Growth followed I-526 to East Cooper, now Johns Island residents fear same
The Mark Clark Expressway and growth east of the Cooper River resemble the
chicken and egg dilemma: With coastal communities booming throughout the
Southeast, would growth have come anyway?
Residents of Johns Island face a similar dilemma as momentum builds to
extend the Mark Clark through their rural lands and complete the final
stretch of the beltway.
By 2030, without factoring in the interstate, Johns Island can expect to add
12,651 people and 4,073 jobs, according to a Berkeley-Charleston-Dorchester
Council of Governments study.
Add the Mark Clark to the picture, and those figures jump 20 to 40 percent.
Leon Stavrinakis, former Charleston County Council chairman and current
state representative, said he and other council members were committed to
protecting Johns Island. The completion of I-526 is an opportunity to
revisit densities and make them stricter, he said.
Despite efforts to preserve the island's rural character, Megan Desrosiers,
program director of the Coastal Conservation League, worries that future
governments will be unable to ignore the $500 million investment in
infrastructure.
While the future reamians uncertain south of the Charleston peninsula, north
of the peninsula holds lessons from the past. The opening of I-526 across
the Cooper River coincided with a boom in population and industry.
Fifteen years ago, Meritha White waited in her car for workers to
unceremoniously remove the barricades to the James B. Edwards Bridge over
the Wando River. It was the first of two bridges that would complete the
eastern half of the interstate.
White, a medical technician, commuted daily between Mount Pleasant and
Cainhoy. "I don't have to leave as early to go to work," she told The Post
and Courier in October 1991.
Now unable to work for medical reasons, White splits her time between her
home in the historically black Phillips community in Mount Pleasant and
Clements Ferry Road on Daniel Island, where her mother lives.
Since the Mark Clark opened in 1992, subdivisions have sprouted all around
the Phillips community, building up to its border. Industry also came north
along the unincorporated patches of Clements Ferry Road, looking for cheap
land.
"Some things I don't like," White said recently. "So many people just got
here, and they act like they own it."
History has a way of repeating itself. As the proposal to extend I-526 from
Charleston across Johns Island hits the planning table, those west of the
Stono River are posing the same question Mount Pleasant residents did more
than a decade ago: Which will come first - growth or the Mark Clark?
The chicken argument: Growth would have happened anyway
A 1979 environmental impact statement for the Mark Clark's construction
cited growth in Mount Pleasant at the 1960s rate. The statement was released
before 1980 census data, and federal and state engineers did not detect the
population boom already rumbling underfoot.
The population of Mount Pleasant increased 33 percent between 1960 and 1970.
The 1970s saw an increase of 101 percent, and the population grew another
117 percent in the 1980s.
Fewer than 14,000 people lived in the town when planning for the expressway
began in the late 1970s, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. By the time
the eastern half of the beltway opened in 1992, more than 30,000 people
called Mount Pleasant home.
Since that time, the population has nearly doubled again. The Census Bureau
estimated the 2005 population at 57,932.
"Growth was already here," said Joel Ford, Mount Pleasant director of
planning and development.
As for the cause of growth, Mount Pleasant Mayor Harry Hallman said, "It's
awful hard to say." Quality education contributes to the equation as much
as, or more than, accessibility, he said.
The town also was at the mercy of greater national trends. The Center for
Environment and Population reported last year that more than 50 percent of
the U.S. population lives within 50 miles of the coast, crowding into 17
percent of the nation's land mass.
Before the Mark Clark, the town was bursting at the seams, Hallman said. The
traffic on one lane of the now-replaced, three-lane Silas N. Pearman Bridge
was reversed to allow more traffic to enter Charleston from Mount Pleasant.
As annual growth rates in the 1990s soared as high as 10 percent, Ford said,
town leaders knew they had to do something. Council enacted a 4-percent
growth rate cap per year until 2010, refusing to issue building permits once
the annual cap was reached to allow infrastructure time to catch up.
By August, the maximum number of single-family permits for 2006 was reached,
and applications began lining up for 2007. Through canceled and expired
permits, however, everyone who applied in 2006 managed to receive a permit.
Other coastal communities experiencing high growth rates such as Beaufort
County and Wilmington have inquired about Mount Pleasant's Building Permit
Allocation Program.
Growth can't be stopped, Ford said.
"It's America, and that would be unconstitutional."
But growth can be controlled, he said.
The egg argument: The Mark Clark caused growth
The development frenzy of the late 1980s and early 1990s in northern Mount
Pleasant is anchored by a key moment: The eastern half of the Mark Clark
Expressway opened in 1992.
"It used to be the foot of the bridge in old town was Mount Pleasant,"
Hallman said. "The population has shifted."
Hallman and other town officials held a meeting in September at Wando High
School to address growth north of S.C. Highway 41.
Ford presented a timeline of growth at the meeting, beginning with Dunes
West, which was approved by Charleston County in 1989 and annexed into Mount
Pleasant the following year.
Soon after that came Brickyard Plantation, and Charleston National followed
in 1991. RiverTowne Country Club broke ground in 1994. More than 10 years
later, these developments are still building out, with about 2,500 more
homes allowed.
Jane Lareau of the Coastal Conservation League said, "Growth follows
infrastructure. Ninety percent of traffic on a new road is generated by the
road itself." Land grabs began about the same time the road was permitted,
allowing the subdivisions to begin building when the road opened.
Richard Habersham, 52, has lived his life on Bennett Charles Road, off
Highway 41, and is president of the Phillips Community Association. A road
in the community bears his surname.
The Freedmen's Bureau plotted the Phillips community in 1878, according to a
historical marker. Built well beyond the then-town limits of Mount Pleasant,
the historically black neighborhood is now home to about 500 residents.
The truck driver remembers when U.S. Highway 17 was a "horse-and-buggy road"
and when the aging Silas Pearman and the John P. Grace bridges served as
deterrents, not conduits, for traffic.
I-526 had a lot to do with the changes in northern Mount Pleasant, Habersham
said. "Right now, we're overrun since the Mark Clark came," he said.
Now, primarily white subdivisions such as Laurel Hill, RiverTowne Country
Club, Park West and Dunes West surround the community. He insists that the
growing pains are not a racial issue. The old Mount Pleasant, whether you're
black or white, has changed forever, he said.
And with more people came more demand for housing. "A lot of people making
$20,000 a year can't live in Mount Pleasant," Habersham said. A 10-acre plot
in the Phillips community recently appraised for $950,000. In 1878, lots
sold for $63, Habersham said, which is slightly more than $1,000 in today's
money.
"We have a horrific traffic problem," he said. The community straddles
Highway 41, which children cross to visit family and friends. He blames part
of the problem on a lack of interconnectedness between the subdivisions,
pouring cars onto highways 41 and 17.
Industrial development came to northern Daniel Island about the same time.
In 1991, one year before the expressway was completed, the city of
Charleston crossed the county line into Berkeley and annexed most of the
island.
Clements Ferry Road, toward the north of the island, runs in and out of
Charleston through patches of Berkeley County. Cheap land, a lack of county
zoning restrictions and access to the Mark Clark made Clements Ferry Road an
obvious choice for trucking and industrial businesses.
Fred Lincoln, an activist in the Cainhoy community, sees a correlation
between the expressway and the growth along Clements Ferry Road. "You
couldn't have any commercial buildings here without the Mark Clark," he
said.
Lincoln pointed toward the Vennings' house across the road from Cainhoy Fire
Department Station 3, where he is chairman of volunteers. The station door
must be pulled tight or passing trucks will suck it open.
Joanne Venning, Meritha White's mother, said the Venning family moved to the
house in 1978, but she and her family have lived in the area for
generations.
Less than three years after the Mark Clark opened, G&P Trucking Company
turned on the lights next door to her cinder block home.
Clements Ferry Road also is feeling the pressure of the residential boom to
its south, as traffic flows from Highway 41 east toward the Mark Clark.
People can't leave their homes during rush hour, Lincoln said.
Between 1990 and 2000, the road experienced nearly 500 percent growth,
rising from 1,440 to 8,400 cars per day, according to a
Berkeley-Charleston-Dorchester Council of Governments study. By 2005, the
count jumped to 15,500.
Expressway spurred growth
Whether growth was under way or not, observers say the Mark Clark made the
process faster.
"I think the Mark Clark accelerated growth," Mount Pleasant's Ford said. The
road made the northern region more accessible, more convenient and easier to
develop from a marketing point of view, he said.
Former Mount Pleasant Mayor Cheryll Woods-Flowers wrote a letter in 2000 to
Charleston Area Transportation Study policy committee members that read, "In
the years between 1991 and 1993 two Federal/State projects forever changed
traffic patterns east of the Cooper - the Mark Clark Expressway and the Isle
of Palms Connector."
Woods-Flowers said in an interview, "Growth may have come, but not in the
numbers it did." The Mark Clark removed difficulties reaching Interstate 26
and opened up the northern part of town, she said.
Given the geography of the Mount Pleasant area, growth only has one way to
go - up Highway 17. And it has continued its crawl, with Carolina Park's
approval in 2003 for 1,745 residential units, 950,000 square feet of retail
space, and 3 million square feet of industrial and office space. White Hall,
with 108 lots, was annexed in 2004.
Growth north is tempered, however, by Charleston County's urban growth
boundary and the town's support of a county pact to prevent growth in and
around Francis Marion National Forest.
Mount Pleasant considers its planning area to reach from the Arthur Ravenel
Jr. Bridge to Sewee Road, Ford said. Town estimates predict the population
for the northern area, above Long Point Road, to reach 28,800 by 2015, a 50
percent increase from today.
What happens next?
Cainhoy's Lincoln is not resentful of the changes. "Now that it's here, we
have to total the negatives and positives," he said. "You just have a
different life than before, and that doesn't necessarily have to be all
bad."
His advice to those on Johns Island standing where he stood about 25 years
ago: Organize and force policies to protect the uniqueness of their home, or
face explosive growth.
Thomas Legare operates Legare Farms on Johns Island with his sisters, Helen
and Linda. The Legares have been farming on the island for three centuries.
"The Mark Clark will destroy the rural character and turn us into Mount
Pleasant, with fast-food chains on every corner," Legare said. "We'll be
another suburban blip on the map."
Increased property values already are jeopardizing the family farm. The
Legare family has farmed its present land since 1830, he said. The 300-acre
property was appraised a few years ago for $10 million. Owned by Legare's
mother, if the farm passes to the next generation after 2012, when the
inheritance tax is reinstated, the family will owe $5.5 million, forcing
them to sell.
Legare and other residents formed the Concerned Citizens of the Sea Islands
last summer. The group is collecting signed petitions to present to
Charleston County Council in February.
"If people don't understand why we're fighting it, just look at what
happened in Mount Pleasant in the last 15 years," Legare said.
If you go
Concerned Citizens of the Sea Islands has scheduled a rally for 7 p.m. Feb.
12 at St. John's High School, Main Road, Johns Island, to voice opposition
to the extension of the Mark Clark Expressway through Johns and James
islands.
For details, visit www.no526.com.
To honor and serve
Mark Wayne Clark was born in Madison Barracks, N.Y., in 1896.
After graduating from West Point in April 1917, he went on to serve in World
Wars I and II and the Korean War.
In June 1942, Clark was assigned as commanding general of the II Corps in
England. In October 1942, he became deputy commander in chief of Allied
Forces in North Africa.
During the Korean War, Clark commanded the United Nations forces.
He signed the cease- fire agreement in July 1953.
After the general retired in October 1953, Clark became president of The
Citadel, where he is buried.
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