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Towne Centre paves over problem to add parking
By Kathleen Dayton
Staff Writer
Shoppers, take heart. Mount Pleasant’s Towne Centre recently added more than 100 new parking spaces to help assuage demand at the shopping complex.
The additional parking has helped pacify motorists who previously may have scanned the lot for minutes on end to locate a space, only to circle around and watch someone else swipe it.
“This parking expansion seems to have alleviated a great deal of this,” said Rebecca Gosnell, Towne Centre’s marketing director.
The parking expansion added 105 spaces along Hungryneck Boulevard near the Palmetto Grande cinema, bringing the total number of spaces at the center to 1,795. The 446,486-square-foot Towne Centre houses 65 shops and has been leased at 98% or higher since 2003. The center opened in 1999.
“Certainly the town code was followed in making sure the parking was adequate at the time, but you’re right, Mount Pleasant isn’t shrinking,” Gosnell said. “It was well-known, even to us, that if we went away for lunch … we had to circle the parking lot ourselves to get back. We’re a victim of our own success.”
Parking capacity had become more of an issue in the past year. A combination of factors in recent months made parking even testier, Gosnell said.
The expansion of the Belk department store reduced parking by about 100 spaces between the store and Earth Fare while construction was in progress. The newly completed project frees all but a handful of spaces in the area.
The construction of the new parking lot along Hungryneck Boulevard also impacted some parking space, as the center’s seasonal traffic increased.
“If you were here on a Saturday or Sunday in June with parking under construction and tourism in full bloom, that was a tough time,” Gosnell said. “Unlike a lot of malls, we don’t have that slump in summer because we have such a heavy influx of beach traffic here. They get to the beach on Sunday and by Tuesday they’re all sunburned and it’s time to do something else. It’s a good scenario for our retailers.”
Eddie Bernard, site planner for Mount Pleasant, said Towne Centre is not the only place where parking is at a premium, but he said the town’s parking ratios work. For a mixed-use planned center, there is one space for every 250 square feet. Stand-alone retail stores get one space for every 200 square feet and restaurants get one space for every four chairs plus one space for every three employees, based on the amount of employees on shifts.
One of Bernard’s more recent projects was Belle Hall Shopping Center.
“Now that they’re filling up, parking has become a premium over there as well,” Bernard said. “There are more people in the area in general.”
Mount Pleasant’s population in 1999, when Towne Centre opened, was 44,354. In 2004, the town had 62,610 residents, according to information available from the U.S. Census Bureau and Mount Pleasant’s planning department. By 2010, the town is expected to pass Rock Hill and Greenville to become South Carolina’s fourth largest municipality. By 2015, Mount Pleasant’s population is projected to be 84,173.
Opening up more parking at Towne Centre was challenging for a number of reasons, Gosnell said, including the fact that the center is hemmed in on all sides by roads. The shopping center also wanted to preserve its green space.
“We have to be creative as to how we can reconfigure parking without impacting the landscaping,” Gosnell said. “In Mount Pleasant, you can’t just mow down every tree and put in a parking space. We don’t want to lose our green feeling because it’s part of the experience here.”
Towne Centre’s solution was to eliminate one of its detention ponds and install an underground detention system to replace it. The undertaking involved a local animal rescue group, Keepers Of The Wild, which came during the draining of the pond to relocate fish and frogs to a larger pond across the street.
“They came in with buckets and nets and made sure we didn’t leave any animals behind in the pond,” Gosnell said. “If you ask our customers if they’d rather have two ponds, or one pond and parking, I’m sure you’d get a huge response.”
Kathleen Dayton is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her at kdayton@charlestonbusiness.com.
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