With almost 50 people signed up to speak during Tuesday’s Charleston City Council meeting, dozens of island residents waited in the James Island Recreation Complex to demand a pause to new development. Unified in their calls for a moratorium on high-density projects on James Island, those who addressed council spoke of increased flooding and traffic as a result of new development, while their neighbors raised signs and applauded.
“I’ve grown up here, and I’ve seen the development of this town and this city. The locals are frustrated,” said one James Island native. “We are here because we are ready for an apartment moratorium. We’ve seen extensive apartment development and grid-locked traffic as a result. We want to prohibit apartment development and high-density housing for at least two years.”
Many residents in attendance cited the apartment moratoriums approved by Mt. Pleasant Town Council over the past year as a good model to follow for curbing development on the island. Others asked that city and town leaders work together with county officials to develop a unified plan for the future on James Island.
“The fundamental problem on which I think all of us would agree is that there is no regional planning on James or Johns islands. It’s all divide and conquer,” said island resident Chris Dixon.
Councilwoman Kathleen Wilson, who represents much of James Island, followed up the comments from her constituents with an appeal to her council members to give more consideration to the future of the island.
“To my colleagues on council, we are dying over here. We are grid-locked with traffic. We’ve got flooding problems. We have apartments sprouting up left and right. We just lost a movie theater,” Wilson said, alluding to the Carmike James Island Cinemas that was recently closed after being sold to an apartment developer. “The Carmike, they sold the property. It was not a profitable theater. It was old. It was rundown. That industry is declining, and they chose to sell to a developer. I went to that developer and said, ‘This is zoned general business. We could really use some nice new retail, some commercial spaces in the area. All we got were apartments.”
Wilson added that developers coming to the island are “cherry picking” zoning in order to turn a quick buck, which has led to the continued building of apartments. Last February, a coalition of local leaders signed off on the Rethink Folly Road plan aimed at reversing negative impacts of transportation infrastructure and future development along the Folly Road corridor and improving the transportation network throughout these communities. Wilson asked council to be realistic about the changes currently underway with the project.
“That’s going to reconfigure some spaces. We’re going to be able to move from one parking lot to another with a greater amount of ease, but that’s not going to solve the fundamental problems that we have,” said Wilson, who suggested modifying the city’s comprehensive plan and reining in the amount of residential zoning on the island. “What I do see is a lack of balance on the island. We’ve become so residential heavy — and I understand the concept of smart growth and some infill — but it doesn’t have to be excessive infill. It’s OK to leave a little thicket of trees to remind us what trees are. There’s infill to a suffocating degree and then there is smart growth.”
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