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Morrison Drive project needs to revitalize, not gentrify area
By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer
The former landfill on Romney Street, off downtown Charleston’s Morrison Drive, is an economic development gold mine, according to local business leaders and politicians.
Visionaries looking beyond the site’s dirt mounds and garbage heaps see the gateway to a 115-acre, mixed-use tract where condominiums, apartments, shops, offices, hotels, restaurants and a public waterfront could spark massive redevelopment along the peninsula’s easternmost side, extending from the new Cooper River bridge off-ramps on Morrison Drive up to Spruill Avenue in the peninsula’s Neck.
“That project alone will have a billion-dollar economic impact,” says Stephen Griffith, vice president of Mount Pleasant-based commercial real estate company Joe Griffith Inc., which two years ago bought the brownfield from Holston Land Co. for $3.5 million. “It will bring in tourists, new residents, new jobs and new businesses.”
It’s a project whose economic impact will extend throughout the state, experts say. Yet, while business owners who own their own property along Morrison Drive are excited by the revitalization, business owners who rent their space are nervous about rising property values. Meanwhile, the city is devising a plan to ensure that this and other developments on the peninsula provide livable-wage jobs and affordable housing to prevent gentrification.
Griffith expects the landfill development to be a 15- to 20-year endeavor and believes the project will get rolling before the end of the year.
The Ginn Co., a Florida-based resort developer with offices in Mount Pleasant, is “close” to working out a deal with Joe Griffith Inc. to buy the site, according to Earl Hewlette, chief executive officer of The Ginn Co.’s South Carolina operations.
The state Department of Health and Environmental Control has recently approved the site for development, says Stephen Griffith.
Nina Marshstein, senior project manager for General Engineering Laboratories, a West Ashley company that performs environmental tests, gives the former landfill an “A” for cleanliness.
“The landfill is mostly construction debris and shredded waste, so it compacts better and breaks down faster,” Marshstein explains, adding that GEL has been performing soil tests at the landfill since the late 1990s. The landfill has no chemical wastes. Foxes and deer are occasionally seen there, Marshstein says.
The Ginn Co. has yet to decide what exactly will be built on the tract, although it will contain “a hospitality component,” Hewlette says.
“Right now, we’re focused on acquiring the land,” Hewlette explains, adding that once the company buys the property it will sit down at the drawing board and then discuss its development ideas with the city. “Whatever we do, we want the city’s blessing. We want to marry our vision with the city’s vision.”
City officials believe the site’s geography, which includes a waterfront along the Cooper River, is its strongest attribute.
“It has great appeal,” says Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. “It’s in the center of waterfront commerce and nestled within what’s going on. There’s lots of shipping activity nearby. It’s been an overlooked or hidden area that’s now being opened up by the new Cooper River bridge.” Once developed, the tract and other future development along Morrison Drive “will be a natural extension of the city,” Riley adds.
Most business owners along Morrison Drive look forward to the corridor’s redevelopment in general and the Ginn Co.’s project in particular.
“It will be a complete renaissance of Morrison Drive,” says John Kammeyer, general manager of Rug Masters, an Oriental rug dealer located on Morrison Drive directly across from the former landfill. “This part of Morrison Drive is the best kept secret in Charleston. It’s easily accessible to any part of the city. There’s no traffic. And there’s free parking. It’s a very good area to develop. Why the city has not promoted this area is a mystery.
“A lot of businesses are looking at property down here,” Kammeyer continues, adding that Rug Masters, which in May will celebrate its 15th anniversary at its Morrison Drive facility, owns its space and the block on which it sits.
“We’re excited by it,” says Larry Condon, general manager of Charleston Blueprint Co. on Morrison Drive, referring to the development of the former landfill tract. “We lobbied for the Cooper River bridge to have an off ramp going onto Morrison Drive.”
Once construction of the new Cooper River bridge progressed to the point where the bridge could be seen, more properties in the Morrison Drive area began to sell, says John “Demi” Howard, owner of Palmetto Craftsmen Inc., a general contracting service on Romney Street. Like Rug Masters and Charleston Blueprint Co., Palmetto Craftsmen owns its property.
“Things are moving quite quickly,” Howard notes of the Morrison Drive area’s property transactions. “I think the development will impact us in a positive way. Property appraisals have gone up considerably.”
The values of 11 prime properties sold along Morrison Drive in 2004 and 2005 have doubled since 2001, according to County Assessor Michael Huggins.
While store owners, who also own their property, are excited about the skyrocketing property values, owners of smaller businesses who rent rather than own their space are less cheerful.
“I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be here,” says Martha Gadsden, proprietor of Martha Lou’s Kitchen, a small restaurant on Morrison Drive. “What happens to this property is up to the owner.”
The city wants to protect small business owners like Gadsden and residents of nearby public housing communities and low-income neighborhoods from being swept from the area by the Ginn Co.’s development and others following it.
“Our major concern is gentrification,” Anthony Moore, manager of empowerment programs in the city’s Housing and Community Development department, says of the Ginn Co.’s project. “We want a certain percentage of units to be affordable housing.”
To help prevent low-income residents from being displaced by new developments, the department is drafting a Community Benefits Agreement whereby developers agree to provide affordable housing and jobs, including construction jobs. Additionally, the agreement calls for the development to be aesthetically pleasing and unobtrusive to the city’s traffic flow.
The agreement, which Moore says will be finished this month, is being modeled after the community benefits agreement a coalition of activist groups, unions and residents in Los Angeles created four years ago for the Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment District, an area including the Staple Center (home of the National Basketball Association’s Los Angeles Lakers and the National Hockey League’s Los Angeles Kings), a 1,200-room hotel, a 7,000-seat theater, plus restaurants, nightclubs and retail stores. The district is located in a low-income area of the city.
Under the Los Angeles agreement, developers provided livable-wage jobs for local residents, affordable housing, new parks in the neighborhood and other services helping to revitalize the community.
“I’ve never heard of an agreement that’s as comprehensive as this,” Greg LeRoy, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Good Jobs First, a nonprofit organization that tracks the public benefits of economic development projects, told the Los Angeles Times.
Griffith believes the Ginn development, in addition to attracting new businesses to the Morrison Drive area, will provide jobs for area residents rather than displace them.
“It won’t cause gentrification,” he says. “It will clean up that part of the peninsula.”
The Bayside Apartments, a low-income garden apartment complex, is located near the former landfill and is part of the 115-acre tract slated for Ginn Co. development. It is uncertain how the apartments, which are being renovated, will be affected by the development project. Edgewood Management Group, which manages the apartment complex, could not be reached for comment.
Joe Griffith Inc. had its own plans to redevelop the tract, which the company had been eyeing for 25 years and finally purchased in 2003, says Stephen Griffith. What the company had in mind was a smart-growth community called “The Promenade,” which would have apartments, condominiums, offices, retail stores, a marina, public access to a 3,000-foot waterfront along the Cooper River—many of the same features speculators believe the Ginn Co.’s development will have. The project would have cost “several hundred million dollars,”says Griffith.
When the Ginn Co. showed interest in developing the tract, Joe Griffith Inc. deferred to the Florida company’s strong financial resources and development track record, Griffith explains.
“They had enough resources to make this work,” he says. “We knew their capabilities.”
The Ginn Co.’s resort community portfolio includes RiverTowne Country Club in Mount Pleasant, Hammock Beach & Yacht Harbor Village near St. Augustine, Fla., Reunion Resort & Club of Orlando, Fla., and Tesoro and Waterford on the St. Lucie in Port St. Lucie, Fla. The company’s principals, including Hewlette, created Wild Dunes and Dunes West before forming the Ginn Co. Last year the company announced plans to make a resort out of Patriots Point and also purchased a tract on James Island.
How well the Ginn Co. can develop a mixed-use property that blends upscale housing with affordable housing remains to be seen.
Yet Griffith is confident the Ginn Co. will work wonders with the landfill tract on Morrison Drive. “It will be a phenomenal development,” he says.
Dennis Quick covers economic development for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@crbj.com.
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