Group miffed by college’s quiet demolition of YWCA building

MORNING HEADLINES | A local citizens group is expected to raise its concerns this week that the College of Charleston did not notify members before workers began to demolish the former YWCA headquarters at 106 Coming St., site of a proposed student dormitory.

Meanwhile, the college’s board of trustees is expected to hold a special meeting Aug. 3.

Student housing is an agenda item. The trustees are expected to go into executive session to receive “legal advice and discussion of matters incidental to proposed contractual arrangements regarding student housing,” according to a statement from the college. It is not known whether that advice involves 106 Coming St. or nearby College Lodge on Calhoun Street, which also is being torn down.

Moncks Corner resident Walter Brown, a member of the Community Engagement Council (CEC), said the Coming Street demolition of the YWCA building “saddens me (as) a loss of a place where young (African American) women had an opportunity to develop their personal skills. The college ignored that” with the decision to raze the entire structure.

The 20-member CEC is scheduled to meet Aug. 6. Brown said he may join the meeting remotely to raise his concerns. The college wants to build a dormitory on the former YWCA property that covers a portion of an 18th century city-owned paupers’ cemetery. It formed the CEC as an advisory group for the project. The group, however, is “not to determine whether the approved project should proceed,” the college has said.

LaVanda Brown, executive director of the YWCA of Greater Charleston, said the community knew that at some point the building would be removed, “but I was surprised when it happened. I didn’t know other than rumors that it would be happening (last) week.”

While the college has said it wanted to preserve the YWCA’s legacy, the building’s unceremonious demise raises questions “as to whether they are sensitive to how much that building meant to so many people,” LaVanda Brown said.

“Honoring the YWCA could have started with a better communication of the building being torn down. That is not to say they don’t have plans, but I don’t know what those plans are” beyond a proposed mural and a plaque at the site, she said.

“They missed an opportunity to honor the organization’s history with those folks who would have wanted to know” about the building’s removal, she added.

Walter Brown, who is not related, said he had proposed that the college preserve a portion of the building.

“The CEC has become a tool” for the college to engage with the community, he said. “But we are only in an advisory capacity” and it is not a working partnership with the college, he added.

The YWCA moved into the 5,000 square-foot, single-story building in 1964, a time when the organization was still segregated.

The college received the city’s Board of Architectural Review approval to demolish the building in June 2025. The college still needs approvals from state agencies to remove the asphalt parking lot around the building. In a statement, the college said, clearing the site could extend through Aug. 11.

“As part of planned redevelopment of 106 Coming St., the College of Charleston initiated demolition of the long vacant single-story building on Thursday, July 30, 2026. Demolition is weather-dependent and may occur over a period of days,” the statement said.

CEC members had asked to be notified within 24 hours of the start of the work to tear the building down. That notice did not come. —Herb Frazier

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