|
Town council approved Central Mount Pleasant project
By Kathleen Dayton
Staff Writer
After more than a year of planning and public input, Mount Pleasant Town Council has passed a development agreement that will create a 110-acre mixed-use community in the heart of Mount Pleasant.
Central Mount Pleasant will be built on a chunk of acreage between Hungryneck Boulevard and Rifle Range Road and will fill in the only sizeable undeveloped tract of land west of the Isle of Palms connector.
The project includes an extension of Hungryneck Boulevard and a new Whitesides Elementary School. Parks, lakes, bicycle trails, retail and office space will mix with apartments, condominiums and single family homes in a development that will add 719 residential units to the town. Approximately 400 of those residences will be part of 34 acres reserved for mixed uses including commercial. A 200-room, Class A hotel is another fundamental part of the project.
Mount Pleasant-based McAlister Development Co. and joint venture partner Greystar Real Estate Partners are steering the plan along with urban planning consultant Keane & Co., which has created a walkable community design based on the concepts of New Urbanism.
The building site is a “missing piece of the town,” said Tim Keane, the project’s designer and planner.
“From the beginning, the developer in this case was committed to doing something unique and of the highest quality just because of the prominence of the property and importance of the location,” Keane said. “I think originally the vision was to create something that would be a seamless addition to the neighborhood in that section of Mount Pleasant and create a walkable main street location with a central park.”
The plan passed town council’s final reading with a 5-2 vote. Mount Pleasant Mayor Harry Hallman and councilman Billy Swails voted against the project, citing concerns over density and strain on existing infrastructure.
The project was scaled down in January from the original plan that would have allowed as many as 940 dwellings. Of the 719 residences in the current plan, 252 are single-family homes.
McAlister Development began holding public meetings a year ago to allow citizens to comment and offer ideas on the project. The development agreement included annexation of nearly 100 acres along Hungryneck Boulevard.
“I think it’s important to understand what the town would have missed had it not passed, said Mount Pleasant town councilman Joe Bustos. “We’re going to get a new school site for Whitesides Elementary and a connecting road to Rifle Range Road to improve connectivity from Rifle Range to HungryNeck and on to Highway 17, so we will have more parallel routes.
“We will get a large number of 6% tax assessed properties, which means we’ll get the tax base in one of the huge donut holes in the heart of Mount Pleasant that was in the county and will now be in the town. If we had refused to annex it…it would have developed in the county and we would have gotten all the traffic and all the building and none of the tax base, no impact fees and no future school site.”
The first step with the development will be the extension of Hungryneck and construction of other roads within the development, Keane said. Site work will begin within a year and construction should begin within two years, he said. Complete build out is expected to take about 10 years.
Mount Pleasant is saving more than $1.6 million toward the expected cost of the Hungryneck extension by allowing the developer to build the road. The town is contributing $4 million toward the extension, which is the amount it had budgeted two years ago for the project. The developer has also reconfigured the road so there is less impact on existing neighborhoods.
Mark Fava, an attorney for the developer, said concerns about traffic and density have been issues in the past for other developments in the area, including nearby Towne Centre. The 8-year-old shopping center is currently being expanded.
“It’s been so explosively successful,” Fava said. “It allows the town to continue to attract fine retail establishments, and they in turn are allowed to tax at 6 percent. The town is looking at those types of revenue streams that don’t tax the homeowner.”
Kathleen Dayton is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her at kdayton@charlestonbusiness.com.
|
E-Mail This Article
Printer-Friendly Version