GRIDS ARE GOOD: The plan for the upper peninsula

City of Charleston · Planning Commission
🌳 Contested 95-townhome concept plan on last major James Island forest parcel approved 5-0
The commission approved a concept subdivision plan for a 95-lot townhome development on 27.8 acres of DR6-zoned land off Maybank Highway on James Island, over unanimous and passionate neighborhood opposition from Woodland Shores, Stefon Drive, and Pawpaw Street residents citing catastrophic flooding risk, loss of the last contiguous forest canopy on the island, traffic gridlock, and wildlife habitat destruction. The commission acknowledged it lacked legal authority to deny a subdivision that meets code criteria under state law, but required the applicant to continue community engagement; the project must return to TRC for a far more stringent preliminary plat review before any building permit can issue.

City of Charleston · Planning Commission
🔥 STR occupancy cap and grandfathering rules spark major operator opposition; item deferred
The commission heard proposed amendments to the STR ordinance that would replace the existing four-person occupancy limit with a combination of an eight-person cap and IPMC-based bedroom standards, while grandfathering existing large-unit operators. Dozens of operators, attorneys, hospitality professionals, and small business owners testified that the eight-person cap is arbitrary, will devastate property values for large-unit operators, and is unsupported by FOIA complaint data showing only three livability complaints across 700+ licensed units over 29 months. The commission voted 5-0 to defer the item, citing concerns about the grandfathering-on-sale impact and the need for further refinement before a council recommendation.

Charleston County · County Council — Environmental Management Committee
🌳 Council authorizes administrator to negotiate North Charleston waste convenience center at donated 6-acre site
The City of North Charleston proposed donating a 6-acre site at 4212 Scott Street for a new convenience center to relieve overcrowding at the Bees Ferry facility, with North Charleston agreeing to staff and operate the site while Charleston County handles hauling. Council approved a motion authorizing the county administrator to negotiate and execute the necessary agreements when North Charleston is ready to proceed. The site also has capacity to serve as a storm debris laydown yard during disaster events.

Charleston County · County Council — Planning and Public Works Committee
🚧 14-year-old intersection safety project cleared to proceed to construction after tree approval confirmed
Consultant Emily Swearington presented the history of the Central Park Road and Riverland Drive intersection project, which dates to 2012 and has been scaled back repeatedly due to tree impacts, property acquisition issues, and neighborhood concerns. The current scope includes approximately 4,700 linear feet of sidewalk improvements and a flashing pedestrian beacon for school crossings, with no traffic signal, and all permits have been obtained. Council reached consensus to proceed with construction, confirming that tree removal approvals were already granted and that future signal improvements could build on this work as a first phase.

Charleston County · Historic Preservation Commission
🏛️ Boone Hall Plantation to be donated to public foundation in perpetuity
Attorney David Miller announced that the McCrae family is donating Boone Hall Plantation entirely to the newly formed Boone Hall Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, with a conservation easement already in place prohibiting further subdivision. A minor 1.53-acre lot at 1235 Long Point Road is being split from the roughly 600-acre parent parcel so that owner Elizabeth McCrae Peterson can continue residing in her home during her lifetime, after which it too reverts to the foundation. The HPC found the subdivision application consistent with the Cultural Resources Element of the comprehensive plan, and its report will go to the Planning Commission on August 10, 2026.

Town of Mount Pleasant · Town Council
🚧 Council debates motion to deny municipal consent for Laurel Hill Parkway connection to Dunes West Boulevard
More than 60 speakers addressed the council on Charleston County's proposed Highway 41 Road to Compromise, a $245 million project that includes a new Laurel Hill Parkway spur through approximately 10 acres of the 741-acre Laurel Hill County Park. Council member Rambo moved to deny municipal consent specifically for permits and approvals necessary to connect the Laurel Hill Parkway to town-owned Dunes West Boulevard, prompting legal debate over the geographic scope of municipal consent under state law. The county's engineering team warned that the $63 million State Infrastructure Bank commitment could be lost and that Alternative One (four-lane widening) was set aside after 794 public comments opposed it, while Smart Growth 41 reported 3,967 of 4,014 submitted comments opposed the Laurel Hill Parkway.

City of Charleston · Committee on Traffic and Transportation
🔄 City approves its first-ever mini roundabout on James Island
The committee unanimously approved installation of the city's first mini roundabout at the intersection of Old Military Road, Secessionville Road, and Grimball Road Extension on James Island. The 22-foot-diameter traversible center island will be funded from city traffic calming funds, with SCDOT reducing approach speeds to 30 mph. Council Member Sakran, whose District 12 includes the site, noted the intersection was the top constituent safety concern raised during campaign door-knocking.

City of North Charleston · Public Safety Committee
🏙️ Code Studio unveils comprehensive UDO framework to replace 1970s-era zoning code
Consultant Christy Dodson of Code Studio presented an extensive framework document outlining eight recommendation buckets for a new Unified Development Ordinance to replace North Charleston's outdated 1970s zoning regulations. Key recommendations include a new zoning map aligned with the Prime Charleston comprehensive plan, a consolidated use table, missing middle housing districts, form-based design standards, and integrated stormwater and resilience standards. Community engagement will continue for 14 months, with a full public report to be posted online within two weeks and council feedback solicited over the next month before ordinance drafting begins.

I went to the Peninsula Plan open house this week. The session focused on the Upper Peninsula and the Neck, and I had a chance to talk with Christian Sottile, one of the urban designers leading the planning work. This is such an important part of the Peninsula Plan because the last plan from 1999, often referred to as “The Riley Plan”, stopped short of the Upper Peninsula.

Sottile was direct about it: development is happening up there without a guiding framework. Projects are going in one at a time, each one making its own rules. The result is what he called "islands": buildings that don't connect to anything around them.

The root cause isn't that developers are doing something illegal. It's that the city hasn't spelled out what it wants the Upper Peninsula to look like. Each project fills that vacuum on its own terms, usually with parking lots where streets should be.

Sottile made a case for the street grid as the single most important tool the city has for keeping the Upper Peninsula coherent as it redevelops.

His argument: grids are not invented. They're a naturally occurring ordering system. "The grid is a naturally occurring regulating feature," he said. "The grid just holds it together." The Upper Peninsula already has a large grid working in its favor, which has given it more coherence than some other parts of the city.

The parcels up there are big, and big parcels without streets running through them are fine for an industrial area, but it's not fine when you're talking about housing, offices, and the kind of walkable city Charleston says it wants.

The fix is straightforward in concept: when large sites redevelop, require new streets to break them down. He gave a specific example using Greenleaf Street, east of Meeting Street, as an alignment that should be extended through new development rather than ignored. "It's very old-fashioned," he said, "but it's how you make a choice."

He also noted that cities have the leverage to ask for this. Streets are public infrastructure. The ask has to happen during the approval process, before the project is locked in.

Sottile talked about the Lowcountry Lowline in terms of waypoints and tributaries as it stretches further north.

The Lowline runs up the King Street rail corridor. Along that spine, he described a series of "targets": landmarks and crossing points that help people read the corridor and know where they are.

The critical gap he identified is pedestrian connectivity. Between Meeting Street and King Street, north of Mount Pleasant Street, there is currently only 1 crossing point. That's a significant constraint for anyone trying to move between the 2 corridors on foot.

His proposal: create tributary paths that stitch from the Lowline up to both Meeting Street and King Street. These wouldn't be major roads. They'd be pedestrian connections that make safe crossings at key intersections.

He also talked about the area around Mount Pleasant Street as a natural edge for where the Low Line should currently terminate, with lower-scale infill buildings along that corridor to create street enclosure.

Lowcountry Rapid Transit, the planned Bus Rapid Transit line, intersects with the Lowline. Sottile described this as one of the most important moments in the entire Upper Peninsula plan. He was pointing to the piece of property between Meeting and King, on the north side of Mount Pleasant Street.

His concept: a civic plaza and transit pavilion at that crossing point. Not a bus stop. A place. He compared the experience to stepping out of a major railway station in a European city, where the architecture signals that you've arrived somewhere worth being.

He was candid that the site doesn't feel that way right now. The transfer point needs placemaking: design, programming, and physical form that makes getting off the LCRT feel intentional.

He proposed thinking about this connection as a "belt buckle": the node where LCRT and the Lowline meet, enabling transfers and linking to micromobility options like bikes. The name, he suggested, matters. Naming the node is part of giving it civic significance.

Sottile identified a set of locations he called "hinge" moments: places where corridors meet, typically under bridges or overpasses, that currently read as nothing and should read as gateways.

Courier Square area came up as one example of an "important moment where everything comes together." Other sites he referenced included locations near Lyon Street and Mount Pleasant Street.

Right now, these spots are gaps. His argument is that they're actually opportunities, precisely because they're at junctions. He pointed to a photo of an early transit-oriented development stop in San Francisco as a precedent for how transit moments can anchor housing and civic life in a way that makes the transit investment worth it.

Sottile made the case that the city needs to think on a 20-year horizon for certain sites, not a 5-year one. Some parcels that are privately owned today will become available eventually. If the city hasn't identified which ones matter for future civic uses, it won't be positioned to act when the moment comes.

He specifically called out what he described as "natural folds in the road": moments in the street network that become important orientation points as the corridor develops. Some sides of those folds matter more than others for civic anchoring. His recommendation: mark those sites now, even if nothing can be done with them in this generation.

Sottile's clearest point was also his most direct: the city needs to move decisively enough as a municipal entity to spell out what it wants the Upper Peninsula to be, before development fills in the gaps on its own.

Right now, high-performance zones in the Upper Peninsula don't carry design obligations that would produce a coherent city fabric. The result is parking lots where blocks should be, and isolated buildings where streets should be.

His prescription: "Instead of making parking lots, we should be making streets." That means updating codes for high-performance zones, requiring block coherence as part of project approvals, and setting a clear public expectation for what the Upper Peninsula is becoming.

A lot of the confusion among residents and developers alike, he said, comes down to a lack of clarity. The plan's job is to provide that clarity.

The Peninsula Plan sessions are continuing on a weekly basis, with each session focused on a different project in alignment with the plan. Next week is Magnolia Landing. I am planning on attending as many of these open houses as possible to bring you all the information I can get.

For all information on the Peninsula Plan, visit the website HERE

Park Circle home with “mini angel oak” tree
- 3 bed, 2 bath, 1624 sqft
- .32 acre lot
- Parking pad behind the fence for a boat/RV
- 300-600 year old oak in the backyard!
-$610,000

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