 parcels already have been paid for in cash, Clement said Thursday in announcing the project. Much of the land, including the infamous Kopper's wood-treatment site, is on the Ashley River.

"It's viewed by some as the last frontier in the city of Charleston," said Genoa Shaw Johnson, deputy director of the city's Department of Housing and Community Development.

The remediation and revitalization is expected to take at least five years and require tens of millions of dollars in additional investment once the first planning phase is completed in December.

The project is seen by supporters as a partial solution for a number of hot-button planning concerns in Charleston, from the costly spread of urban sprawl to the isolation of Rosemont, one of the city's oldest black neighborhoods. It also is expected to provide new job opportunities in the Neck.

"It would achieve many things," Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. said. Representatives of Ashley I and Ashley II, the investment groups that are buying the property, along with community leaders and city officials, have been discussing the proposed redevelopment with nearby residents for several months.
They also have met with conservation and preservation groups.

"I think we all envision a dense, urban development," Clement said.

Single-family homes are not part of the plan. "This is not suburbia," he said.

While the details have yet to be worked out, Clement said the project potentially could include thousands of housing units, namely apartments, condominiums and townhouses for all income levels, as well as office space and buildings for other commercial uses.

The noted urban planning firm of Shook Kelley is working with Clement. By using "new urbanism" development principles, the Charlotte-based company expects to set aside 130 acres for open space and wetlands, said Terry Shook, co-founder and principal.

The new urbanism movement began in the late 1980s, around the same time as architects Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk unveiled their design for Seaside, a new beachfront town in the Florida Panhandle that is among its most famous examples. Seaside also was the setting for the movie, "The Truman Show."

In a practical sense, New Urbanism aims to create neighborhoods where homes come in all sizes and types, from efficiency apartments to larger single-family homes. The houses then are mixed in with stores, offices and civic buildings. Lots tend to be smaller, not only to leave more land for parks and other public spaces and but also to reduce distances so it's easier to walk.

Neighboring communities will be invited to help shape how the land is redeveloped. The city has scheduled a series of public workshops beginning next month to help it sketch out a redevelopment plan for the entire Neck, not just the Clement properties.

"It's more like a skeleton," said City Councilman Jimmy Gallant, whose district includes the Neck. Starting next month, Gallant said, "we'll sit down with residents and start to put some meat on it."

The planning phase is expected to be completed by December. Zoning issues then will resolved. After that, parcels will be sold off to private companies for development, Clement said.

The Neck is a flat, narrow expanse of land bounded by the Ashley and Cooper rivers, the Charleston peninsula and North Charleston. In the late 19th century, the area was the phosphate fertilizer capital of the world, providing jobs for thousands of workers. By the 1970s, the industry had all but vanished, partly because of stiff competition, partly because of growing concerns over the environmental mess it had created.

Since then, the so-called brownfields stigma of the land had scared off most private investment.

Clement said the $20 million environmental cleanup by the largest of the former landowners, Pittsburgh-based Beazer East Inc., is nearly complete. The Beazer East property, also known as the Kopper's site, and six adjoining parcels were classified as federal Superfund sites in 1994. Their cleanup began in 1996.

Only a few of the other properties that Clement and his backers acquired will require extensive environmental mitigation, and those will be fully remediated before they can be developed, he said. Still, the cost of doing so could run into the tens of millions of dollars, Clement said.

"The good news is that there are a lot of responsible parties on the line for it," he said.

The fact that the property was acquired by basically one buyer is encouraging because it "brings the land back to the community," said Slade Gleaton, Charleston director of The Trust for Public Land, a conservation group that focuses on urban parks and open space.

"This typically would be done piecemeal," Gleaton said.

Clement downplayed comparisons of his proposal to the Noisette Co.'s redevelopment plan for North Charleston, which has run into snags with government agencies over land transfers at the former Charleston Naval Base. Unlike Noisette, Clement said, his project involves no public funding or public property.

Clement said city housing officials approached him about redeveloping the Neck's industrial land about five years ago. He was skeptical at first.

"All I could see was five stories of shipping containers on every single side," he said.

Clement said he realized the potential of the blighted area and its central location later, while trying to persuade a company to open a call center in the Neck. "All of the sudden, it clicked," he said.

Gallant was called in to help quell any suspicions that residents of Rosemont and nearby neighborhoods might have. Historically, Gallant said, the city's black residents have borne the brunt of major construction projects, including Interstate 26, the Gaillard Municipal Auditorium and the new Cooper River bridge. In this case, Clement said no residents will be displaced.

"What's happened in the past is that people in poorer areas get taken advantage of in big economic development deals," he said. "We wanted to make sure that didn't occur."

Gallant introduced Clement to David Rivers and other members of the nonprofit Greater Charleston Empowerment Corp., which has been working for years to redevelop the Neck. They have collaborated ever since to win the trust of residents.

"This was not something where Mr. Clement walked out there, bought it and said, 'I'm going to do this,' " said the Rev. Sidney Davis, the group's chairman.

In addition to the broader tax and population bases it will create for the city, the project will yield other benefits, supporters said. Utilities already serve the area, and an old rail line that runs from the Neck to upper King Street could one day provide public transportation and reduce traffic.

"I see this as a sprawl buster," Clement said.

Others said the project will rejuvenate Rosemont. Dana Beach, the executive director of the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League, said the neighborhood is served by an incoherent road system and, as a result, has been "ignored in a way."

"This is a tremendous opportunity to reintegrate this part of the city back into the city," Beach said.

The Neck project is the second notable revitalization effort that Clement is taking on. He recently announced the purchase of a 4.2-acre contiguous tract stretching from King to Meeting streets near Spring Street. Dubbed "Midtown," that site also will be redeveloped with community input.

Because the two projects are two miles from each other and are connected by a rail line, "opportunities exist to knit the projects together, creating a new gateway into the commercial district," Clement said.
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