Development in downtown Charleston is, quite simply, out of control. And that’s after the city tried to slow it down a few years back.
The laissez-faire development environment in Charleston is killing its charm, its character. It is snarling traffic, interfering with existing businesses and changing the face of Charleston into something more befitting of a Disney resort than a historic community.
Just look at the massive Courier Square III development (thanks Post and Courier owners) in which four buildings in early stages of construction — including a 10-story edifice — will spew 1 million square feet of retail space, dining, apartments, a hotel and affordable housing sandwiched into a single block framed by King, Line, St. Philip and Spring streets.
Businesses in the area already are complaining that revenues are down because of frenetic construction exacerbated by pounding by two piledrivers, interrupted street traffic and sometimes blocked sidewalks. For a city that sported 24 cranes across the peninsula during the pandemic, this one site had five — yes, five — cranes this week.
And more development is ahead, as Preservation Society of Charleston President and CEO Brian Turner noted in a recent annual fall meeting. He pointed to an analysis that showed how the city has some 20 projects on the books for planned hotels. If eventually built, they will add an additional — wait for it — 3,549 hotel rooms to the peninsula. Just under a third of the rooms would be at Magnolia Landing, a long delayed development for thousands of people in the Charleston Neck that is profiled in this issue.
It’s not like we really need more hotel rooms. We’ve already got enough.
Imagine what Charleston will be if all of these already-approved 3,549 rooms materialize. It will become just gross: more traffic, more tourists, more congestion as well as losses to the “feel” of Charleston as Charleston. All of this seemingly unstoppable development is killing the golden goose that has blessed Charleston for years.
Let’s hope the new blood on Charleston City Council can do something to temper the development fever that seems to be more contagious than the malaria and yellow fever that zapped early Charlestonians of their lives. Rather than mosquitoes being our past worst enemies, today’s nemesis seems to be ourselves.
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