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The former Navy Base in North Charleston that closed back in 1996 is finally on its way to adding new construction, including both single and multi-family homes

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - New ownership brings new developments. The former Navy Base in North Charleston that closed back in 1996 is finally on its way to adding new construction, including both single and multi-family homes.

Since the base closed its doors in 1996, the city had an original master plan that was created in 2004 for this redevelopment. Now, the city has a revamped plan, known as the “Navy Base Redevelopment District” that they say is going to help bring even more connectivity to this area.

The city of North Charleston says the “Navy Base Redevelopment District” will include areas south of Virginia Avenue, areas around Noisette Boulevard, and Reynolds Avenue as the main focus. Megan Clark, the city’s planning and division director, says they are renovating two buildings on the base. One for residential and one for offices and retail.

Clark says other buildings could be hotels or strictly office buildings.

“All of that’s permitted,” Clark said. “The only development that we have proposed right now is just reused to those two buildings for the multi-family and office and retail.”

The city owns a lot of the property surrounding the base, such as the Noisette Creek Pedestrian Bridge, the Admirals House and Riverfront Park. Clark says they do not have a set number of how many people will be able to move to this area as they preserve the historic district.

“There’s a height district surrounding the historic buildings, so we maintain that character along Noisette,” Clark said. “But beyond that, there isn’t a height district. Potentially, you know, if you can park the facilities then you can put as many units as can fit.”

The city says they have nothing budgeted for this because they won’t have to pay if a property is privately owned. However, they can join an agreement with someone if they wish to do so.

The city’s planning commission will have two public hearings on Monday, Jan. 9. The first will be about the proposal of this new plan and the second will be approving the rezoning of the actual property. From there, it will need to go through city council readings in order to officially move forward.

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COLUMBIA, S.C. – FlexCold, a leading cold storage warehousing and logistics company, today announced plans to establish operations in Dorchester County. The company’s $49.9 million investment will create 59 new jobs.

Headquartered in Charleston, FlexCold specializes in cold storage warehousing and logistics by providing customers with personalized cold storage expertise and targeting strategic locations that are advantageous to today’s evolving food supply chain. The company focuses on storing, handling, and distributing poultry, seafood, meat, packaged goods and frozen produce.

Located on Patriot Boulevard in North Charleston, the Dorchester County facility marks FlexCold’s first cold storage location in South Carolina and second facility in the United States. The new operations will include a highly modern, cold food storage facility to accommodate a diverse customer base with a focus on receiving a substantial amount of imported goods. Operationally, FlexCold will provide import and export services, U.S. Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration inspections, labeling and repacking, and cross-docking services.

Operations are expected to be online by late summer 2024. Individuals interested in joining the FlexCold team should visit the company’s careers page.

QUOTES

“We are thrilled to be expanding our footprint by establishing operations within a modern cold storage facility strategically located close to the Port of Charleston. We’re proud to further add to the economic development of the area in a meaningful and tangible way by helping meet the need to accommodate critical import and export business, specifically seafood.” -FlexCold Co-Founder Jeff Manno

“We are proud to announce another innovative cold storage chain locating in South Carolina. It’s companies such as FlexCold that will continue to enhance our supply chain by providing profound ideas and cutting-edge talent. We welcome FlexCold and look forward to the positive impact that they will make in the state and the Dorchester County community.” -Gov. Henry McMaster

“We welcome FlexCold to Dorchester County and celebrate the new opportunities that the company will create. South Carolina’s business-friendly climate, talented workforce and efficient infrastructure network make it the perfect location for FlexCold to establish new operations.” -Secretary of Commerce Harry M. Lightsey III

“SC Ports has significantly upgraded its refrigerated capabilities to efficiently handle more frozen and fresh products for the growing Southeast consumer base. FlexCold’s investment will complement these efforts and further enhance the cold chain in South Carolina. This innovative facility will expand the ability to move more frozen products, such as seafood, through the Port of Charleston.” -SC Ports President and Chief Executive Officer Barbara Melvin

“We are excited to welcome FlexCold as the newest company in North Charleston and Dorchester County, as we know the large capital investment and new job opportunities will certainly have a positive and lasting effect on our community. The city of North Charleston proudly commits to remain business-friendly and attentive to the needs of FlexCold and all our local industries.” -City of North Charleston Mayor R. Keith Summey

“Cold storage is a fast-growing segment of the logistics and distribution business at the Port of Charleston, and Dorchester County is excited to welcome FlexCold. It’s encouraging to see such a dynamic company establish operations in our community. We thank FlexCold for their investment and look forward to their success.” -Dorchester County Council Chairman Stuart T. Friddle

FIVE FAST FACTS

NORTH CHARLESTON — A new motel, barbecue restaurant and coffee shop are slated to be the newest businesses in the Chicora Cherokee neighborhood where once-vibrant Reynolds Avenue is now a focal point for revitalization.

“Our goal is to not be King Street,” said Ed Sutton, developer and president emeritus of the Reynolds Avenue Area Merchants Association, emphasizing the need for the North Charleston strip to attract locally owned business as opposed to chain restaurants.

But there’s another problem that affects the downtown Charleston business corridor that those living near North Charleston’s Reynolds Avenue are hoping to keep at bay: flooding.

The Chicora Cherokee community, a hot spot for new development and also a target for affordable housing and new businesses, is one of six neighborhoods that have been targeted for drainage improvements. Though residents and community leaders welcome the improvements, the city’s recent decision to move forward with a flooding study in Chicora was met with mixed reactions.

City Council voted Dec. 15 to pay civil engineer Reveer Group $146,510 to lead the Chicora Drainage Study. The study will analyze existing flooding conditions and evaluate remedial action in the form of maintenance or drainage improvements that will reduce or eliminate future flooding.

Reveer, a North Charleston-based firm, will also develop alternatives that will increase the capacity of the stormwater system and reduce the flooding potential in Chicora.

Chicora will be the first of six neighborhoods to undergo drainage studies using funding from grants awarded last year by the South Carolina Infrastructure Investment Program to help cover more than $14 million worth of drainage improvements. Other neighborhoods that will see flooding solutions are Union Heights, Accabee, Read Street, Midland Park and the Northwood/Bentwood area.

The city still needs to secure additional funding to implement the recommendations from the study, Councilman Michael Brown said.

AJ Davis, president of the Chicora neighborhood, said any improvement that seeks to alleviate flooding is welcomed. But the infrastructure improvements are to be expected, given the economic interests in the city’s south end, he said.

Development is trickling southward from the Park Circle community, an eclectic district of residences and restaurants. Businesses have stretched south along Spruill Avenue and along Reynolds Avenue into the predominantly Black Chicora neighborhood, where housing affordability and gentrification remain a concern.

Some expected that incoming development would “trigger” infrastructure improvements, Davis said.

“In my opinion, this is less about truly addressing infrastructure issues for the people there and more so about aligning with a development trajectory that we’re all pretty much seeing,” Davis said.

Union Heights, located a few miles south of Chicora, is also slated to see drainage improvements.

Skip Mikell, neighborhood president, said he was unaware of the $14 million being invested in southern end neighborhoods. He also said the city should have considered the number of grassroots organizations that have for years been examining environmental issues in these neighborhoods.

In 1980, North Charleston studied the Chicora Drainage Basin, which spans over 400 acres and covers the neighborhood, and concluded that a new box culvert and outfall to the Cooper River was needed. The study also concluded that the pipes upstream of the retention areas were undersized and only provided up to 50 percent of the required stormwater conveyance capacity.

Soon after, the city constructed the recommended saltwater retention. In 2007, the Charleston Naval Complex Redevelopment Authority built a new box culvert though the former Charleston Navy base and a new outfall to the Cooper River.

While drainage has improved, flooding has continued to impact the community, which includes several homes, nonprofits, businesses, schools and churches.

“You have flooding to where folks can’t get to their houses,” Brown said. Brown added that the problem hasn’t gotten better over the years, even as new infrastructure projects have made way, such as the four-lane Cosgrove overpass that was replaced several years ago.

Evie Palmisano lives at the corner of Arapahoe Street and Captain Avenue, located in the adjacent Nafair neighborhood. She bought her home in 2019. Since then, her yard has flooded at least 10 times, she said. In 2021, Palmisano lost her car after the vehicle was flooded during heavy rainfall.

“I’m tentatively hopeful,” she said in hearing about the city’s new Chicora drainage study.

Rexton Street, a strip that stretches off the up-and-coming Reynolds Avenue, is also frequently under water. This impedes current plans to transform the strip into community-oriented space that includes an amphitheater, cafe and plaza. But proper infrastructure will need to be in place for those plans to be successful, Sutton said.

CHARLESTON S.C. (WCIV) — Wonderful things can happen when a community comes together.

Lowcountry non-profit, Metanoia SC, is listening to the people who live in North Charleston's Chicora-Cherokee neighborhood.

Over the past 20 years, Metanoia has been implementing programs to meet residents' needs to generate positive changes.

Shawn Saulsberry is the Board Chair of Metanoia.

"It's a huge responsibility because Metanoia is literally serving the area that I grew up in," Saulsberry said.

Saulsberry remembers growing up in what's known as "Charleston Heights," or the "Heights" in North Charleston.

The community played an important part in his childhood.

"I didn't have the organization that we have today, but somehow I ran across those metanoia-type people who saw me, and they invested in me."

His grandfather taught him the importance of entrepreneurship.

"My grandfather taught us to work hard at an early age. He would let us rent the lawnmower from him, and we would go and cut grass in the community, and we would get to keep the profits," Saulsberry said.

Now, as a Senior Manager at the accounting firm Ernst & Young, Saulsberry uses his background of a strong work ethic to encourage the youth in the neighborhood.

Metanoia serves as a youth leadership pipeline.

"I'm not the smartest or the brightest, but I do know how to work hard, and I also know how to have endurance and not stop and just encourage them. If you do those things eventually, you're gonna find what you love. You're gonna find what you want to do in life, and it's gonna work well for you," said Saulsberry.

Metanoia was launched in 2002 by a coalition of churches across South Carolina.

By definition, Metanoia certainly works well with the community it serves.

"It means to make a positive transformation, kind of take upon a positive change of direction," explained Metanoia CEO Reverend Bill Stanfield.

Rev. Stanfield and his wife Evelyn live in the Chicora-Cherokee neighborhood with their two teenage sons.

Before Metanoia's founding, the couple spent one year getting to know their neighbors and listening to their concerns.

"We really do believe people closest to communities know the solutions to their own problems," said Stanfield.

Stanfield saw this as an opportunity to build on the positive community members saw in their neighborhood.

And Metanoia did just that.

In addition to building leaders, it's the non-profit's mission to also establish quality housing within Chicora-Cherokee.

"We build new homes for some home buyers. We also build new homes for affordable rental, all within the community where prices are going up, and people are finding it hard to afford a place to live," said Stanfield.

The organization also invests in neighborhood assets. They support black businesses on Reynolds Avenue and have a partnership with a local manufacturing company to create jobs in the community.

"There's a systematic way of listening to the community and understanding what the community needs and then coming alongside the needs of the community and becoming an advocate for what the community wants to do," said Saulsberry.

If you'd like to nominate an individual or organization for a prestigious 'Jefferson Award, email your nomination to ABC News 4's Tessa Spencer.

One of the few remaining manufacturing facilities on the Charleston peninsula is scheduled to shut down before the new year as The Post and Courier shifts printing operations to a new location and a newer press in North Charleston.

The two gigantic presses in the former newspaper building at King and Columbus streets, an assemblage of machinery three stories tall and nearly the length of a city block, are expected to print their last editions in December.

The move to a new 48,000-square-foot facility and Evening Post Publishing’s related purchase of a 2008 Goss Magnum Single Width Press is “a big deal,” said Tom Harmon, the company’s director of facilities and manufacturing. “There are not a lot of companies that are investing in printing presses.”

Newspapers are increasingly focused on online subscriptions, which suit modern reading habits while avoiding the costs of printing and distributing papers, but The Post and Courier still delivers printed newspapers to more than 30,000 readers in the greater Charleston area each weekday.

The company will print most of the other 10 South Carolina newspapers it owns at the North Charleston site, as well as print publications it does not own and commercial printing jobs.

Evening Post Publishing Chairman of the Board Pierre Manigault said many community publications would have very limited printing options but for the company’s new press.

“I think a lot of the products that people in the Lowcountry are used to seeing are printed by us,” he said. “I think that, just like we are doing the Uncovered series and helping smaller community newspapers that don’t have the resources, we are trying to boost journalism in South Carolina.”

He said the press will also help the company diversify its revenue through commercial printing jobs.

“It is a pretty big investment, and we think it will pay for itself,” Manigault said.

Harmon said the newer press will do the work of the older two presses it is replacing more efficiently and with higher quality.

“In South Carolina, we are one of the main printers,” Harmon said. “That’s kind of our niche right now.”

Up close, the newer printing press is an imposing piece of machinery, 130 feet long and 40 feet wide. It consumes ink by the barrel and can rapidly turn a huge roll of paper into tens of thousands of printed, collated and folded newspapers, ready for delivery.

The former Post and Courier building in downtown Charleston has two older and larger presses, currently performing their final weeks of service. Replacing them at the World Trade Center industrial park in North Charleston is the newer press purchased from a seller in Sweden, which made its way to Charleston in multiple shipping containers.

Just creating a foundation for the machine in its new location involved eight truckloads of concrete, said Harmon.

“We’ve added a lot of upgrades and redid all the controls, and all the newest bells and whistles,” he said in November. “Right now, we’re at the stage where the press has been completely assembled and we’re going through the test process.”

A newer press in a new location is just one of many changes that followed the 2021 restructuring of Evening Post Industries, a company that traces its roots to The Courier newspaper founded in 1803.

More than 200 years later, the family-owned company was a multi-state business with interests in television stations, multiple newspapers, extensive real estate holdings on the Charleston peninsula, a forestry company, pharmaceutical company, a chain of hospices and a book publishing operation.

In recent years, those holdings were trimmed down, the television stations were sold off and so were the hospices. And in 2021, Evening Post Industries was split into three companies. Today, The Post and Courier and 10 other papers, along with book publishing, commercial printing and White Oak Forestry, are run by Evening Post Publishing Inc.

A different company, Evening Post Industries, owns about 12 acres of real estate on the Charleston peninsula, which is slated for a redevelopment called Courier Square. Those holdings include much of the land between King, Spring, St. Philip and Line streets, as well as the former newspaper building along the east side of King Street between Columbus and Line.

Previously, the company leased vacant land that it owns at Meeting and Columbus streets for the development of the $100 million The Guild apartments and the $38 million headquarters of Greystar, an international real estate manager and developer.

Evening Post Industries CEO Ron Owens said the company has received permission from Charleston’s Board of Architectural Review to demolish the block-long newspaper offices and manufacturing facilities at King and Columbus streets.

“We’re not going to tear it down right away because we don’t know what we’re going to build there,” he said, adding that plans will be worked on over the next year with input from community and civic groups.

The more immediate plans involve a large surface parking lot on the west side of King Street and surrounding properties owned by the company, where the company has received conceptual approval from the BAR for retail businesses, apartments and a senior living facility.

“If everything goes as planned, we should break ground late next year,” Owens said.

The Post and Courier is South Carolina’s largest news organization and has been expanding statewide, with reporters in Beaufort, Bluffton, Charleston, Columbia, Hilton Head, Greenville, Myrtle Beach, Rock Hill and Spartanburg.

“All of the expansion is digital, so that doesn’t affect the printing press,” Manigault said.

The Post and Courier is available in print and online in the greater Charleston area, and online elsewhere. Weekly editions of The Post and Courier are published in print for Columbia and Georgetown. Evening Post Publishing also publishes the daily Aiken Standard and weekly printed editions of the Moultrie News, Kingstree News, North Augusta Star, Summerville Journal Scene, Berkeley Independent and Goose Creek Gazette.

“We’ve been looking at this whole thing since the split-up of Evening Post Industries a year ago, and we’re really looking at it (Evening Post Publishing) as a startup company,” he said. “It’s a little bizarre, looking at it as a 200-year-old startup, but that’s how it is, and we’re looking for the best ways a media company can operate in this era.”