By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer

Architect Charles Muldrow is passionate about the route Mount Pleasant should take to improve Johnnie Dodds Boulevard, the town’s main thoroughfare, to handle worsening traffic problems.

“It’s the biggest issue we’re facing in Mount Pleasant,” says Muldrow, president of Mount Pleasant-based Stubbs Muldrow Herin Architects Inc. and a member of the American Institute of Architects. The way Johnnie Dodds is upgraded to accommodate increased traffic will impact Mount Pleasant’s quality of life for future generations, he says.

In April, Muldrow and other Lowcountry architects attended the state AIA conference in Columbia, which included a seminar about advocacy for architects and encouraged them to become active in community planning and design issues.

Getting more involved in community, state and national affairs as they relate to architecture, planning and design is the thrust of the national AIA’s grassroots advocacy. The AIA believes architects “need a strong voice on a wide range of issues,” from community design to transportation planning, energy and water consumption, to education and historic preservation, and a number of other concerns affecting a community’s quality of life.

As a result of the seminar in Columbia, Muldrow and Mount Pleasant architect Stephen Russell formed an AIA advocacy group for the improvement of Johnnie Dodds Boulevard.

“Our group was concerned with various areas of the Johnnie Dodds issue,” Russell explains. “The proposed overpasses at certain intersections would have a negative impact on the community.”

This is one example of how the Charleston AIA chapter is trying to become more involved in what happens in the community, explains chapter president Chris Karpus of architecture firm McMillan Smith & Partners in West Ashley.

Muldrow is on the steering committee of the East Cooper Planning Council, a citizens group comprised of residents and businesspeople from Mount Pleasant, Isle of Palms, Daniel Island and Cainhoy. This group wants Johnnie Dodds widened from four lanes to six, with roundabouts at key intersections, on-street parking along frontage roads and a tree-lined, park-line median with sidewalks and bicycle paths.

Michelle Sinkler, the planning council’s executive director, finds it “inspiring” to have Muldrow and other business professionals on the council.

“The professional business community is concerned about the future of Mount Pleasant,” Sinkler says. “To see professionals band together for a vision for the community is a positive thing.”

The town of Mount Pleasant wants the boulevard widened too. However, that is where agreement with the East Cooper Planning Council ends. The town wants to build overpasses at major intersections along Johnnie Dodds, a proposal the planning council believes will be an aesthetic blight to the community and make businesses along the corridor more difficult to access.

Town officials disagree with the planning council and say they are looking at a number of options before determining a course of action. Mayor Harry Hallman says engineers have told him flyovers are the best way for Johnnie Dodds to handle up to 70,000 cars a day, the projected traffic increase over the next 15 years. Therefore, the mayor is “leaning” toward flyovers but is not “locked into them.”

In addition to the Johnnie Dodds Boulevard issue, Muldrow and other architects met with commercial real estate broker Chris Fraser to discuss ideas for a new Moultrie Middle School in Mount Pleasant. The architects discussed how the school could become a civic center for residents in the Coleman Boulevard area and presented plans and renderings to show the school’s possibilities.

“It was solely to promote ideas, to get the conversation started,” says Muldrow, adding that it was not a ploy to draw business to his firm. “Our firm doesn’t design schools.”

Although the Charleston AIA has not yet formed advocacy groups for issues other than Johnnie Dodds Boulevard, the chapter does support local urban redevelopment initiatives like the Noisette and Magnolia projects.

“Those projects are trying to improve people’s lives, and that’s what we’re for,” Karpus says. “Architects have always been advocates for good community planning.”

Dennis Quick is senior staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@crbj.com.

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