Commercial real estate brokers in Awendaw, SC

The town of Awendaw was incorporated more than three decades ago, not so much to provide municipal services but to let residents control their planning and zoning decisions rather than relying on county government. In recent years, however, that job has become increasingly challenging because Mount Pleasant is running out of large developable sites, our region’s continued growth is creating dramatic demand for more housing and Awendaw’s location helps it retain much of its rural charm, wedged as it is between two environmental treasures of national significance: the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge and the Francis Marion National Forest.

It’s more important than ever that town officials recognize the growing importance and intensity of their planning work — and rise to the occasion to protect the relaxed, rural ambiance that has defined this part of South Carolina’s coast.

There are some encouraging signs.

A year ago, we lamented proposals to develop two large subdivisions, with 249 and 204 homes respectively, to be served by individual septic tanks since there are no sewer lines in the town. Those are still in the permitting stages and we hope they will be scaled back if they’re built at all. They certainly underscore the need for state regulators to consider the cumulative impact of large subdivisions with dozens, even hundreds, of septic tanks that can compromise nearby waterways, as they have done along Shem and James Island creeks.

But the encouraging news is when yet another septic-tank subdivision was proposed recently, the Awendaw Planning Commission voted unanimously against Sewee Landing’s 72 homes on 50 acres. At the same meeting, the commission recommended an update of the town’s planned development ordinance that these subdivisions had relied on.

Awendaw Town Council could consider both the subdivision proposal and the ordinance rewrite as early as this week, and we urge council members to follow their planning commissioners’ advice.

Even when a septic system is well-maintained, it can face problems if the water table is too high, and rising groundwater can carry the resulting contaminants to rivers and marshes, a problem that’s expected to grow more acute as climate change pushes sea levels higher. Awendaw’s proximity to the pristine Cape Romain makes it a desirable place to live, but too many septic tanks too close to the refuge (and too close to each other) could taint the very thing that makes the area an attractive place to visit and to live.

These developments don’t pose a threat simply because they would rely on septic systems. They also would increase the amount of impervious surface and stormwater runoff, exacerbate habitat loss and degrade the community’s rural character.

Awendaw is a small town that seems to have been pushed around at times. Its deal for a new park to be created by then-Charleston County Councilman Elliott Summey in exchange for Mr. Summey’s right to mine dirt on the park site ended badly. The mining stopped in 2019, but the town had to sue to try to get an accounting of what was done there; the park itself is still a distant dream. In another part of town, the King Tract mine was allowed to expand even though it had been hit with more than a dozen water quality violations.

So we’re encouraged that there’s a proactive solution in the works. Awendaw is drafting a new comprehensive plan to replace one that’s 13 years old. This process will provide town leaders, residents and others a perfect chance to forge a shared vision of how the town should manage growth, and they should make sure they make the most of this chance.

After all, the pressures on their town are only expected to intensify in the years to come.

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A angular swath of timberland known as the Nebo Tract was an early poster child of the development pressures that were bleeding over into Awendaw and the Cape Romain Wildlife Refuge some 15 years or more ago.

The debate hasn’t relented about growth in and around the rural town of about 1,500 residents, just up the road from Mount Pleasant.

But as for that particular piece of real estate — it’s off the table.

The Nature Conservancy now owns the 355-acre parcel along U.S. Highway 17, bounded by Mount Nebo AME Church and the 259,000-acre Francis Marion National Forest.

The land-protection group bought it from the previous longtime owner from the Chicago area earlier this month for $3.6 million. The property had been marketed for several years through NAI Charleston for $4.5 million.

“It was Christmas in March when we closed,” said Dale Threatt-Taylor, executive director of the Nature Conservancy in South Carolina.

She said her organization had been keeping its eye on the Nebo Tract for some time. It decided to step in after a deal with another would-be buyer fell through.

“We made an offer to purchase it, and the owners accepted,” Threatt-Taylor said. “So we were delighted and moved forward with it.”

For now, the nonprofit has no firm plans for its latest acquisition in the Sewee-to-Santee district, between Awendaw and lower Georgetown County. Typically, the group will quickly sell or transfer its land holdings to a like-minded owner, such as the U.S. Forest Service, but that’s not likely in this instance, Threatt-Taylor said. She also stressed the conservancy won’t “go off mission.”

“We’re actually going to look at this property to find the best path forward. We want to engage the community in the conversation. ... Also, we may do something totally new ... and innovative that we can lead from here in South Carolina and show our partners across the nation, ‘Hey, it’s a new day in conservation.’”

Charleston is better-positioned in the commercial real estate sector than much larger U.S. markets to stave off economic distress that could result from higher borrowing costs and the unsettled office sector after the pandemic.

That’s the assessment of industry experts who specialize in office, industrial and retail properties.

“There are more tailwinds than headwinds (for Charleston),” said Manus Clancy, senior managing director at Trepp, a New York City-based financial information service for the commercial real estate industry.

“Charleston is strong across all property types,” he said. “You are punching above your weight when it comes to the metrics.”

Clancy noted “a dramatic difference in geography” across the nation for areas affected by the fallout of the shift toward the hybrid model of in-person and remote office work policies.

Large cities, such as San Francisco, Baltimore and Seattle, where the quality-of-life quotient is offset by long commutes, are not faring well after the global health crisis.

“This puts cities like Charleston, Greenville, Austin and Salt Lake City in the driver’s seat to attract more industries,” Clancy said.

He pointed out housing costs are higher in Charleston than most of the rest of South Carolina, but compared to many large metro areas it’s more affordable and the quality of life is attractive in the Lowcountry.

He also noted the area’s labor force is strong and increasingly better educated.

“People want to flock to places where their students can be educated,” Clancy said. “In Charleston, you have the ability to make that case.”

Clancy added the financial industry has not fully recovered from the spring scare instigated by several high-profile bank failures, and credit, especially for the office sector, is going to be harder to come by.

Still, he noted borrowing continues in the commercial real estate market, but at roughly half the pace as last year.

Cubicle command

The office market is showing the most stress, with delinquencies of commercial mortgage-backed securities more than doubling from less than 2 percent in December to about 5.5 percent nine months later.

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In the Charleston area, vacancy rates for office space average just under 12 percent, based on composite local market reports for the July-September period from the commercial real estate firms of Avison Young, Colliers and Lee & Associates.

The latter firm said it sees an uptick in office occupancy in 2024 as more employers require staffers to show up in person more often. Avison Young echoed the move next year to the hybrid arrangement.

Colliers cited the updated working environments and ease of access as the drivers of the office market, and the firm projected a flattening of vacancies by the first quarter of next year.

Lee Allen, executive managing director for commercial real estate firm JLL in Charleston, said the local office sector never got overbuilt and the risk is lower for newer, more creative offerings.

“What we have seen in the market is a flight to quality,” Allen said.

Business and other employers that are set on bringing workers back to the office two to three days a week want to elevate their experience with a top-notch working environment to keep top talent from jumping ship.

AWENDAW — Just past the border of Mount Pleasant, the small town of Awendaw has been seeing increasing development of suburban-style subdivisions that rely on septic tanks.

Now the town is trying to apply the brakes.

In the modest cinder-block building where Town Council meetings are held, a supportive standing-room-only crowd gathered May 4 to follow as more restrictive rules for development were laid out.

“We’ve been very hamstrung in the past,” Planning Commission member James Gardner told council members. “It seems the (current) less stringent rules are letting developers come in and have their way with the town.”

At issue is what’s known as a “planned development” that allows developers to negotiate rules with the town, potentially avoiding stricter zoning regulations.

Town planner Mark Brodeur said every planned development he’s seen in the past year and a half has sought more density — more houses per acre — than the town’s rules would otherwise have allowed.

New rules, which received initial unanimous approval from the Town Council, would prevent that from happening and would add a host of new requirements to future planned developments.

“Managed growth is the key to Awendaw’s future,” reads the first sentence of a large, framed copy of the town’s vision statement on the meeting room wall.

Resident Susan Cox applauded the rule changes, telling council members “it will allow Awendaw to protect this gorgeous environment.”

The coastal town of fewer than 1,500 residents sits between the Francis Marion National Forest and Bull’s Bay. A shrimp trawler is the main feature on the town’s seal.

Each new subdivision can have a large impact on the population of such a small community, and because the town has no sewer system, each new home relies on a septic system. That’s not uncommon in rural areas, but failing septic systems have been an increasing problem in the Charleston area and some governments — including Mount Pleasant — are spending millions to get rid of them.

NORTH CHARLESTON — An executive director, dipping into a federal grant. A new leader, struggling to break even. An expansion project, put on pause. And a damning health inspection, revealing rats, dirt and crumbling walls.

These were some of the problems that fueled the protracted collapse of the North Charleston Community Interfaith Shelter, a nonprofit inspectors shut down in January for unsafe conditions. At one time the Lowcountry’s largest transitional housing unit for homeless veterans, Interfaith is now a run-down building closed for the foreseeable future.

Disorganization, mismanagement and financial problems precipitated the shelter’s demise, a Post and Courier investigation found in June. But more than internal troubles doomed Interfaith, also known as the Good Neighbor Center. As the shelter limped along for three decades, local, state and federal regulators failed to spot numerous problems and raise alarms.

Blame the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, a major funder, for not auditing the shelter sooner. Fault the Internal Revenue Service for rubber-stamping its nonprofit status. Question the S.C. Secretary of State’s office for not doing more to warn donors of its poor standing. Criticize its board for not being more attuned and attentive to operations.

Interfaith sidestepped intervention up until the bitter end. It failed to submit informational returns for several years, eventually prompting the IRS to revoke its tax-exempt status. But it was a tenant complaint — not a federal or state agency — that instigated the inspection that led to the shelter’s demise.

AWENDAW — One of two controversial housing developments is moving forward after a public meeting in which several residents of this rural town made clear the construction is not welcome.

Awendaw’s Planning Commission on April 18 approved the plats for a development by national homebuilder PulteGroup on a piece of land known as the White Tract. The development includes 204 homes at build-out on 148 acres near the intersection of Seewee and Bulls Island roads.

All of the homes would use septic tanks to handle sewage.

The tanks are a major component to environmentalists’ objections of the project, contending the tanks could fail and send untreated sewage leaching into the pristine waters of nearby Cape Romain Wildlife Refuge. Neighbors are concerned by the construction for additional reasons, including added traffic and already minimal fire services for the area being stretched further.

The panel approved the development with several conditions attached. The vote was 5-1, with only Commissioner James Gardner voting against. Lewis White Jr., chair of the planning commission, was not present at the meeting and has not weighed in on the project because he owns the land where it will be built.

Will Waterhouse, a representative of Pulte, said during the meeting that developers had worked to meet with the community and address concerns first raised in a raucous March meeting where angry members of the public argued they had not been properly briefed on the plans.

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“What was evident was that folks in this room had something to say about it, and in the time between the meetings we’ve been listening,” Waterhouse said to the commission.

Residents of the town argued the project should be thrown out entirely because of several changes in the proposal from the conceptual development plan, which was approved in 2006.

“This is dramatically different from what Pulte has proposed to you (16 years ago),” resident Susan Cox said.

She pointed out the original plan called for a new road that will no longer be built, more space between house lots and the edge of the development area, and more distance between homes and a saltwater impoundment that drains directly into the Intracoastal Waterway.

Some concerns that were first raised in the March meeting were addressed in the list of 17 conditions that commissioners added to the project. Among them is that covenants future homebuyers will agree to will include an easement for smoke. Smoke often drifts over the area from nearby prescribed burns by the U.S. Forest Service in Francis Marion National Forest, which are necessary to maintain the ecosystems there.

Waterhouse acknowledged that for some things, like an annual septic tank inspection Pulte will require, may not last.

Asked by Gardner how builders could ensure their conditions will hold after the project is done, Waterhouse said Pulte will retain control of the future homeowners association board only until all the houses are built.

Whether there is a way to ensure septic inspections stayed mandatory after that point, Waterhouse said, “I just don’t know (how) off the top of my head.”

After the meeting, Grace Gasper of conservation group Friends of Coastal SC, said she was “disappointed but not surprised” by the commission’s decision.

She said Pulte had made strides in talking to interest groups and neighbors about their plans, but there are still concerns about the effect on the Francis Marion forest and the nearby Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge.

Developers will still have to get approval from several other public agencies before they start construction, including the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control, which will review plans for septic tanks.

The town will have another meeting next month on the second development proposal that stirred up animosity in March. That plan will eventually put 249 houses on 184 acres near the intersection of Doar Road and U.S. Highway 17.

Taken together, the two projects could eventually increase the population of the town, now at about 1,400, by 50 percent.

Each Friday, the Rising Waters newsletter offers insight into the latest environmental issues impacting the Lowcountry and the rest of the South.

A potential new middle and high school in Awendaw has a chance to be a partial magnet school, and students from multiple parts of the district can be pulled to

AWENDAW, S.C. (WCSC) - A potential new middle and high school in Awendaw has a chance to be a partial magnet school, and students from multiple parts of the district can be pulled to take part in a specialized curriculum.

Charleston County School District Board Members and the people of Mount Pleasant got to hear new details about the potential schools on Wednesday. District officials told people at the meeting, held at Laing Middle School, that a lot of the plans right now are just ideas with no specific timeline.

This new middle and high school would be located on 107 acres at Highway 17 and Jenkins Hill Road. As part of this plan, district staff presented concept maps with multiple options for rezoning.

Jeff Borowy, the Chief Operating Officer for the district, says this plan will be a challenge.

“Most of the times we build a school, we just build a specific zone of attendance for that school, but in this case, we want to have a number of students to offer the right programs for those students,” Borowy said. “So, we have to look out of the box and look for something different beyond the zone.”

District staff says one of the main challenges is making sure that each school holds a maximum of 500 students. This would pull in kids from D1, the Awendaw-McClellanville area, and some from D2 in the northern Mount Pleasant area.

Staff also say they are continuing to research desirable education options for a partial magnet school to reach that target enrollment.

“It’s going to be very important to let’s build the school from up, but at the same time, let’s figure out what we’re going to be doing inside,” Thomas Colleton, D1 Constituent Board Chair, said. “The curriculum needs a lot.”

There is currently no timeline on construction for the schools because the district does not know if this magnet option will be included. The district says it is possible that the earliest we can start to see construction would be in four years.

Jonathan Mars, a parent of two children at Carolina Park Elementary, says this could be an option for his family when his kids get older.

“But it does sound like they’re going to have very specific programs at the school,” Mars said. “So, for example, if there’s a great art program and my daughter’s really into art that seems like a great option to have.”

As of now, this project is not fully funded and the district says they do not have a price estimate.

They say the next step is to charter a blue-ribbon committee in mid-October that will look at enrollment numbers and look at the best options to make this project successful.

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