The Audubon Society’s Francis Beidler Forest is an 18,500-acre bird and wildlife sanctuary located in upper Dorchester County. The sanctuary is not a place you would find by accident since it is located off a two-lane country road in Harleyville. New industries and residential neighborhoods are beginning to encroach on the edges of the Beidler Forest and the 45,000-acre Four Holes Swamp as new roads and development go up all around it. “This has always been a very rural part…
More and more businesses from startups to established companies are using flexible office space for their employees to provide a lower cost alternative and more user-friendly space to the traditional office setting. Building owners are increasingly embracing the concept of flexible office space and leaving behind preconceived views on leasing office space. They are becoming curators of building community and facilitating workplace experiences. “For owners, dealing with small tenants has never been something that you wanted to focus on,” said…
Developers finally broke ground recently to build a 12-story 219-unit multifamily housing and commercial complex at the former Sergeant Jasper site on Broad Street in Charleston. Construction of the multimillion-dollar buildings, called The Jasper, should be completed by 2020. The Beach Co. is the developer of the upscale project near Colonial Lake. The large commercial building is one of the largest buildings the city’s Board of Architectural Review (BAR) has ever approved. The space will include 25,000 square feet of…
South Carolina’s annexation laws have prevented many cities from growing in an orderly fashion, even though urban areas are the driving force behind the state’s economy. In many cases the current annexation laws favor rural areas due to their longstanding domination in state politics, as well as support of property rights. A bill was introduced this year to reform the annexation laws, but did not go very far in the state legislature. The bill’s sponsor, State Representative Mandy Powers Norrell…
Online shopping continues to transform retail, and is reshaping the real estate market as well. Retailers used to house merchandise in department stores with many floors above the street level, and in most cases had buildings without office space. Now there is a shift, evidenced by real estate investors seeking to have a more mixed-used space. In Manhattan, this trend to edge out retail for office space is becoming more prevalent. Normandy Real Estate recently invested $133 million to convert…
At a recent conference on multifamily development, BMC Investment CEO Matt Joblon predicted big changes in the multifamily housing market during the next two decades. He said “co-living is a real possibility where people are sharing kitchens and common areas and just having bedrooms. I think that will evolve. Things will get smaller and tighter, and it will be more about the experience.” He compared this trend to Facebook where people are looking for a digital connection. He believes that…
New housing development approvals will allow 105,000 new homes with the capacity to house 267,000 more people in the Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester counties. The ability to house new residents will push the number of people living in the tri-county area to over 1 million people. The Post & Courier examined the number of homes approved for new construction in the metropolitan area by gathering information from local governments and reviewing development agreements. The new housing construction will economically benefit the…
South Carolina continues to attract new residents and has remained in the top 10 most popular places in 2017 to move and settle. The state ranks at number 7, a drop of two spots from the previous 12 months according to United Van Lines annual survey of inbound relocations. United Van Lines said that 57 percent of their customers in South Carolina are new residents putting it in the nation’s top destinations for those individuals looking for a new location…
Charleston County’s cost to fix up the former Charleston Naval Hospital continues to go up and become more complicated. Debate among county council members circles around renovating for up to $66 million, selling or demolishing the 10-story building. Charleston County acquired the property last year for $33 million after settling a large lawsuit with a development group with investors that included Donald Trump Jr. The developers had bought the property from the city of North Charleston for $5 million and…
Mount Pleasant recently earned the recognition as one of the fastest growing cities on the Eastern Coast, as newcomers flock to the South Carolina coast. The town’s residents have exploded from 48,000 in 2000 to 86,668 in recent estimates. New development has been cropping up all over town, but will the town’s soaring impact fees put a damper on future growth? Town Council recently increased the impact fees as concerns were raised that development is not paying for itself, and…
Charleston and North Charleston are ranked among the top five most prosperous cities in the United States according to a recent study by California-based online apartment service RentCafe (rentcafe.com). The study evaluated cities with at least 100,000 occupants and used six prosperity indicators between 2000 and 2016 to rank them. These economic factors included changes in population, median household income, home values, higher education degree, poverty rate and unemployment over the time period. Charleston ranked at No. 3, just after…
There is no right answer when it comes to the design of the perfect office space among the corporate world, landlords and designers. A panel of experts at a Bisnow conference, Workplace of the Future, agreed that there is much to be debated still about how best to design an office. “We could charge an hourly rate for the conversations we have on what belongs in the building – not the shape of or the color of glass, but what…
Mount Pleasant residents were shocked when developers broke ground to build a new 269-unit apartment building off of Rifle Range Road. The town’s residents had been packing Town Council meetings for two years to raise concerns about overdevelopment in Mount Pleasant, and felt they were being ignored. Little did they know that the development had been approved eight years ago as part of the 2004 Vested Rights Act, which was passed by the State legislature to allow developments approved before…
A Spartanburg developer is the latest firm to capitalize on the industrial growth expanding along the Interstate 26 corridor in Berkeley County. The Upstate firm hopes to build one of Charleston’s largest distribution centers in the region. Johnson Development Associates has filed a permit application with the Army Corp of Engineers to fill 8.2 acres of wetlands at a 91-acre site in Jedburg. The 829,000 square foot speculative building would be built on the eastbound side of I-26 near the…
A local developer of the upper peninsula hot spot known as NoMo for its north Morrision Drive location, says the area is getting too popular and expensive. Developer Stephen Zoukis, responded recently to the sale of a 7.2 acre site at 838 Morrison Drive for $9.1 million to a local Mount Pleasant investment firm, and the announcement by the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) to sell their property for a likely higher price. Mr. Zoukis told the Post & Courier that…
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