‘Creative class’ will turn Navy base into urban gem

Slowly, steadily, you can see it happening. Artists and artisans are setting up shop on a piece of North Charleston turf that 13 years ago doomsayers pronounced dead when the Base Realignment and Closure Commission blew taps over it.

I’m talking about the former Charleston Naval Base. It’s been coming back to life—not that it was ever truly dead, thanks to the business-recruiting efforts of the Charleston Naval Complex Redevelopment Authority and the Charleston Marine Manufacturing Corp.—and a driving force behind this “resurrection” are folks who paint, craft and design things for a living.

As reported in the Business Journal’s Nov. 13 issue, lighting fixture design outfit The Urban Electric Co. will call the base home by end of the year and furniture designer Matt Decell, whose company is already located on the base, will be leasing space in his building to other designers seeking to make the Navy base their headquarters.

And thanks to the Noisette Co., which is redeveloping some 340 acres of the base, artists and fabric designers have established studios in the base’s 10 Storehouse Row address, also home to architects McMillan Smith & Partners and the Charleston Trident Homebuilders Association. The American College of the Building Arts occupies part of the building as well.

If this artsy activity keeps up, and all signs seem to show it will, the former Navy base, over time, could evolve into one of the most vibrant urban and cultural centers in the Southeast.

Southeast? Let’s get bold and say the East Coast. Heck, toss away trepidation and say east of the Mississippi. Care to go all the way and say the entire nation?

That’s how Noisette President and CEO John Knott sees it. Knott envisions the Navy Yard at Noisette becoming the nucleus of what he calls “the new American city”: North Charleston.

The creative industries cluster, a segment of our economy the Angelou Report said we need to develop, is developing indeed and playing a vital role in transforming the base into an exciting place to be.

No, it’s not there yet. More buildings need to be renovated, more space needs to be leased, some roads need fixing. It takes time—years, maybe decades—to build a city.

As artisans and artists move onto the base, restaurants are sure to follow. After all, interior designers shopping for handmade furniture, lighting fixtures, fabrics and other such items need to eat, too. So do folks searching for a nice painting or sculpture. Ditto for the artists and artisans who create these things.

And then lofts, apartments and condos start popping up, some retail shops come in, more studios and galleries arrive, perhaps a nightclub or two, maybe a theater here, some more offices there and—shazam!—you’ve got a thriving urban center attracting folks from all over the place.

I see the former Navy base evolving into something similar to New York City’s SoHo neighborhood. A lot of people said that about upper King Street when that corridor began its revitalization from a blighted area to a mostly retail-oriented design district. The SoHo comparison is more apt with the Navy base because the base has more of that gritty, city, industrial look than does upper King.

Here’s something else I see as I clean off my glasses and squint 20-some-odd years down the road. While the Charleston peninsula most likely will remain the area’s predominant tourist attraction, North Charleston, and particularly the 3,000-acre Noisette footprint, will become the fashionable address for the Lowcountry’s young professionals and creative class.

True, a whole lot of work remains to get the Navy base up to that level. But progress is happening, one studio and design-manufacturing shop at a time.