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Neighborhood is being renovated at foot of Ravenel bridge
By Kathleen Dayton
Staff Writer
Another mixed-use development is planned for Charleston’s Upper East Side in a neighborhood now dominated and being transformed by the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge.
The project is still in the early planning stages and is being called New Market because it lies along New Market creek.
Wecco of Charleston, which also is selling urban lofts on Cool Blow Street off upper Meeting Street, plans the development for approximately 1.9 acres on Morrison Drive adjacent to the bridge.
“We just love the location,” said Kristopher King, Wecco’s project manager. “You have access to every part of the country through the road systems that are there and you can ride your bike to downtown. We just think it’s very logical and it’s underutilized.”
The original Auto Mile
Morrison Drive was Charleston’s original Auto Mile and was home to Ford, Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz dealerships in the 1960s and 1970s.
A metal scrap yard is still in operation at its northern end and a number of businesses still operate in the area, but vacant lots and empty buildings are prevalent and the neighborhood attracts few pedestrians.
“It’s not an empty corridor, but it could be much more active and have a lot more things going on in it,” said Christopher Morgan, the city’s planning division director.
“It is a major gateway into town with the access onto the Cooper River bridge. It’s also the main route that gets you onto I-26.”
Morgan calls the neighborhood “transitional.”
The city rezoned some of the property more than a year ago, because much of the industrial market isn’t there any more. Wecco’s parcel on Morrison Drive is now zoned Mixed Use 1, work force housing.
Morgan said work force housing is required to have 15% or more units available at a cost that does not exceed 120% of the area’s median income.
The New Market buyer will be similar to buyers at One Cool Blow, where prices start at $183,000 for a 745-square-foot loft, King said.
“Our goal is city employees, people who work for nonprofit organizations, city policemen, firemen and people in the health care industry and the food and beverage industry,” King said.
“A lot of our friends work in those industries and most cannot afford to live downtown.”
Not your father’s architecture
Wecco officials see the area as a natural extension of the urban fabric of downtown Charleston, which is mixed-use.
“Morrison Drive is a pretty important commercial corridor,” King said. “What can we do to enhance that that might bring people here who may want to live here or have an office here?
“We have been focusing on what we call the urban diagram, looking at the bigger piece of the area and its current uses, its current businesses, and how we can fill in the gaps and enhance the fabric that’s there with new use.”
King said the company hasn’t decided how many residential units will be built, how much they will cost or what type of commercial component will accompany the residences. Wecco is working on the project with the Savannah, Ga., architectural firm Sottile and Sottile, which specializes in preservation and urban planning.
“Our goal is to create structures that blend in with the historic context of the city as a whole, but are contemporary in their detail,” King said. “It’s a much more modern floor plan and I think that will appeal to buyers buying up here and not to the buyers buying south of Broad.
It’s an aesthetic I find appeals more to a younger buyer. It’s not our grandfathers’ architecture.”
Yvonne Fortenberry, director of the city’s Design, Development and Preservation division, said she thinks a mixed-use development on Morrison Drive is an opportunity to start changing the character of the area.
Its distance from the lower peninsula and its industrial history also give developers in the area a little more freedom to try new things.
“You find a little more land where you can do a little more and you don’t have the historic context of the lower peninsula, so you have a little more design freedom to do something different and innovative,” Fortenberry said.
“I think we’ve got a lot of opportunities in that area.”
Kathleen Dayton is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her at kdayton@charlestonbusiness.com.
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