Plumbers in Johns Island, SC

Step inside the big top tent during Cirque Ma’Ceo to witness an emotionally charged artistic experience featuring circus performers and horses from around the world. With misty red lighting, the tent offers an intimate setting where every seat allows for breathtaking access to the one-of-a-kind performance which promises to transport you back in time to the “roots of Gypsy heritage,” according to the show’s website. This 90-minute show offers fire dancers, mesmerizing acrobatic acts, dance and equestrian displays.

Cirque Ma’Ceo is suitable for all ages and offers five performances March 24-26 at Johns Island County Park.

The show has been described as an equine version of the famous Cirque du Soleil. The theatrical, equestrian-themed circus show tells a story through acrobatics, dance and aerial performance — all to the acoustic beats of Spanish guitar. Cirque Ma’Ceo is based out of Sarasota, Fla., and has performed in Las Vegas, Nev., Honolulu, Hawaii, and all over Canada.

Rachel Gauthier, media relations for Cirque Ma’Ceo, said the show blends many cultures. It was created in 2005 by director Olissio Zoppe, a ninth-generation descendent of the historical Italian family that created equine-based theatrical-style circus performance, the Zoppe and Zamperla family. Zoppe himself has performed in the circus since childhood.

“He was born in the circus — he’s been doing this all his life, and now he’s created his own show,” Gauthier said. “We’re performing and traveling all across the United States doing this amazing show, but this will be our first time in Charleston.

“The show features aerialists, fire dancers and amazing tightrope acts. We have this really dreamy act of featuring this black Friesian stallion horse. The performer rides the horse as an aerialist takes flight over him with red ribbon silks. It’s a really beautiful act.”

Those who are interested in horses will enjoy seeing many different and exotic breeds, including Friesian Percherons, Mustang quarter horses, miniature horses and more. The show combines elements of contemporary circus, as seen in Cirque du Soleil, along with more traditional circus elements.

“Zoppe comes from a more traditional style of circus: the big top tent with the ringmaster announcing act after act — the traditional circus acts that you would see. This show is a blend of both worlds because he comes from a traditional circus family, but in his work he has touched on the contemporary more theatrical side of circus too. He was inspired to create his own show that had this traditional feeling to it, but brings a contemporary style of circus as well,” Gauthier said.

General admission tickets are $35 and can be purchased here.

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JOHNS ISLAND — Charleston County sheriff’s deputies were investigating a man’s death as a homicide after his body was discovered in the backyard of a home.

Deputies responded around 1 p.m. Jan. 14 to 2569 Gibbs Road, a rural swath of land dotted with modest homes sandwiched between the Kiawah River and Abbapoola Creek.

They found an adult man in the backyard suffering “obvious signs of trauma,” Sheriff’s Office spokesman Andrew Knapp said. Paramedics confirmed the victim was dead.

The Sheriff’s Office initially deemed the death “suspicious” but said there was “no known danger to the community.” Deputies worked through the day to conduct interviews and search the area for evidence, Knapp said.

Deputies later confirmed they were investigating the man’s death as a homicide. No arrests have been made and while little information is available, deputies still don’t believe there’s any threat to the community, Knapp said.

The Charleston County Coroner’s Office has not yet identified the victim, whose death marks the second homicide reported this year in the tri-county area.

MOUNT PLEASANT — An imposing home rises near the Gadsdenville boat landing, a finger of land where people can launch kayaks to Copahee Sound, cast for bait or enjoy the quiet occasionally broken by the cry of gulls.

The elevated house stands out among the marsh-front pines in Ten Mile, a historic Black community surrounded by the north end of Mount Pleasant.

At 7,600 square feet, the house could be mistaken for a townhome complex.

And it sits at the edge of land Charleston County paid $1 million to protect from development.

The 2011 county Greenbelt Program deal that protected the adjacent 7 acres is getting fresh scrutiny only because a large concrete circular driveway was recently paved on the property. The county originally bought the site for the Ten Mile Neighborhood Association, which was expected to create walking trails and community farming there.

Then, the huge house at the protected property’s edge was built by the association president’s family.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” said County Council Chairman Herb Sass. “I don’t think we did anything wrong, but I still don’t like it.”

Sass in 2011 voted for the million-dollar greenbelt purchase requested by the Ten Mile group. He said he was unaware the neighborhood president’s family was at the same time buying a newly created building lot, which required a road across the land the county was about to buy.

The dirt-and-gravel road dubbed Clarksville Court ends in a cul-de-sac practically at the home’s front door. And that’s where the large circular cement driveway was recently created, with walkways to the house and parking areas.

Longtime association president Pearl Ascue said the paving was done to help visitors to the public greenbelt property called Heritage Farms — not because it’s the driveway to her daughter’s house.

“It was paved because it was not safe to come in and out,” she said. “People coming from the community would get stuck.”

Prompted by the property paving, a Post and Courier investigation of the land deal revealed a tale of real estate intrigue with roots in the Great Recession.

Competing interests

The story begins in 2011 when Ascue led efforts to convince the county Greenbelt Program to buy a nearly 7-acre marsh-front property where a small subdivision had been planned. A bank had foreclosed on the undeveloped land.

While the county made plans to protect the site, Ascue’s family was buying a half-acre building lot the bank subdivided from the original property. Instead of a 17-home development, the property would have just one house while the county would buy all the remaining land and the association would own it.

The new home site was purchased by Ascue’s daughter and son-in-law the same day the county bought the adjacent land.

“We were just able to get a piece of it,” Sean Kershaw, the son-in-law, told The Post and Courier. His wife, Christi, is Pearl Ascue’s daughter.

Sean Kershaw said he was not involved in paving the circular driveway, but that his in-laws, Pearl and Timothy Ascue, “spearheaded all of that.”

Now, Charleston County wants to be paid for the public land that was compromised. The county also wants changes made so there’s a clear boundary between the private home and the large greenbelt property directly in front of it.

Pearl Ascue is an East Cooper community leader who once ran for County Council and has served on the county’s Board of Zoning Appeals, as well as many other boards and commissions. She said she doesn’t understand why asking the county to buy and protect most of the land, while her family planned to develop what was left, might be perceived as a conflict of interest.

“If you think it’s a conflict, I don’t see it,” she said. “You’re pointing the finger at me like I did something wrong, but everybody on the Greenbelt (Advisory) Board, everybody on County Council — it went through the process.”

The timeline:

Pearl Ascue said having a marsh view in the Ten Mile community isn’t such a big deal.

“We’ve lived here all our lives, and we just walk to the marsh,” she said. “The main thing is, we acquired that property on the marshfront to keep it from being developed.”

One reason the house is so enormous, according to county records, is that Pearl Ascue and her husband also planned to live there.

A family affair

Four months after the land purchases were completed in late 2011, Pearl Ascue’s husband, Timothy, co-signed a county zoning application with daughter Christi Kershaw that said: “Our intent is to build a residential house with my wife and I occupying the north portion of the home and our daughter occupying the south portion of the home.”

The county granted the request to build an unusually large house covering one-third of the Kershaws’ property. Pearl and Timothy Ascue don’t live in the house now, as was suggested in the zoning application, but live a short walk away in their longtime home.

Charleston County Greenbelt Director Eric Davis said no rules have been broken, aside from the driveway paving of part of the greenbelt land.

“There’s no violation of the grant program agreement other than that, and that’s what guides our relationship with grantees,” he said.

The county says the homeowners were confused about the property line, and both the Greenbelt Advisory Board and County Council have decided that the solution is to sell them nearly half an acre of the greenbelt land around the circular driveway.

“We actually thought that was our yard,” said Sean Kershaw, who owns a general contracting company and built the elevated 7,600-square-foot house, snug against the unusual property line created in 2011.

“It shouldn’t have happened, and somehow it did,” said Sass, the council chairman.

Davis said the county will be monitoring improvements the neighborhood association was expected to make on the property the county paid for, and is taking a broader look at what’s become of all the greenbelt properties protected with public dollars.

“Just this week, we started working on a big report we’re going to provide to the Greenbelt Advisory Board about every property going back to the start of the program,” he said on March 31.

Ascue said the Ten Mile association is thinking of planting sweetgrass at the Heritage Farms site. She said the land proved too wet and salty for most kinds of farming.

The county could have decided to order the circular driveway pavement removed, but the Greenbelt Advisory Board and County Council agreed the paved-over land should be sold to the homeowners. That would reduce the size of the Heritage Farms property owned by the neighborhood association, and return money to the greenbelt program.

Davis said a survey and appraisal will be done. The four-tenths of an acre would have been worth $64,000 in 2011, based on what the county paid then. It’s expected to be worth substantially more, now.

The Greenbelt Advisory Board also wants the homeowners to construct a gate, fencing or landscaping that makes clear where the public property ends and the private property begins — a distinction that’s been unclear for the past 12 years.

NORTH CHARLESTON — A man provided Charleston County deputies with a different name before he took off running across several lanes of a major road and jumping from an overpass.

Kelvin Cole, 56, died Oct. 28 after being struck by multiple cars on Interstate 26. Investigators later determined he had active arrest warrants from Charleston County’s Family Court and the S.C. Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services.

Cole, who lived and worked as a welder in Johns Island, was riding in the passenger seat of a car when a deputy stopped it for alleged traffic violations. The car’s 31-year-old driver was ultimately given a warning.

Attempts to reach Cole’s family Nov. 2 were unsuccessful.

The Charleston County Sheriff’s Office released an incident report Nov. 2, several days after Cole’s death. It provides new details on what preceded the moment he ran from the deputy.

Deputy Tanner Buller was patrolling around 10:30 p.m. near Stall and Mazyck roads in North Charleston when he noticed a white SUV swerve several times from its lane, the report states. The driver also failed to use a turn signal when changing lanes.

Buller, who has worked in law enforcement for five years, had a deputy-in-training with him during the stop. He flipped on his blue lights and the SUV pulled over onto the Ashley Phosphate Road overpass, which sits atop I-26.

Buller spoke with the car’s driver through the passenger-side window. The driver denied he had been drinking, but Buller wrote he could smell marijuana and alcohol coming from the vehicle’s passenger side. The car’s passenger, later identified as Cole, told the deputy his name was Raymond Brown.

Buller had both men get out of their car so he could search them. The driver admitted he’d smoked marijuana earlier in the day, the report states.

When Cole exited the car, Buller saw a beer can near the passenger seat. Buller found Cole’s driver’s license and noticed it did not match the name he’d provided the deputy.

Buller tried to detain Cole “but he pulled away and fled on foot” across Ashley Phosphate Road, the report states. The deputy chased Cole while trying to avoid traffic.

He repeatedly asked Cole to stop but the man “eventually jumped over the guardrail,” the report states. Buller saw Cole’s hands “grabbing the rail for a brief period” before he appeared to let go and fall onto I-26, the report states.

Buller never drew his weapon, said Andrew Knapp, a Sheriff’s Office spokesman. The deputy remains on duty. In addition to conducting its own internal review, the Sheriff’s Office also requested State Law Enforcement Division investigate the incident, Knapp said.

Investigators searched Cole’s name in a federal database and found he had an active warrant with the probation department, as well as three bench warrants with Charleston County’s Family Court.

Cole was the defendant in an ongoing child support case filed in 2016, court records show.

He was placed on a year of probation in February 2020 after pleading guilty in Charleston County to a forgery charge. Cole’s probation sentence would not be terminated until he paid all associated fees, said Anita Dantzler, a department spokeswoman.

Cole owed nearly $2,500 to the department, records show.

The $75 million in funding that Charleston County Council approved for the Mark Clark extension project last week has the potential to be transformative for Charleston County and Johns Island in three ways, but not in ways council members or residents may think.

First, the project could be financially transformative in the short-term because it could be the largest county financial debacle since the millions “invested” in the former Naval Hospital.

Why? Because council is betting taxpayer money that a slew of low-probability events take place that make this $75 million bet a sure winner.

These events include betting that:

These bets don’t even include the bet that the state Joint Bond Review Committee will shirk its fiduciary responsibility and approve the infrastructure bank’s request for matching funds. This despite Charleston County having no real plan to raise the additional funds needed for the project.

If this low-probability bet is lost, county taxpayers will not only be out $75 million, but they also would have to reimburse the infrastructure bank for 50% of all funds it provided. And we would have lost $75 million that could have been spent on making much-needed improvements to our roads now.

Second, the project could be financially transformative for Charleston County in the long-term since the true cost of the project will likely be much greater than $2.2 billion.

Why? Because of the intergovernmental agreement Charleston County signed with the infrastructure bank and the state Department of Transportation, the county is solely responsible for all additional costs. These costs include any cost overruns and lawsuits; funds for bond servicing; and the cost to upgrade River Road to accommodate the traffic from this project.

These costs could easily add up to an additional several hundred million more dollars. Just imagine how the bond rating agencies will assess the county’s creditworthiness with this unbounded financial obligation.

Third, the project could be transformative to Johns Island because the Lowcountry character of the island would be lost forever.

Why? Because large road projects like these attract large “Anywhere USA” residential developments with their multitude of cars, big box stores and national franchises that push out local businesses. They also dislocate long-time residents. All of this would greatly and adversely impact our quality of life and worsen traffic congestion.

If you need some examples of this, just look to Mount Pleasant and the Cainhoy Peninsula.

Once the Ravenel Bridge was completed, growth in Mount Pleasant exploded. The town is now grappling with its growth and congestion at nearly every Town Council meeting. For example, the town recently announced it will perform an in-depth study to see what can be done to reduce the number of vehicles traveling on roads throughout the town. The study is not about building new roads but managing traffic on existing ones.

Without Interstate 526, the Cainhoy Peninsula was not attractive to developers. Now, there are plans to build 9,000 homes there and to fill vast stretches of wetlands — not to mention the eventual dislocation of long-time residents.

Even without the 9,000 Cainhoy houses, I-526 is currently so congested that the state and federal governments (not Charleston County) are looking to spend billions of dollars to try to relieve this congestion.

This is not the future Johns Islanders want.

There will be those who say that this is a much-needed project. This despite effective lower-cost alternatives that do not alter our island forever.

There will be those who say that residents are overwhelmingly in support of this project. This despite the latest DOT survey showing that fewer than half of them support the project.

There will be those who say that we need a third way on and off the island. This despite, in comparison, that we have only 10% more daily traffic than Hilton Head on our bridges. Yet we have two bridges with eight available lanes, while Hilton Head is about to spend millions to expand its single bridge from four to only six lanes.

Do we need to improve safety and reduce congestion on our roads to improve our quality of life? Yes.

Is betting the county’s short-term and long-term financial future, losing the soul of what makes Johns Island who we are, ignoring effective lower-cost alternatives and ignoring the desires of the majority of the residents the way to do it? No.

So what will happen?

The county could be saved from itself if the Joint Bond Review Committee votes against authorizing the matching funds. Then we can get back to the business of improving safety and reducing congestion on our roads.

John Zlogar is a cofounder of Rational Roads for Johns Island.

Something green is coming to Charleston, and we’re not talking about St. Patrick’s Day. A new state park is in the works at the tip of James Island. We spoke with SC State Parks Director Paul McCormack for the latest on the project.

The waterfront park will be located on 23 acres at the end of Fort Johnson Road, adjacent to the Fort Johnson historic site. The parcel is managed by the SC Dept. of Parks, Recreation & Tourism.

In 2021, the state purchased the land from the Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Mercy for $23 million. The May Forest Convent located on-site is expected to be converted into an event venue that will be the main component of the new park. Funding has not yet been secured for the venue construction project.

Charlestonians can look forward to a day-use recreation and picnicking area with views of the Charleston Harbor, the Ravenel Bridge, and Fort Sumter. There is an existing gazebo and bench swing. Conceptual images are not yet available, but stay tuned.

An event space, lodging, and a dock may be added in the future. A structural assessment of the property is expected to determine park features down the road. What would you like to see this new park offer? Let us know.

In addition, there is a master plan that envisions the entire ~100-acre Fort Johnson area that is separate from the state park project.

The park is expected to open this spring or summer. There is currently no timeline for potential future amenities, but keep an eye on the newsletter for updates. The plans for Fort Johnson, which surrounds the state park area, are long-term.