The planned revitalization of the remaining 18 acres of a former city of Charleston landfill on the western edge of the historic downtown peninsula is well underway, city Deputy Chief Financial Officer Matt Frohlich told the Charleston City Paper.
The ongoing WestEdge redevelopment project aims to turn the site into a “dynamic area as part of the larger Westside neighborhood where individuals can work, enjoy and live but also where businesses can grow,” said Frohlich, who also chairs the WestEdge Foundation.
This can already be seen, he added, with the developments of 99 WestEdge, 10 Westedge and 22 WestEdge, which together offer ground-floor retail and restaurants, a grocery store in an area that has historically been a food desert, and office space with a focus on health care and life sciences. Every piece of the puzzle has been built with sustainability and resiliency in mind, as the surrounding area has long been plagued with troubles with water.
He said the next big step in the process was to secure permitting from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
“We’re working through that process,” he said. “Once we get that, a big piece of that will be drainage and improvements that will address tidal flooding and rain events that could provide benefits beyond the WestEdge physical boundaries.”
Frohlich pointed to neighboring areas like Gadsden Green and the Hagood Avenue corridor as examples of other places that could benefit from further WestEdge development or be tied together to benefit the entire peninsula. He said project leaders are working closely with partners in city government, the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston Housing Authority and the Citadel to ensure any redevelopments serve not only a piece of the peninsula, but the whole.
Other projects, such as the ongoing Low Battery Seawall Extension led by the city and the coming Lowcountry Rapid Transit (LCRT) project led by the Berkeley-Charleston-Dorchester Council of Governments will also serve to bring benefits to the WestEdge redevelopment, Frohlich said.
The LCRT project’s downtown terminus at the end of Line Street connects the community to the rest of downtown Charleston and North Charleston via dedicated lanes along Rivers Avenue. The Low Battery project, meanwhile, aims to protect a large swathe of the peninsula from rising sea levels, future-proofing redevelopment projects such as WestEdge.
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