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Bracing for change
Growth is slowly engulfing Johns Island; residents want it controlled
By Kathleen Dayton
Staff Writer
Johns Island is the closest area to the city of Charleston that is still agriculturally saturated, but agriculture is slowly giving way to urban development there as landowners and city and county planners wrestle with their visions of the island’s future.
Long known as a seaside realm of twisted live oaks and tomato farms, Johns Island is home to the ancient Angel Oak and the 18th century Fenwick Hall plantation, and is the gateway to the affluent communities of Kiawah and Seabrook islands. The majority of Johns Island, however, is comprised of farms and modest homes, many of which have been passed down through the generations.
A changing landscape
With development encroaching and taxes rising, the question remains as to how much the island is going to change.
“I have no interest in selling my property to make a profit,” said Mildred Seabrook, who was born and raised on neighboring Wadmalaw Island. “This is home, this is where I’m happy, but I see people doing it, and it’s their decision.”
Seabrook, who lives with her husband Carl on five acres off River Road that is part of the property where he grew up, said property taxes nearly doubled last year.
Traffic is another issue, particularly on River Road, which links Johns Island to West Ashley.
“Our road used to be fairly safe,” Seabrook said. “Kids could even ride their bikes. You can’t do that now. It used to be just a little bit quieter.”
Seabrook does admit that she likes the convenience of supermarkets and the new public library.
“I have mixed feelings, but I wish (growth) would stop now, because we have enough,” Seabrook said. “I kind of think it’s inevitable, but I wish it weren’t so.”
Mary Bradley, a neighbor of the Seabrooks, is also concerned about growth, especially traffic on River Road. A 34-year resident of the area, Bradley and her husband raised their children on their property near the Stono River.
“Our section is actually called the Ferryfield community,” Bradley said. “It’s almost like a little island. The kids had horses and any kind of farm animal they wanted.”
The scene is different now, with numerous wrecks, including fatal accidents, on the winding, two-lane road between Main Road and Maybank Highway. The thoroughfare, posted with a 45-mph speed limit, is home to numerous new residential developments.
Bradley said she thinks commercial trucks using the road as a route to the county landfill should be detoured.
“I’d say the truck traffic has increased over the past seven or eight years until it’s dangerous,” Bradley said. “With all the homes and subdivisions that have gone up, seems like we could get the big trucks and the garbage trucks that are going to the landfill to take another main route that is not a residential area.”
Careful planning needed
It will take careful planning and much dialogue between residents and government officials to ease Johns Island through its impending development.
“The majority of the people we know and our neighbors want it to remain a rural, country-like setting,” Bradley said. “We don’t want big buildings and condos. You’re going to have development and we know that, but there needs to be some kind of control over it. If there’s any kind of talk about changing River Road to four lanes, you’re going to have a fight on your hands.”
City and county officials say they have heard the pleas of Johns Island residents.
“From the day I got on council, it’s been an enormous issue,” said Leon Stavrinakis, Charleston County Council chairman.
The county put together a comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance between 1999 and 2000, Stavrinakis said, after a lot of work and public meetings regarding growth on Johns Island.
“It became obvious that the majority of people on Johns Island wanted it to stay rural and agricultural in nature,” Stavrinakis said.
The comprehensive plan calls for lower densities in developments on much of the island, as well as uses that would not be allowed in urban and suburban areas.
“It’s hard to find projects that provide for the increasing growth, but allow Johns Island residents to find comfort that the rural and agricultural vision they have for their island won’t be lost, and that’s important,” Stavrinakis said.
The city of Charleston has a similar plan for the portion of the island it has incorporated. That portion is less than 18% of the total land on the island, according to city records.
Christopher Morgan, the city’s director of planning and neighborhoods, said the city’s urban growth boundary would leave most of the island rural, with urban development concentrated along the Maybank Highway corridor.
“These zonings in place on Johns Island will help keep the rural areas of Johns Island rural, provided (the zoning ordinances) stay in place,” Morgan said. “If our area councils protect the integrity of the zonings and don’t support rezonings that undermine the integrity of the plan, that should not be a problem.”
Try, try again
Already, a group called the Johns Island Growth Management Committee has told one developer interested in Johns Island to go back to the drawing board.
The committee is chaired by Anne Frances Bleecker, Charleston City Council’s district representative for Johns Island. County representatives and Johns Island residents are also on the committee, which holds regular public meetings.
Renderings of a new development proposed near the Johns Island airport did not mesh with the group’s visions for the island, Bleecker said.
“They passed around photos of I’On-like developments and proposed a neighborhood with a lot of houses,” Bleecker said. “It was completely out of character with the island in style and terms of the infrastructure on River Road. I was dumbfounded that someone would think this is what would work on Johns Island right now.”
The homes would have been priced between $200,000 and $500,000, Bleecker said.
“There were a lot of them,” Bleecker said. “This is not Mount Pleasant. Yes, the city is going to grow, but this is the opportunity to do it more responsibly than ever in a place so richly beautiful. It’s culturally diverse and the people are humble and friendly. It’s not supposed to be the big city. It’s supposed to be more rural in character and nature.”
Support for I-526 extension
While Bleecker feels development on Johns Island needs to be far less dense than in other areas, she supports plans to extend the Mark Clark Expressway across a portion of the island, connecting it with West Ashley and James Island.
The Coastal Conservation League has suggested that the county re-evaluate the highway because of findings in a recent study the county commissioned from EDAW, an urban planning consulting firm based in San Francisco with offices around the country.
In a letter to The Post and Courier published July 6, Megan Desrosiers, program director at the Coastal Conservation League, wrote that the study confirms the Mark Clark extension would threaten the rural character of the island. It concluded that, if the extension is built, the island’s population could double by 2030.
Bleecker said Desrosiers is on the Growth Management Committee and that she respects Desrosiers’ opinion. But Bleecker thinks the Mark Clark extension is inevitable.
“The Mark Clark is so critical for alleviating problems on Savannah Highway and it’s so important for people on James Island and Folly Beach for hurricane evacuation,” Bleecker said. “It was always intended. We just have to figure out how to incorporate that with what we’re doing on the island.”
The extension, Morgan said, will impact only the northeast tip of Johns Island and will be built mainly over marsh.
Containing urban sprawl
Mitch LaPlante is an architect who owns property along Maybank Highway in the urban development area.
LaPlante and a neighboring landowner, Jimmy Kerr, commissioned Harvard University graduate students in landscape architecture and planning to use the Maybank Highway area as a semester project.
“We’re convinced urban sprawl can be controlled and you can create an urban center,” LaPlante said. “But when you create it, it doesn’t have to spread like a cancer over the whole island.”
LaPlante and a partner purchased about 110 acres of high ground along Maybank Highway six years ago; the parcel was once part of the original 2,000-acre Fenwick Hall Plantation.
The plantation was subdivided in the 1970s, but about 60 acres around the original plantation house is deed-restricted to remain undeveloped. The plantation house is a private home.
Nearby, LaPlante is responsible for two very different neighborhoods: The Preserve, a collection of 66 homes to be built on densely forested land, where home prices will start at $1 million. The other neighborhood is The Grove at Fenwick Plantation, a rental community nestled among live oaks.
“My partner and I are self-professed tree huggers. Our commitment is not to lose one grand tree over the 110 acres,” LaPlante said.
At The Grove, two-bedroom units rent for $875 per month and are buffered from River Road by thick forest.
“Again, we saved the trees,” LaPlante said. “A long time ago, my partner and I realized we were going to make money, but more important, are we going to be proud of what we’ve done?”
Johns Island needs to appeal to different economic levels if it is going to succeed, LaPlante said, which is why he built the rental units.
“That level of the market is being squeezed out of the market,” LaPlante said. “We felt the need to build housing for the average guy.”
Mixed-use plan
Philip Woollcott, broker-in-charge of PrimeSouth Development Group, said his company is planning a 70-acre mixed-used community called Maybank Village on Maybank Highway, a little more than a mile from the intersection of River Road.
The project will have a multi-family residential component, a retail component and possibly office space.
“There are plans for Maybank Highway to expand. It is the only commercial thoroughfare on Johns Island, and I think everyone wants to keep it that way,” Woollcott said.
Woollcott said he has heard that Harris Teeter was also looking at the River Road intersection, but Jennifer Panetta, spokeswoman for the supermarket chain, said she could not confirm that information.
Infrastructure drives development
Al Parish, economist and director of the Center For Economic Forecasting at Charleston Southern University, said development on Johns Island will be spurred not only by the Mark Clark extension but by new water lines, sewer and other infrastructure.
The island is different from Summerville, where Mount Pleasant-style neighborhoods are shooting up because of the availability of infrastructure and home sales are skyrocketing because prices are lower than in Mount Pleasant.
“I guess the similarity is it shows you there’s demand for living in this part of the country,” Parish said.
The question is not whether Johns Island will develop; it is how it will develop, he said.
“It’s going to develop. The profitability of farming versus developing property is too wide,” Parish said. “Those farmers have every right to sell their property at a profit for someone to use a different way if they want to. Will that upset the neighbors? Possibly. Let the neighbors buy the land and keep it the way they want.
“Most developers don’t want to ruin the community any more than anyone else because then they’re out of business. The best way to handle this is to work with developers, not view them as adversaries.”
Kathleen Dayton is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her at kdayton@charlestonbusiness.com.
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