Charleston Regional Development Alliance

Berkeley, Charleston & Dorchester Counties

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Atlantic Southeast Ballet to move onto the former Charleston Naval Base

Jul. 1, 2003
Charleston Post and Courier
North Charleston, the Lowcountry's historic industrial hub, has landed a new corporate citizen, the Atlantic Southeast Ballet, a move that city leaders are tutu happy about.

The ballet, a professional touring group that hits 30 cities across six southern states, is moving onto the former Charleston Naval Base, converting a 15,000-square-foot machine shop into studios, rehearsal rooms and offices.

Gordon Crowder, the artistic director and chief executive officer of the nonprofit, said it was a combination of cheap rent and a great location in the heart of the Lowcountry that led the group to the base.

"It was a nice marriage," said Crowder, a Canadian dancer who runs the ballet with his wife, Susanne Crowder-Puerschel. "I look at North Charleston as the hub of everything."

Many city leaders view the arrival of the ballet, which features about 80 employees from 12 countries, as part of North Charleston's continuing renaissance, much of it centered on the historic Park Circle community off the northern tip of the base.

The area has come into focus in recent years because it lies at the heart of the Noisette Project, the redevelopment of 300 acres on the base and about 2,700 in surrounding neighborhoods.

Noisette CEO John Knott said art, in the form of architecture, museums and performing space, is a priority in the 20-year project that calls for the addition of 3,000 residential units and 1.5 million square feet of commercial space at the base.

Preliminary plans, he said, are for the creation of a performing arts center, not like the one the city operates on Montague Avenue near the coliseum, but a smaller, more intimate hall aimed at ballet, symphony and opera. The multi-use facility will be joined by a museum, where Knott said he envisions overflow exhibits from the Gibbes Museum of Art's permanent collection, some of it in storage, could be displayed.

"Everybody knows Noisette has made a major commitment to the arts," said Knott, adding that his teams have studied the layout and architecture of such famous cities as Florence, Italy, to gather ideas for how to develop the base. "We intend to work very hard on long-term affordability issues for artists."

Noisette is not the only group working to promote arts on the city's south side. North Charleston, which in 2000 won the state's prestigious Elizabeth O'Neill Verner Award, the Governor's Award for the Arts, is renovating old barracks at the base for artist studios.

Marty Besancon, the city's cultural arts director, said crews are putting the finishing touches on the $200,000 renovations in time to open this fall. The barracks will have about 7,000 square feet divided into 10 rooms for use as studios and classroom space. Fees have not yet been set, she added.

"I have got a waiting list of people interested in studio space," Besancon said. "We are not limiting ourselves. This is a multi-disciplined space."

To encourage private development in the arts off the base, the city created a new zoning category aimed at allowing heavy-equipment craftsmen, such as blacksmiths, to open studios in places like the Olde Village. One of those already in place is glass artist Sally Leydic, who needed the special zoning designation for her equipment, which includes a furnace filled with about 250 pounds of molten glass.

Leydic, who has the distinction of being North Charleston's first resident artist in the Olde Village, opened her studio two years ago on East Montague in the city's two-block stretch that resembles downtown.

"When I moved back to Charleston three years ago, I started looking for property to buy from Wadmalaw to McClellanville," she said. "This area has the most inexpensive retail and commercial space in the area."

Leydic, who bought her East Montague studio, purchased a house earlier this year in Park Circle. She isn't alone in recognizing the lure of the area. She said a friend and fellow artist, blacksmith Sean Ahern, recently opened a studio nearby.

"There are great deals," she added. "It's convenient to everywhere. People think of North Charleston and think of Rivers Avenue, Ashley Phosphate Road and traffic. I can be downtown in less than 10 minutes."

Local real estate broker Bill Forrest said business has been hopping in the Park Circle area, with more people recognizing the charm of the historic neighborhood and Olde Village retail area, now home to a popular new Irish pub, Madra Rua. Forrest, who is a neighbors of the Crowders, recently helped about 30 of the ballet dancers, many from Europe, find homes to rent in the neighborhood.

The addition of the ballet goes hand in hand with the city's future goals, said Councilman Kurt Taylor, whose district includes the base.

"It shows we are coming a long way and the quality of life issues that we have talked about so much are coming to bear," he said. "We have got the facilities. We have the people. We have the location in the Lowcountry to be the center of some development in the arts."
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