Cainhoy and Huger residents who have seen how I-526 has changed their communities are issuing a stark warning if the freeway is extended across Johns and James islands: If you build it, you’ll get rampant development, a traffic deluge and life-changing “culture shock.”
“We have just absolutely been overwhelmed with traffic and wrecks. We now have a 24-hour vape shop” that attracts students after school, said MaeRe Chandler Skinner, a longtime resident of Cainhoy in lower Berkeley County. “It has been a culture shock!”
The quaint Wando River enclave settled in the early 1720s has become nearly encircled by development since the highway called the Mark Clark Expressway opened three decades ago. The community has “more development than you can shake a stick at,” Skinner said. “There is not going to be a tree standing on Clements Ferry Road by the time [developers] get through.”
Decades from now, James and Johns islanders might voice a similar lament if an 8.5-mile southern loop to the interstate is built at a cost of $2.3 billion to connect it with the James Island Connector and the Charleston peninsula.
The S.C. General Assembly’s Joint Bond Review Committee on Dec. 5 approved $75 million in preliminary funding to the S.C. Transportation Infrastructure Bank for the first phase of the highway’s extension.
The new funding will be combined with $75 million pledged by the Charleston County Council toward the project. The decision puts taxpayers on the hook for $150 million for a road destined to alter the landscape and way of life for two Charleston County sea islands.
On Johns Island, some residents are resigned that not much can be done to stop the highway, said Cheryl Glover, lay leader of Johns Island Parish United Methodist Church on Bohicket Road. “It is hard to get folks to realize what is going to happen, if they don’t see it already happening.”
A long time in the making
The prospect of the Mark Clark Expressway’s southern loop has laid dormant for decades but now with additional funding, Cainhoy resident Sammy Sanders warns: “Don’t do it! Don’t let it happen!”
For the sake of Johns and James islands, “I had hoped that issue wasn’t going to come back up,” he said. “When you increase the number of people, you increase the difficulties.”
Glover said development on Johns Island has already caused traffic delays, and the extended expressway might be a regrettable solution to traffic congestion.
Sanders admits, however, that having more people in the area has brought some advantages to lower Berkeley County. Cainhoy’s marina now has dry stack storage for boats, he said. “We wouldn’t have a dry stack, if we didn’t have the houses.”
A housing boom in the Huger community brought better internet connections, said community advocate Vernelle Dickerson. Nevertheless, the growth in Huger also has meant more traffic, a smelly sewage pumping station in one development along S.C. 41 near the Huger post office and an erosion of the tranquil country lifestyle, she said.
“These people [come here] from the North and West say they want county living, then they want all the amenities of city living” which fuels more commercial development, she explained.
Lessons learned from battles fought
Before and after the Mark Clark Expressway connected North Charleston with Daniel Island, community leaders attended dozens of meetings with state officials and developers.
Skinner urged residents of James and Johns islands to “come up with a game plan, attend every meeting … and say your objections.”
Dickerson said to blunt some of the downside of development communities should demand what they want.
Fred Lincoln lives in the Jack Primus community near Cainhoy on land his great-grandfather purchased after emancipation. Lincoln said before the extension comes, property owners should decide how they can take advantage of the commercial and residential growth that could follow the highway.
When land speculators offer to buy property, Lincoln advises “don’t take the fast dollar. Those people who sold property [in the Cainhoy area] if they had to rethink it, I don’t think they’d do it.”
Landowners on James and Johns islands near the path of the coming highway, Lincoln explained, should rezone their land for commercial use and consider leasing their property instead of selling it to preserve the land for the next generation.
City Paper special projects editor Herb Frazier is the author of Behind God’s Back: Gullah Memories, Cainhoy, Wando, Huger, Daniel Island, St. Thomas Island, South Carolina.
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