By Kathleen Dayton
Staff Writer

But they are coming.

The city has been working with the community for several years to redevelop the neighborhood that for most of the 20th century was split in two by the old Cooper River bridges.

“We have come up with a concept plan that focuses on re-knitting the neighborhoods, so those neighborhoods that were split by the bridge can become a cohesive neighborhood,” said Michael Maher, director of the city’s Civic Design Center.

The city has been seeking the input of community residents to guide redevelopment and determine what the character of redevelopment should be, Maher said.

“The primary redevelopment will be new housing, but there will be components of mixed use, including commercial development on Meeting Street and also on East Bay Street and Morrison Drive, and there might be some in-fill mixed use, things that are neighborhood appropriate,” Maher said.

A new Sanders-Clyde elementary school is on target for completion in July 2009, replacing the 1954 school that was recently demolished on East Bay Street at the north end of the neighborhood.

The East Side is bounded on the south by Mary Street, to the north by Stewart Street, to the west by Meeting Street, and by East Bay Street along the Cooper River. For most of the 20th century, the neighborhood’s edge along East Bay Street was dominated by industry, including a cigar factory and former cotton mill, the city incinerator, the port and a railroad yard.

Its rough-and-tumble character stems from its reputation for crime, although there are pockets of well-maintained residences throughout the neighborhood as well as a few city parks.

Maher said the city is trying to come up with the right mix of housing types and affordability so that redevelopment efforts reinforce the stability of the neighborhood rather than create gentrification.

High rollers

While the city hopes to incorporate new, affordable housing into the neighborhood, developers for the first time are eyeing the area for high-end projects, including the renovation of The Cigar Factory at East Bay and Columbus streets.

The Simpson Organization Inc., an Atlanta real estate company, recently purchased The Cigar Factory for $22 million and plans to retrofit the office building into a mixed-use condominium complex.

“We’ve been interested in Charleston as a market for several years and hadn’t found anything that truly suited us until this particular property came up,” said Boyd Simpson, president of The Simpson Organization. “We liked the size of the property and its sort of flexible potential. We like historic properties that can be adapted and reused. We think its location is one that will benefit from general improvements in the area and we can be a part of that.”

Simpson’s plans include 77 condominium units, 37,000 square feet of retail space and about 30,000 square feet of office space, plus a swimming pool, wine cellar, fitness club and other amenities.

The 232,000-square-foot building, built between 1881 and 1882, is on the National Register of Historic Places and first operated as The Charleston Manufacturing Co., a textile processing company. It later operated as various cotton mills before it was leased and later purchased by the American Cigar Co. The cigar factory was a major industry in Charleston during the peak of the Great Depression and operated until 1973.

Rooms with a view

Condominiums at The Cigar Factory will be priced from about $400,000 to $1.4 million, Simpson said. No matter that views include not only the Cooper River and the new Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge but also the S.C. State Ports Authority and its railroad yard. Simpson believes buyers for Cigar Factory condos are out there.

“Based on our market research, I have no doubt,” Simpson said. “I think demand pressure for being close to the historic-built environment of Charleston is causing the city to expand, and Charleston is a pretty unique city in the American palette.

“There are very few places that have as much history and character as Charleston does and I think that is just creating a lot of positive things for the city, more tourism, more people wanting to move there and more people wanting a second home there.”

Simpson said he believes the East Side will eventually be seen as an extension of Charleston’s lower peninsula, largely because of the new footprint of the Ravenel bridge.

“The new Ravenel bridge to some extent is going to redefine the boundary of the peninsula,” he said.

Not far from where bridge traffic exits onto Meeting Street, a local developer and general contractor, Wecco of Charleston, plans an urban loft complex with a commercial component. Located off upper Meeting Street on Cool Blow Street, the 56-unit project, called One Cool Blow, recently broke ground and is expected to be complete by March 2008. All but 10 of the 52 residences have pre-sold, said Brook Griffin, marketing director for Wecco.

All of the company’s projects are built on the sustainable, green concept, using materials such as bamboo flooring and pre-cast concrete walls. One Cool Blow is expected to attract city workers, policemen, firemen, teachers and young professionals as buyers, Griffin said, with prices starting at $183,000 for a 745-square-foot loft.

Fighting crime

As new housing projects and new commercial spaces open up on the East Side, more residents and visitors will seek the area and the city has been setting up mechanisms to curtail crime, said Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen.

“It doesn’t matter to us whether it’s million dollar condos or a $150,000 home, we think everybody’s important and we’re going to address crime,” Mullen said.

Mullen walks the neighborhood regularly and police are deployed as quickly as possible when crime occurs. He doesn’t think that new development in the neighborhood will act like a silver bullet to solve its problems, but redevelopment should encourage opportunities for residents to become more engaged, he said.

“There’s a theory out there called ‘broken windows’” Mullen said. “If you live in an environment that appears to people from outside that you don’t care about it, that kind of gives people incentive to go in and do bad things. I think anytime you can renew sidewalks, put up lighting, and refresh segments of the area, all of that is a benefit in fighting crime.”

East Side residents will get new sidewalks and a whole lot more by spring. The city plans an extension of the bicycle and pedestrian path off the Ravenel bridge onto East Bay Street extending to Charlotte Street.

The 12-foot-wide path will include trees, benches, a drinking fountain and a new fence screening the railroad along the SPA’s property. The project will cost slightly more than $1 million, with $500,000 coming from the S.C. Department of Transportation and the balance from the city.

Steve Livingston, director of the city’s Department of Parks, said construction of the path will begin this fall. He believes the Ravenel bridge, which attracts throngs of people every day to bike, walk or run its pedestrian lane, has been a catalyst for redevelopment on the East Side.

“I think it’s shown the power of what a pedestrian connection like that can do to a community,” Livingston said. “There should not be a bridge built that doesn’t have that and we should retrofit every one that we have.”

Kathleen Dayton is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her at kdayton@charlestonbusiness.com.

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