Chimney Sweep in Charleston, SC

Tropical Storm Idalia moved into South Carolina on Wednesday night after making landfall along Florida's Gulf Coast as a powerful Category 3 hurricane earlier in the day. While the storm had weakened as it moved across Florida and through Georgia, entering South Carolina with maximum sustained wind speeds of around 60 mph, it was still bringing heavy flooding to the coast of the Palmetto State. It later moved on to North Carolina.

A storm surge warning was in effect for the Savannah River, on the border of Georgia and South Carolina, up north to the South Santee River in South Carolina, the National Hurricane Center said Wednesday night.

Along South Carolina's coast, North Myrtle Beach, Garden City, and Edisto Island all reported ocean water flowing over sand dunes and spilling onto beachfront streets Wednesday evening. In Charleston, storm surge from Idalia topped the seawall that protects the downtown, sending ankle-deep ocean water into the streets and neighborhoods where horse-drawn carriages pass million-dollar homes and the famous open-air market.

Emily Johnson of CBS affiliate WCSC-TV posted video of water coming over the seawall along the Battery, an area at the southern tip of the portion of Charelston that extends into the harbor.

Video posted to social media by Kathleen Culler showed two men walking through knee-deep water in what appeared to be a parking lot along the Ashley River.

Police in Isle of Palms, a small town on a barrier island to the east of Charleston, posted a video on social media showing "deep standing water" on one of the island's major roadways.

Preliminary data showed the Wednesday evening high tide reached just over 9.2 feet, more than 3 feet above normal and the fifth-highest reading in Charleston Harbor since records were first kept in 1899.

Idalia also spawned a tornado that briefly touched down in the Charleston, South Carolina, suburb of Goose Creek, the National Weather Service said. The winds sent a car flying and flipped it over, according to authorities and eyewitness video. Two people received minor injuries.

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Four tenant spaces remain after two tenants leased almost three-quarters of the recently completed structure.

A 71-unit project is being built in West Ashley while a 99-unit townhome community in Summerville is now under new ownership.

Dozens of students that have gone through Explore Charleston’s Intern Cultural Enrichment Program, and six have officially come back to call Charleston home.

More than 250 people have confirmed for the 7-8 p.m. Monday forum, which is free to attend, although registration is required. All of the candidates will take part.

State Rep. Kambrell Garvin, former Columbia City Councilwoman Tameika Isaac Devine and activists Javar Juarez and Johnnie Cordero are seeking the Democratic nomination for the state Senate Dist. 19 special election.

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Charleston International surpassed the total passenger count of six years ago in eight months this year.

The state’s busiest airport logged just over 4 million passengers from January through August, besting the 3.98 million for all of 2017, based on the latest report from Charleston County Aviation Authority.

Last month, nearly 536,000 ticket holders arrived and departed at CHS, setting a record for the month of August and exceeding last year’s count for the same month by nearly 12 percent.

For the year so far through August, the airport recorded more than 564,000 additional travelers, or 16 percent more than the same span last year.

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Charleston airport CEO Elliott Summey attributed the continued upsurge in passenger growth to creating an environment that incubates economic success for the airport and the airlines.

“We are making money and they are making money,” he said.

The August tally was down from the all-time one-month record of more than 600,000 passengers set in July, but travel usually falls off in late summer as children return to school and family vacations end.

Hurricane Idalia also affected travel at the end of the month as nearly 90 flights were canceled Aug. 30-31 in the Lowcountry. The runways at CHS also were closed for just over 13 overnight hours on Aug. 31-Sept. 1 as the storm passed to the west of Charleston.

Charleston airport officials are eyeing a record 6 million passengers, or roughly 700,000 more than in 2022, by year’s end. With four months remaining, the airport will need to see about 483,000 travelers each month to reach the milestone. Through the first eight months, the terminal has seen roughly 508,500 each month.

A year ago, Lamont Ferrebee was nearing graduation from Atlanta Technical College and staying in Charleston for a culinary internship. Now he’s a Sous Chef with Queen Street Hospitality at 82 Queen.

He is one of the dozens of students that have gone through Explore Charleston’s Intern Cultural Enrichment Program.

When the program was launched in 2020, the objective was to help students secure hospitality roles in the region after graduation and create a workforce pipeline for the area’s growing industry.

As the evening sous chef, he starts his day in the early afternoon. After taking inventory of what ingredients they have in stock, he gets to curating specials for the evening. One of his favorite dishes to date was a pan-seared halibut with summer vegetable medley, garlic butter mashed potatoes and citrus dill oil. Now that he’s settled in Charleston, he spends his days off in the kitchen at his West Ashley apartment experimenting with new dishes.

Ferrebee said that it wasn’t just the network he built during the internship that made him want to return. It was his love for Charleston as a city and as a fine dining scene.

“I didn’t just become a chef to cook, I became a chef to create,” he said. “It’s like artist walking up to a fresh blank canvas to paint whatever they want. I get to create new dishes every day. It’s unique to be able to have that creative freedom in such a historic restaurant.”

While not everyone chooses to return to the Holy City, Explore Charleston is now seeing that vision come full circle. Six alums recently accepted full-time opportunities in the market.

The 10-week internship program was designed to connect underrepresented minority college students with real-world paid work opportunities in Charleston’s hospitality, food and travel industry.

The internship doesn’t just help place students with a job and summer housing. It’s a leadership development and mentorship program to introduce students to the industry and give them the communication tools and network to professionally grow.

Kyonna Bryant was also a member of the ICEP class of 2022 and returned to the area after graduating from Atlanta Technical College. She is now a line cook with The Charleston Place at the Charleston Grill. She started in the role in June and said she was most excited to be under Chef Michelle Weaver’s wing. Weaver was a primary mentor for both culinary students Bryant and Ferrebee.

“When I thought about where I might start my career, Charleston didn’t cross my mind. That changed after my internship here,” Bryant said. “Charleston hospitality is different than what I was used to in Atlanta and I wanted to be a part of it.”

Many of the intern students say Charleston was not on their radar until the internship. That was also the case for Iyanna Freeman, internship class of 2021 who graduated from Benedict College.

“By the end of my internship, I had a strong feeling I’d return,” Freeman said. “The connections I made during my time in Charleston made me feel like it was the perfect place to start my career in the event industry.

She interned for Charleston Place and is now working as a Special Events Associate at the newly opened International African American Museum.

“I love the idea that I can build the experience that becomes a memory for someone,” she said. “I get to play a small role in furthering our mission to honor the untold stories of the African American journey in a space that connects the past to the present.”

Marc Gibson, Director of Inclusion & Engagement at Explore Charleston, said as the program wrapped up its third year, that they are now seeing the program come full-circle.

“When you plant seeds in a program like this, you don’t always see the reward right away. Sometimes it takes years to see that impact and when you do, it’s even more rewarding,” Gibson said.

The program was launched in the height of the pandemic and has added more workplace opportunities every year since. This year, Halls Chophouse and Taco Boy join an existing lineup of employers including The Charleston Place, Charlestowne Hotels, Hilton Embassy Suites, Hilton Garden Inn, Hotel Bennett, Kiawah Island Golf Resort, Lowcountry Hotels and Wild Dunes Resort.

One of the resources that helped Ferrebee land the job, was the networking opportunities through the internship. An informative panel of hospitality leaders and mentors sat down with students and discussed what they look for in a candidate.

“As students, it helps tremendously because it was like a roadmap to get where they are. It’s a cheat sheet of what they’re really looking for in a resume,” Ferrebee said.

Ferrebee said he had a job offer in hand before he walked across the graduation stage.

Explore Charleston wrapped up its third Intern Cultural Enrichment Program class this month. The ICEP class of 2023 included 10 students from six universities that completed internships with 12 area employers. Three of those interns and Kayla Harrison just accepted full-time positions in Charleston.

Brittney Espitia and Richlyn Jackson were offered at Kiawah Island Golf Resort and Kayla Harrison is joining the Charleston Area Convention Center.

“The experience these interns get is a win for all,” he said. “They leave the summer knowing that they are better prepared to work in the hospitality industry. Even if it’s not in our area, is a definite impact wherever they go in the field that they work in.”

What about Lowe?

With a new city-led 2.0 effort underway to reimagine Union Pier, the question of how to get rid of Lowe and its odious contract with the State Ports Authority is now critical. The Los Angeles real estate giant was hired to sell the project to Charleston and its residents so the Ports Authority, which sat on this prime waterfront property for decades, could cash in on the rise of Charleston.

There’s no way around it: Lowe failed completely. Totally. Miserably.

And yet, Lowe remains at the front of the line to buy Union Pier, at a discount. If nothing else, you have to admire those Lowe lawyers.

The Ports Authority contract with Lowe looked bad when it was signed three years ago. Lowe’s comfy $50,000 a month in fees and expenses was just the start. What really raised eyebrows was that Lowe was given a right of first refusal to buy Union Pier, along with a 9.5% share of the sale price (i.e., the “incentive fee”) if it went to another buyer. Who was going to bid against such a wired deal?

Today, that bad deal looks even worse. “Horrible” is a better word. Former State Ports boss Jim Newsome’s signature is at the bottom of this albatross. If there wasn’t a clawback provision in Newsome’s employment contract, there should have been.

Lowe’s job was to get Union Pier through the city’s permitting process, and it had the perfect guy to do it: Jacob Lindsey, Charleston’s former planning director. He knows the system better than anyone. He knows everyone. Everyone likes Jacob Lindsey.

“Dare I write the words ‘this time could be different’?”

I own those words, written in this column in April 2022 in reporting Lindsey’s return to Charleston from that Rocky Mountain paradise called Boulder, Colo. If this time is to ever be different, though, it will not be because of Lowe and Lindsey.

They have been reduced to overpaid bystanders after Charlestonians, in a rare show of consensus, shouted down their top-down vision of a too-tall, too-dense waterfront. Too not Charleston.

“The Riley Center, as well as the Union Pier Stakeholder Advisory Committee, is leading the planning and engagement processes for the redevelopment of Union Pier,” the Ports Authority said in a statement to me.

Lowe is nowhere. So why is it still in line for a huge payday? That’s the question of the moment. The Ports Authority declined to comment on the contract; Lowe didn’t respond to my inquiry.

Bill Stern, the Ports Authority chairman, told The Post and Courier’s David Wren in February the gold-plated contract — the right of first refusal, the incentive fee, etc. — was necessary to attract a big hitter like Lowe to get the project through the city’s zoning process.

Lowe didn’t get the project entitled and still has the contract. This cannot stand.

Lowe has lawyers; so does the state of South Carolina, and it can hire more. This is what lawyers do: Negotiate, threaten to sue, sue if they must. Start with Section 4(a) of the contract: Termination by Owner for Default. There are pages and pages of whereases and therefores to parse.

The Ports Authority is not without leverage. Lowe has to live in this town. It has a huge investment in The Cooper, the 225-room luxury hotel nearing completion on the site of the authority’s former headquarters adjacent to Joe Riley Waterfront Park, and ambitions to do more. The Medical University of South Carolina, for instance, is about to start the master planning process for its “Innovation District” on the peninsula. Lowe would be a natural fit for that. But not if its name is poison in Charleston.

If Lowe wants to bid on Union Pier, then welcome! The playing field, however, needs to be leveled: No right of first refusal, no incentive fee.

By removing Lowe as The Chosen One, the Ports Authority would widen the field of bidders, a good thing. There might even be an interested hometown developer. Who knows what’s possible with a level playing field.

Here’s all the incentive Lowe should need: We will forget all about the last unfortunate year if you will. Time to start over.

Steve Bailey is a regular contributor to the Post and Courier Opinion section. He can be reached at sjbailey1060@yahoo.com.

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For a board elected by an organization that claims to prioritize transparency, and chaired by a member who has said repeatedly she doesn’t want closed-door sessions except when South Carolina law requires it, the Charleston County School Board sure is keeping the public — and even some of its members — out of a lot of the public’s business.

If we believe what little board members have said about the recent last-minute, closed-door meeting about their new superintendent, it was not in fact cooked up by the five Moms for Liberty-backed board members behind the backs of the four other board members; one of the Moms candidates, Carlotte Bailey, said even she didn’t know about it in advance.

Also contrary to the criticisms of the four members who routinely end up in the minority, there was nothing inappropriate about discussing the superintendent’s performance after only two months; his contract appropriately requires a minimum of an annual evaluation but allows additional evaluations “at any time the Board deems necessary.”

More significantly, though, both the explanation from Chairwoman Pam McKinney and a rebuttal from Board Member Daron Lee Calhoun II suggest that the board had no business holding its discussion about Superintendent Eric Gallien’s performance behind closed doors.

Ms. McKinney, who called the special meeting with the closed-door session, said afterward it was to clarify Dr. Gallien’s duties and responsibilities based on his contract. And as The Post and Courier’s Hillary Flynn and Maura Turcotte report, Mr. Calhoun said the board also discussed “procedures of termination for a position and grounds certain board members felt a termination of a contract may be necessary.”

Boards may legally discuss grounds for terminating an employee in executive session, although we’ve never understood why: What in the world is more the public’s business than whether people running school districts or government agencies are doing a decent job? Well, except perhaps for whether the people we elect to oversee them are doing a decent job overseeing them, which we only learn if we can see how they evaluate them.

But there’s nothing in the law that requires such conversations to be held in private. And there’s nothing appropriate about having a private discussion about the duties an already-approved (and therefore public) contract spells out, or the procedures that already-approved contract requires for termination.

Except for agreeing to discuss an undefined “personnel matter” in private along with the superintendent’s contract, it’s unclear that a court would rule that the board violated the law, which offers far more wiggle room than we’d like, particularly when boards can find an excuse to hear advice from their attorney. (And yet, many governments still manage to violate numerous parts of our state’s Freedom of Information Act, routinely.)

It’s clear, though, that the closed-door session broke trust with the spirit of the open-meetings law, and any pledges any members of the board made to do the public’s work in public.

It’s clear that the public isn’t being served when the factionalism of the board is so bad that a member of one faction apparently can’t even get a straight answer from the board chairwoman when she reaches out to ask why the board is discussing the superintendent’s contract so soon after it was signed.

Perhaps even more disturbingly, the meeting suggests that at least some members of the board already are suffering buyer’s remorse. And that validates our concerns about the board’s decision to hire the last man standing rather than reopening the search process after two of the three finalists backed out, apparently upset that, in compliance with state law, their names had been released before they expected — a misunderstanding that itself pointed to problems with the search process.

Also disturbing is the confusion by at least some board members about what privacy and transparency mean. Board Member Keith Grybowski sent an email to Ms. Turcotte arguing that the board has to balance public access and protecting individuals’ privacy rights, calling it “essential for our community to understand that transparency doesn’t equate to revealing every detail of every discussion.”

We’re not sure whose privacy he hoped to protect: Dr. Gallien’s or his own. In either case, we believe it’s essential for our board to understand that state law makes it clear and our courts have ruled consistently that “privacy” rights are far narrower than those who throw around the term would like us to believe.

The law might indeed allow a board to hide behind closed doors in order to discuss whether it wants to fire a superintendent, but that’s not because it has anything to do with protecting anybody’s privacy. To the contrary, there are few things that have less to do with privacy than who runs a government agency, and why.

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