Rosemont in Charleston’s Neck area truly is between a rock and a hard place, squeezed by challenges like flooding, an accident-prone chemical plant and gentrification. In the midst of this is a January election in which most of the community’s neighborhood association will be replaced.
When new members are seated next year, the Rosemont Neighborhood Association is poised to receive nearly $1 million in federal, state and city grants through the non-profit Lowcountry Alliance for Model Communities (LAMC) to mitigate threats from sea level rise, storm water flooding and pollution.
To release the money, however, Rosemont must first overcome the internal challenge of motivating residents to attend community meetings to guide the process on how the money is spent on environmental and safety programs, said LAMC’s CEO Rodly Millet.
“I’ve been talking about these programs since last spring, but I am not sure that most of the residents are aware of what is being planned,” he told the Charleston City Paper.
In the meantime, Rosemont’s estimated 275 residents have the unenviable existence of being trapped in the Charleston Neck area between the Lanxess chemical plant, which residents say emits a rotten-egg odor, and the long-planned Magnolia project, a tightly packed residential and commercial community expected to bring thousands of new residents to Rosemont’s doorstep. Magnolia’s developers plan to break ground next year.
The association is scheduled to meet Dec. 2 to take nominations for officers before a planned Jan. 9 election. Association president Nancy Button, who was elected in 2008, is not expected to seek re-election. Button was not available for comment.
Still recovering but with a new problem
Rosemont Neighborhood Association has not fully recovered from the pandemic after it limited in-person meetings, which contributed to a decline in participation, said the association’s parliamentarian and Rosemont resident Arti Edwards.
The association’s contentious meetings before the pandemic also led some residents to lose interest in the neighborhood’s problems, said Edwards, who hasn’t decided if he will continue to serve on the volunteer board.
Jennifer Curry, who moved to Rosemont in 2019, is the association’s co-secretary. She maintained that Button is not the reason for the lack of interest in community affairs.
“I’ve worked very closely with Ms. Button and, yes, she is a big personality, but she has the biggest heart for her community,” Curry said. “She talks with compassion, and she will respect you, if you come with respect.”
Once a quaint all-Black community of modest homes, Rosemont gradually lost some of its luster as older residents died and their children moved away.
Now the mostly Black community with about a dozen White and Latino residents shows its age with vacant, overgrown lots and abandoned houses. Large red X’s tag a few empty dwellings as unsafe to live in.
The community escaped losing some of its homes when the S.C. Department of Transportation (SCDOT) canceled plans to build an Interstate 26 off ramp through the community to the new S.C. Ports Authority terminal in North Charleston. Instead, the SCDOT built another route, along with a tall sound barrier to buffer the roar of truck traffic.
The sound barrier, however, had an unanticipated impact — unexpected flooding. During heavy rains, water rolls down an embankment against the wall, soaking some lawns in ankle-deep water. It is a new headache caused by a clogged ditch along the barrier, residents said.
Walking through Rosemont
The first-time flooding problem was among the issues discussed Oct. 2 when Herbert Maybank, the association’s community liaison to LAMC, led Elizabeth Dieck, Charleston Mayor William Cogswell’s chief of staff, and others on a walking tour of the community.
Maybank said he’s frustrated SCDOT has not committed to a plan to clean the ditches to prevent flooding, which didn’t occur before the sound barrier was installed.
In an email to the City Paper, Hannah Robinson, SCDOT’s media relations manager wrote: “SCDOT has cleared the vegetation in the primary ditch behind the sound wall on the Interstate.”
Edwards said the ditch remains clogged with dirt and weeds.
Maybank said that during the tour with Dieck, and at a Sept. 9 meeting with Cogswell, the mayor said Rosemont is “a priority” to help improve the community’s quality of life. At that meeting, the mayor reportedly assigned Dieck to tour Rosemont, Maybank said.
Dieck didn’t respond to a City Paper email request for comment.
Possible candidates
Maybank, who grew up in Rosemont, said the association needs a president, and he will accept a nomination if no one else volunteers to run for the office.
“The nominations need to be filled so we can have a functioning government in the Rosemont community. There is much work to be done,” said Maybank, who served in the U.S. Air Force and is retired from the building trades and mental health and drug addiction services.
Rosemont was also the boyhood home for the Rev. Christopher X. Buggs, who said he is being encouraged to run for the presidency because he has public administration and urban planning experience in Atlanta.
Buggs said that if he runs and is elected, he would lead the association for six months to train younger residents to take charge.
The Magnolia Project is a continuation of advancing gentrification up the Charleston peninsula, said Buggs, associate pastor of the New Bethlehem Baptist Church on Wadmalaw Island. “Progress will only be defined by how many people it does not hurt,” he said.
Long-term planning for Rosemont, Buggs explained, should include a study to assess the Lanxess plant’s impact on the environment and the health of the community’s residents, especially the elderly.
After two accidental chemical spills in 2023, Rosemont residents became increasingly concerned about the plant’s safety. A June 17, 1991, explosion at the plant killed nine workers and injured dozens. At that time, Albright & Wilson owned the plant. The German-owned plant handles toxic materials used to make agrochemicals.
How to spend the money
Millet said state and federal agencies and the city of Charleston have approved grants for multi-year plans for a variety of environmental and flood-control studies in Rosemont.
Some of the money will also be spent in Union Heights, Accabee, Liberty Hill and the Chicora-Cherokee communities, he said.
The plan also includes training to show a new Rosemont association board how to conduct meetings, understand their roles as officers and how to help the community identify disaster risks. LAMC will lead that training, Millet said.
Implementing the plans, he stressed, will require “community residents at [meetings] so they can tell us what the issues are. We need leadership to be involved because the grants require citizen participation.”
A new board with racial diversity might be what Rosemont needs, Edwards said. “I believe if we have White people involved, we’d get more feedback from the city.”
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