Plumbers in Johns Island, SC

|Updated: Jul. 31, 2024 at 6:44 PM EDT

JOHNS ISLAND, S.C. (WCSC) - Members of the Johns Island community could be looking at the construction of a second hotel and living space.

New Leaf Builders is requesting to build JUBILEE on the corner of Maybank Highway and Wildts Battery Boulevard. The development would take up 13.3 acres.

The City of Charleston passed the plans through in a 7-0 vote on July 19. It is the latest in a series of conversations involving development on Johns Island.

Rich Thomas has lived on Johns Island for 16 years and says it is hard to recognize the lay of the land.

“The city and county have not paid any attention whatsoever to how Maybank and Johns Island in general can handle these developments,” Thomas says. “When you add up 100 housing units, commercial restaurants and things, it turns into a huge problem.”

Councilman Jim McBride says the development is classified as a Planned Unit Development, or PUD, meaning fewer units will go on the property than originally thought.

Developers say they intend to create a “vibrant, human-scaled, pedestrian-friendly community” and “transform neglected and underutilized natural resources into a beautiful hospitality village destination.”

The area is considered a central location for future public transit and connectivity. McBride says it would help to support the island’s future fire station and Trident hospital.

The plans fit the mold for a mixed-use residential office and low-density residential district. JUBILEE would become a spot for 140 families total, split into 75 hotel rooms and 65 residential cottages.

It is unclear how much each unit will cost or how much it will be to build the complex.

Each building would sit at a height of either three or four stories.

Darcy Whalen lived on Johns Island for six years but now resides across the Stono River in James Island.

Out her window, she still sees the impacts of traffic and growth bleeding into her community.

“Infrastructure is huge. We’re a little backwards, that we should’ve had that first before these things were approved,” Whalen says. “I don’t begrudge getting a hotel. There are a lot of people coming onto Johns Island and Seabrook. I think we have been done a disservice.”

Developers emphasized that Charleston has doubled in population since the 1970s. They claim the Charleston City Plan to develop the area over the next 10 years fits within their plans to build up Johns Island.

Charleston County Council will tentatively vote on the project on August 30.

Copyright 2024 WCSC. All rights reserved.

Hilton Head Island is looking to replace the U.S. Highway 278 bridges that provide its only link to the mainland, and current plans call for new bridges that will have not two but three lanes in each direction on and off the island, for a total of six lanes. So why does Johns Island — which has a smaller population and a desire to keep part of its rural character intact — need 16 bridge lanes on and off it?

The answer should be obvious: It doesn't. And that's yet another reason Charleston County voters should reject the proposed half-cent transportation sales tax that is expected to be on the ballot this fall.

County Council is expected to finalize the referendum wording Tuesday and is regrettably expected to proceed with making the extension of Interstate 526 from West Ashley to James Island the only priority project; its price tag, including financing costs, would be more than $2.4 billion, almost half the total raised by the new tax. The project also was among the least popular in an informal survey earlier this year.

Council should reject this plan for many reasons: that enormous price tag; its threat to the conservation of what remains of Johns Island's rural character; the project's failure to ease congestion (it will only move it to different choke points); the county's recent duplicitous history in reviving the project it deliberately left off the 2016 sales tax vote; and the county's poor track record on making progress on projects on its 2016 list.

One of those projects is a new flyover at Main Road and U.S. Highway 17, an enormously frustrating route for many trying to get on and off Johns Island. We suspect that lack of progress has been deliberate because the project holds the promise of addressing the congestion that 526 extension proponents claim that project is needed for. And that's where the comparison to Hilton Head is apt.

Six lanes is fine for Hilton Head even though its population is almost 30% more than that of Johns, Wadmalaw, Kiawah and Seabrook islands combined and Hilton Head has 66% more housing units. Current traffic volumes on the Limehouse and Stono bridges combined are about 14% higher than on the Highway 278 bridges, which suggests we could use a couple more lanes. Fortunately, that's cheap and easy to accomplish.

Both the Paul J. Gelegotis and John F. Limehouse bridges were built large enough to accommodate four lanes of traffic: The Gelegotis Bridge, commonly called the Stono bridge, is striped for all four lanes, but the one lane leading to the bridge from Johns Island effectively makes it a three-lane bridge from the perspective of traffic flow. The Limehouse Bridge is striped for only two lanes, but relatively little money would open the full capacity of these bridges to eight lanes, a 60% increase from what they are now.

Of course, why spend relatively little money to solve the problem when you can spend more than $2 billion and erase any pretention that we're interested in keeping Johns Island's rural character? Voters will ultimately answer that question in November.

There's one other commonality voters might want to think about. The Hilton Head debate has revolved in part around whether there should be one new six-lane bridge or two three-lane bridges, but some have noted the larger six-lane bridge won't address the primary cause of congestion on the island: clogged intersections along U.S. Highway 278. If I-526 is extended on to Johns Island, we're sure the same thing will be said there; just substitute "River Road" for Highway 278.

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JOHNS ISLAND, S.C. (WCSC) - One accident-prone Johns Island intersection is set to receive $5 million in safety upgrades from the state.

With nearly 8,000 vehicles traveling where Brownswood Road meets River Road daily, according to the South Carolina Department of Transportation, government officials say they knew this needed to be a focal point for change.

In a team effort, the Charleston County government, the Charleston County School District, SCDOT and state Rep. Spencer Wetmore (D-Charleston County) and Rep. Leon Stavrinakis (D-Charleston County) are working to get this project going.

“River Road has been a dangerous spot for people for a long time,” Johns Island resident Brent Mattox said.

Stavrinakis and Wetmore are the two statehouse reps who asked for this funding.

“Traffic and safety concerns out there are certainly nothing new,” Stavrinakis said.

Where River Road meets Brownswood is home to 24 accidents and one death over the last five years, according to SCDOT.

Both Mattox and Stavrinakis say they’re not surprised.

“We’ve seen some damage from time to time and there was at least one time where a bridge, its guardrail, was seemingly damaged by a wreck and took months to fix,” Mattox said.

“Sometimes citizens email me pictures of overturned vehicles,” Stavrinakis said.

And with a new Charleston County elementary school already under construction right down the road, Stavrinakis says he knew the funding was needed now.

“We’re so far behind in managing traffic in that corridor given the incredible growth,” Stavrinakis said.

Now, $5 million from the state will go towards a roundabout at this intersection to fix the current issues and alleviate future school traffic, which could start as early as next August.

But the current road plan doesn’t have the roundabout finishing for at least another six years.

“My goal for this is to happen like asap,” Stavrinakis said. “...We need to push as hard as we can to make sure that this happens, if at all possible, simultaneously with the school construction and opening.”

Mattox says he doesn’t think the construction itself will make the situation much better in the meantime.

“I guess that’s the price of progress,” Mattox said.

The roundabout document plans state the preliminary engineering could cover the next three-and-a-half years with right-of-way acquisitions and utility relocations taking another year-and-a-half after that. Charleston County officials are expecting construction to take one year, finishing by the end of FY2031.

Copyright 2024 WCSC. All rights reserved.

CHARLESTON COUNTY, S.C. (WCSC) - Residents living on Patton Avenue in Johns Island are fed up with cars speeding around a blind corner. They say drivers are using this road as a shortcut near Savannah Highway, entering at Main Road to get to Brownswood Road.

Now residents are putting pressure on state agencies to put down speed bumps, rumble strips and blind driveway signs.

They say they’re at a breaking point. A woman named Lisa says she is going as far as to do daily tasks for her neighbors just so that they don’t need to go near the road.

“I have senior citizens that live across the street,” Lisa says. “I get their mail, I put up their garbage and recycling cans and bring them back in. It’s just too dangerous for them to be near the road.”

Lisa says that with a blind curve and speedy drivers using the road as a shortcut, none of her neighbors are safe.

“It just isn’t right for them to have to risk their lives when people don’t slow down for me, they’re not going to slow down for them either. "

One of Lisa’s neighbors, 88-year-old Gloria Simmons, says she doesn’t wander too far out of her front door.

“One day they might knock me up in the tree,” Simmons says.

Simmons says that, for her, this issue hits close to home.

“I was hit by a car downtown years ago. I was hit. And that ain’t no picnic.”

Lisa says she has tried to make a change.

“We’ve put up signs that this is a neighborhood, please slow down. We have ‘Children at play’ signs. They have made absolutely no difference,” Lisa says.

She says neighbors have also come together to send multiple letters to the South Carolina Department of Transportation expressing their fears while demanding a reduced speed limit, blind drive signs and speed bumps.

SCDOT responded, saying they moved the 35 MPH speed limit signs to better locations and put up curve signs. They added that they cannot install signs on private driveways and that the 35 mph speed limit is too fast for speed bumps.

“I would love to see us get some bumper strips at the very least. Speed bumps would be great,” Lisa says.

While Lisa continues to advocate for safer conditions, Gloria says she is thankful to have Lisa as her neighbor.

“I love her. She brings me joy.”

Simmons says she hopes for a day where she, too, can go outside to take a walk.

“I really want to come out and enjoy the outside… but I can show them that I can roll in the yard.”

If anything is driving you crazy on the roadways, submit your request here.

Copyright 2024 WCSC. All rights reserved.

JAMES ISLAND, S.C. (WCSC) - Charleston County Public Works is working to improve stormwater drainage in the Town of James Island.

One of the many projects that are a part of the Central Park Drainage Basin Improvements is located on Hollings Road. The Hollings Road Drainage Project focuses on diverting stormwater from smaller ditches that don’t have sufficient capacity to a county-maintained canal along Hollings Road.

The county plans to do this by installing a box culvert under Hollings Road. A box culvert is a rectangular shaped concrete structure that helps with stormwater drainage.

Some other drainage projects included in the Central Park Basin Improvements are on Central Park Road and Howle Avenue Park.

The stormwater project manager for Charleston County Public Works, John Primm, says that stormwater has been an issue on James Island for a while, but that these projects should bring some relief to the area.

“These projects, they won’t solve all of the stormwater problems, they won’t solve all of the flooding, but what they will do is improve the stormwater, improve the flooding as far as depth and duration, so the height of the stormwater, flooding should be reduced and the amount of time it takes for the storm water to drain after a storm should be reduced,” Primm says.

Primm says the county received one million dollars in state funding for the Hollings Road Drainage Project, but that it doesn’t cover all of the construction costs. The remaining costs will be funded through Charleston County Public Works funds.

This project falls in State Rep. Spencer Wetmore’s district and she says that the most common problem they hear about from people is stormwater drainage.

“This Central Park Basin, which you know as John talked about, makes up several different drainage projects, is probably the number one basin that we hear about in terms of flooding, it appears to be one of the most severe and one of the ones that touches the most neighborhoods,” Wetmore says.

Wetmore says that this project will not only help the residents that live on Hollings Road, but that it will touch on all of the surrounding neighborhood and help alleviate flooding.

“We hear so many awful stories of people not just having to move their cars on days that it rains, but their homes are flooding and they’re truly losing their property and the value that they’ve worked so hard for and we just want to do everything that we can to make sure that we’re addressing and mitigating as best as we can,” Wetmore says.

Primm says the next steps in the Hollings Road project are finishing up the design and permitting process before beginning construction in early 2025. Charleston County Public Works hopes to complete the project by 2026.

Copyright 2024 WCSC. All rights reserved.