Housing advocates, arts fans weigh in on Promenade plans

The Ginn Co. finished three days of public meetings with a wish list of suggestions for Promenade, the company's development of nearly 200 acres along Town Creek and Morrison Drive in Charleston.

The company, an international developer of resort communities, hopes to build three hotels, a large amphitheater, a commercial area, marina, townhomes and condos.

On Wednesday, a number of people active in Charleston's arts community attended one of the planning workshops, many of them asking if Promenade would include low-cost space for artists, community theaters and arts education.

Several said they were responding to an e-mail from Charleston's Office of Cultural Affairs, which described the development as The Promenade Arts District.

"A lot of the theaters need performance space, storage space and rehearsal space," said Art Gilliard of Art Forms and Theatre Concepts. "The big thing is, it needs to be affordable."

Ginn Co. Project Manager Will Bagwell said he hadn't heard the "arts district" name before but said there's potential for public-private partnerships if the city wants to see below-market-rate space for artists.

The company also heard from affordable-housing advocates, some local politicians looking for outreach efforts benefiting residents of nearby housing projects, and a representative of the Charleston Yacht Club interested in the proposed marina.

The three days of workshops about the development also yielded comments about appropriate building heights, public access to the waterfront, and housing affordable for the middle class.

Bagwell said the development would likely include some "workforce housing" with prices around $200,000.

He also said the development would create jobs within walking distance of Bridgeview, a privately owned low-income housing project formerly known as Bayside.

All of the residential units at Promenade will be condos or townhomes, because environmental regulations won't allow for building single-family homes on the site. That's because most of the land was a former Charleston County landfill, and single-family homes with land could lead to problems with disturbing the soil that caps the site.

Anything built on the landfill would sit upon concrete piers up to 100 feet deep, reaching through the buried trash and fill from river dredging into the bedrock below.

The next step in planning Promenade is for the Ginn Co. to incorporate the feedback from the past three days of meetings into their plans, complete a transportation study, and begin a series of meetings with city planners.

The company hopes to have plans submitted to and potentially approved by the city by the first quarter of 2009.

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