By Lindsay Street
Staff Writer

Through all of Mount Pleasant’s growth, a true downtown has yet to emerge and now at least two developments are bidding to become the town’s center.

The town-sponsored plan to revitalize Coleman Boulevard and the new private development known as Central Mount Pleasant are receiving town council votes and public favor, but, in the end, which will become Mount Pleasant’s downtown?

Both, said Councilman Joseph Bustos Jr.

Central Mount Pleasant developers and Mac Burdette, the town’s administrator, agreed. Although both projects are vying to become a central location to live and work in Mount Pleasant, the town and the developers seem satisfied the two can coexist.

“With how spread out we are geographically, it might be unrealistic for us to have a downtown,” Burdette said. “In any growing city, it’s not unusual, or inappropriate, to have commercial nodes to serve population centers.”

After years of research, Mount Pleasant’s Coleman Boulevard Revitalization Advisory Board produced recommendations for turning the boulevard into a thriving Main Street earlier this year.

Coleman Boulevard would be rezoned to promote increased retail and housing units in an effort to create “clusters” of residential and retail, Councilman Krueger Smith said.

Plans for Central Mount Pleasant started simmering several years back and, after extensive planning with community members, was brought to the town planning commission less than a year ago. Central Mount Pleasant would occupy a 110-acre tract between Hungryneck Boulevard and Rifle Range Road. The project’s goal is to create a downtown atmosphere using the New Urbanism concept of locating housing near restaurants, shops and green spaces.

Developing Coleman Boulevard into a thriving center will depend on rezoning and encouraging private developers to build in a manner to suit the revitalization advisory board’s vision. Central Mount Pleasant will start with an empty tract of land, and the developers will decide how the downtown would be outfitted.

“Coleman Boulevard and our project are so different,” said Tim Keane, owner of Keane & Co., which has worked on Central Mount Pleasant with Mills Buxton of McAlister Development. “The town doesn’t need just two quality streets; it needs four or more.”

Cities with multiple downtowns are not unheard of. For example, Columbia has three identifiable “downtown” areas, said Reba Hull Campbell, director of advocacy and communications for the Municipal Association of South Carolina.

Five Points, Main Street and Vista coexist with “each having their own role” in the community, Campbell said. The areas are within close proximity but each caters to a different business aspect of the city.

Another example of multiple downtowns is Batesburg-Leesville. In 1992, the two towns in Lexington County merged into one municipality. Each town retained its original downtown. In an article by Campbell, she described both of the centers as thriving since the town’s merger. The downtowns are linked via a promenade.

Central Mount Pleasant and Coleman Boulevard are compatible and one won’t hurt the other, Burdette said.

“To say we’re creating the downtown for Mount Pleasant by what we are trying to accomplish on Coleman Boulevard isn’t completely accurate,” Burdette said.

But will there be enough consumer demand for two downtowns?

“Of course not now,” Burdette said. “But over the next 20 years there is no doubt that the market is there to support both of them.”

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