Chimney Sweep in Huger, SC

Cainhoy and Huger residents who have seen how I-526 has changed their communities are issuing a stark warning if the freeway is extended across Johns and James islands: If you build it, you’ll get rampant development, a traffic deluge and life-changing “culture shock.”

“We have just absolutely been overwhelmed with traffic and wrecks. We now have a 24-hour vape shop” that attracts students after school, said MaeRe Chandler Skinner, a longtime resident of Cainhoy in lower Berkeley County. “It has been a culture shock!”

The quaint Wando River enclave settled in the early 1720s has become nearly encircled by development since the highway called the Mark Clark Expressway opened three decades ago. The community has “more development than you can shake a stick at,” Skinner said. “There is not going to be a tree standing on Clements Ferry Road by the time [developers] get through.”

Decades from now, James and Johns islanders might voice a similar lament if an 8.5-mile southern loop to the interstate is built at a cost of $2.3 billion to connect it with the James Island Connector and the Charleston peninsula.

The S.C. General Assembly’s Joint Bond Review Committee on Dec. 5 approved $75 million in preliminary funding to the S.C. Transportation Infrastructure Bank for the first phase of the highway’s extension.

The new funding will be combined with $75 million pledged by the Charleston County Council toward the project. The decision puts taxpayers on the hook for $150 million for a road destined to alter the landscape and way of life for two Charleston County sea islands.

On Johns Island, some residents are resigned that not much can be done to stop the highway, said Cheryl Glover, lay leader of Johns Island Parish United Methodist Church on Bohicket Road. “It is hard to get folks to realize what is going to happen, if they don’t see it already happening.”

The prospect of the Mark Clark Expressway’s southern loop has laid dormant for decades but now with additional funding, Cainhoy resident Sammy Sanders warns: “Don’t do it! Don’t let it happen!”

For the sake of Johns and James islands, “I had hoped that issue wasn’t going to come back up,” he said. “When you increase the number of people, you increase the difficulties.”

Glover said development on Johns Island has already caused traffic delays, and the extended expressway might be a regrettable solution to traffic congestion.

Sanders admits, however, that having more people in the area has brought some advantages to lower Berkeley County. Cainhoy’s marina now has dry stack storage for boats, he said. “We wouldn’t have a dry stack, if we didn’t have the houses.”

A housing boom in the Huger community brought better internet connections, said community advocate Vernelle Dickerson. Nevertheless, the growth in Huger also has meant more traffic, a smelly sewage pumping station in one development along S.C. 41 near the Huger post office and an erosion of the tranquil country lifestyle, she said.

“These people [come here] from the North and West say they want county living, then they want all the amenities of city living” which fuels more commercial development, she explained.

Before and after the Mark Clark Expressway connected North Charleston with Daniel Island, community leaders attended dozens of meetings with state officials and developers.

Skinner urged residents of James and Johns islands to “come up with a game plan, attend every meeting … and say your objections.”

Dickerson said to blunt some of the downside of development communities should demand what they want.

Fred Lincoln lives in the Jack Primus community near Cainhoy on land his great-grandfather purchased after emancipation. Lincoln said before the extension comes, property owners should decide how they can take advantage of the commercial and residential growth that could follow the highway.

When land speculators offer to buy property, Lincoln advises “don’t take the fast dollar. Those people who sold property [in the Cainhoy area] if they had to rethink it, I don’t think they’d do it.”

Landowners on James and Johns islands near the path of the coming highway, Lincoln explained, should rezone their land for commercial use and consider leasing their property instead of selling it to preserve the land for the next generation.

City Paper special projects editor Herb Frazier is the author of Behind God’s Back: Gullah Memories, Cainhoy, Wando, Huger, Daniel Island, St. Thomas Island, South Carolina.

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The Richland County Council voted Tuesday to unanimously approve financial incentives for a $100 million housing development at the former SCANA bus storage site on Huger Street.

Huger Flats, previously identified by the county as Project Wichita, will take up nearly 6 acres at 1409 Huger St. across from The Nine student apartment complex, at the gateway to downtown Columbia’s Vista.

The apartment development plans to include sidewalks, a pocket park and a 643-space parking garage, according to county documents.

During the council’s first vote on incentives for the project in March, it was proposed as an $90 million investment. The updated $100 million plan makes the development one of the most expensive housing developments in the city.

The nearby CanalSide development remains the highest with over $100 million invested into apartments at the old South Carolina Penitentiary site.

The new Huger Flats location is one of the most prominent and valuable undeveloped properties in downtown. It has been empty since 2008 when SCANA tore down the old bus barn.

The land was first developed in 1902 as an SCE&G manufactured gas plant, which left coal tar as a byproduct. The apartment development plan currently estimates that required environmental remediation of the area will cost over $1 million. Other large costs include building the parking facility and modernizing and burying electric lines.

Huger Flats also plans to relocate and modernize stormwater and sewer mains, add green spaces and improve the roadway.

There is an estimated total of $22 million of public infrastructure improvements related to the development.

The project is to be developed by Atlanta-based Stratus Property Group, according to county documents. Jeff Koon, a representative from Stratus Property Group said the company is working with stakeholders in the area and is looking forward to proceeding with the project.

“It’s good to see some reinvention of the area on the way,” Koon said. “We’re looking forward to that being kind of a connecting piece between existing properties.”

As a part of the approval, the company agreed to rent apartments at a rate affordable to residents earning between 80% and 120% of the Columbia area median income.

In exchange for the company’s $100 million investment, it will get a 50% property tax break for 15 years.

There have been other attempts to redevelop the site in the past, including a 2016 pitch to build a supermarket and apartments, but none have been unsuccessful. The site sits beside another notable vacant property, the former Kline Iron and Steel Co. property at the corner of Huger and Gervais streets, where multiple development proposals also have faltered over the years.

This story was originally published July 19, 2023, 10:28 AM.

HUGER, S.C. – Nestled in the heart of the Francis Marion Forest down a secluded road in the middle of nowhere in Huger lies a more than century-old church that’s seen better days. Founded in the early 1880s, the old Eccles United Methodist Church still stands strong but time hasn’t been kind.

Situated along Eccles Church Road where the pavement ends, the old church sits adjacent to its current sanctuary, which was built in the 1960s. For many of the older parishioners attending services in the new church, the old building is a time capsule of sorts, filled with fond memories of their youth and an era gone by.

“They [the older members] talk of Sunday school lessons on rustic longleaf pine floors and of Mother’s Day gatherings around banquet tables full of scrumptious country cuisine for families and friends,” described church member, Nancy Platt. “They share about candlelit holiday services against the dark forest canopy and of vacation Bible school on serene, summer mornings.”

It’s been more than 50 years since the last church service in the original building, but church members are desperate to salvage it. Their old, wooden gem is currently in need of a new room, timber framing, windows and the repointing of one of the brick foundational corners.

To ensure that the old church continues to stand the test of time, parishioners have launched a GoFundMe page to raise funds to renovate it. They’re hoping to raise at least $15,000.

“We dream to create more of these special memories with the next generation and of making Eccles Old a vibrant asset in the community,” Platt posted to the online fundraiser. “We’ve been working with a local preservation contracting company and with the American College of Building Arts to formulate a remediation plan and to determine the funds needed for preservation.”

In addition to their online fundraiser, church members will host a gospel performance featuring several singers and groups on Sept. 24 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. The church is located at 1969 Eccles Church Road in Huger. Donations will be accepted during the event.

“Please help us restore and preserve this little woodland gem, and, if you can’t donate at this time, please share our mission with others,” Platt said.

To donate to the church’s GoFundMe page, click here.

HUGER – When Edward Beaufort-Cutner was growing up, he could walk 3 miles in almost any direction from his modest one-story wooden home before reaching another house.

Today, all Beaufort-Cutner, 77, needs to do is walk a few feet out his front door to realize that his family’s 50-acre homesite will soon be overwhelmed by new residential developments.

Over the next five years, as many as 700 new homes in two developments — D.R. Horton’s French Quarter Creek and Toll Brothers’ Forrest Edge — will rise in this rural section of S.C. Highway 41 just steps from Beaufort-Cutner’s property.

The two developments served as prime hunting grounds in Beaufort-Cutner’s youth and were used as farmland by his extended family.

Real Estate

“The new developments are going to affect our quality of life in a major way,” he said. “The increase in traffic, the noise will change the complexion of this area that has been the same since, really, the end of the Civil War. I’m not against growth, it’s progress and I understand that progress can be good if it’s done in the right way. It’s just very concerning what’s happening to this area and I’m not sure what, if anything, can be done about it.”

The chances of the Highway 41 corridor around in this tiny Berkeley County community turning into another of the county’s mega-developments like Cane Bay or Carnes Crossroads are unlikely. The majority of land along the Highway 41 corridor north of Clements Ferry Road is zoned as an agricultural or preservation residential districts, which are designed to preserve and protect the rural residential character and sensitive natural and historical resources of the area.

The Francis Marion National Forrest and large-scale private conservation efforts have limited the amount of land available to developers to about 8,000 acres around Huger. With limited public sewer availability and the existing capacity of Highway 41, the area is not equipped to manage the demands generated by suburban development similar to Cainhoy Plantation off of Clements Ferry Road or in nearby Mount Pleasant across the Wando River.

“This is not a place to have suburban-sprawl style developments like we’ve seen in Mount Pleasant or in the northern part of Berkeley County,” said Coastal Conservation League senior development director Jason Crowley. “It just doesn’t make sense. The county would cripple themselves financially if they were to extend water and sewer lines out to that area. That’s also the heart of the Cooper River Historic District. Most of the families that live on the lands are in settlement communities and have lived there for generations. More development would only upset their way of life.”

Feeling the pressure

The Highway 41 corridor around Huger is feeling the pressure from suburban sprawl that is taking place in Mount Pleasant and in Cainhoy Plantation.

Cainhoy Plantation stretches across 9,000 acres along Clements Ferry and Cainhoy roads, between the Cooper and Wando rivers. When the last moving boxes are unloaded over the next decade about 9,000 homes will stand on the tract north of Daniel Island. It already features schools, apartments, a Publix supermarket, a few restaurants and retailers.

Huger residents don’t want to see a similar scene take place in their backyards.

The 259,000-acre Francis Marion National Forest takes up a huge swath of land along Highway 41 and serves as a quasi-buffer between developers and the established settlement communities already in place.

“The Francis Marion forest is true a blessing for us,” Beaufort-Cutner said.

Local conservation groups have done their share to gobble up land and keep it out of the hands of developers.

The Keystone Tract, a 4,300-acre parcel surrounded on three sides by the national forest, has been a sought-after property since International Paper put it up for sale in the early 2000s.

The land was peppered with controversy amid developers’ plans to build thousands of homes along the Highway 41. That triggered challenges from conservation and environmental groups that said the tract was an opportunity to connect the Francis Marion to the Cooper River and preserve safe passage for wildlife between the watersheds of the Santee and lower Cooper rivers.

A one-two weather punch will foster plenty of weather headaches across the West as the calendar flips from March to April. A pair of weathermakers will lead to a soggy, snowy end to the month across much of the West. The first will deliver light to briefly moderate snow across the tallest peaks in the Colorado and Wyoming Rocky Front Range. A second, more intense storm will follow, gliding along the Golden State coast into the Four Corners throughout this weekend before jumping onto the western High southern Plains in time for beginning of April. Already, Winter Storm Warnings, Winter Weather Advisories, and Winter Storm Watches cover parts of the West, including the Sierra Nevada, Santa Barbara, Ventura, San Gabriel, San Diego, and San Bernardino Mountains, as well as parts of the Great Basin and central Rockies in Nevada, Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado throughout this weekend. Three inches to locally a foot of snow will pile up across parts of the Wyoming and Colorado Rocky Front Range through the first half of today. This includes Aspen, Colo. Travel will be difficult, especially when combined with gusts up to 35 to 40 mph blow and drift the snow about, significantly reducing visibility. The tallest peaks above 9,000 feet will rake in the heaviest snow totals during this time. The main course, the meat and potatoes, will rush inland across California today. Soaking rain accompanied by a few thunderstorms will patrol the beaches and valleys, while flakes will break out across the Sierra Nevada and southern California’s mountains above 5,000 to 6,000 feet. This is where 3 to 12 inches of snow will be measured by the time the storm moves east on Sunday. One to 3 feet locally will occur above 6,000 feet, with the heaviest totals falling at 8,000 feet or higher. Lighter snow totals will spread further inland between tonight and Monday, leaving many parts of the Wasatch Range, Arizona’s northern mountains, and from Wyoming’s to far northern New Mexico’s Rocky Front Range under a fresh blanket of snow. Totals approaching a foot or more will be found most east of Salt Lake City in the Unita mountains and across western Wyoming. Several inches will fall in the Flagstaff, Ariz., metro area and surrounding higher terrain as well. Meanwhile, Interstates 5, 10, 15, 215, and 405 will be susceptible to impactful flooding across southern California, whether that’s low-lying, poor drainage, urban, or excess runoff from rivers and creeks. A risk for rockslides and mudslides will exist as well. Widespread 1 to 3-inch totals are expected with locally up to 6 inches in the surrounding foothills and mountains possible. Flood Watches stretch across much of southern California. Los Angeles, Anaheim, Ontario, Riverside, and San Diego, Calif., are included. Remember this simple motto if you approach a roadway covered in water, “Turn Around, Don’t Drown!” Another noteworthy punch the storm makeup will pack is gusty, potentially power interrupting winds. Peak gusts of 50 to 70 mph will be commonplace, making driving difficult for high-profiled vehicles, blowing dust across desert locations leading to reduced visibility, and sending lose objects airborne. Widespread High Wind Warnings and Wind Advisories remain in effect for portions of California, most of Arizona, and parts of southeast Utah and southwest Colorado. Los Angeles, Anaheim, and San Diego, Calif., and Phoenix, Flagstaff, and Tucson, Ariz., are included. It’s never too early to prepare for inclement weather. Simply having an emergency kit equipped with a weather radio, extra batteries, non-perishable food, water, clean clothes and blankets will go a long way in keeping your family safe, warm and protected. Be sure to check the WeatherBug App or your local weather stations to keep informed on the approaching weather.Read More