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In a move that will impact numerous homes backed up on a cut of land on Red Bank Road, Goose Creek is rezoning a 34-arce wooded parcel that serves as a buffer for residents who live in the area.

On May 9, City Council held the final reading and vote to approve the rezoning. For years, the area was zoned for general commercial. Now it is zoned for “planned development.”

The area with the address at 117 Red Bank road is proposed to have apartments as well as separate dwellings.

Bordering the 30-plus acres are homes along Pandora and Hastie drives. The area also sits near one of busiest intersections in Berkeley County, where Red Bank Road intersects with Highways 52 and 176.

The county tax map shows the site as having the last large stand of trees inside the area that is dense with both business and residential traffic.

The proposal presented by Beazer Homes to the planning commission shows the residential areas of Avalon Point Planned Development fills roughly 29 acres.

The plan includes 142 total residential lots, with 71 each of single-family residences and townhome units. An additional commercial area totals approximately 3.5 acres.

Some living along the fringe of planned development feel defeated. That includes Lisa and Steve Berry, who live on Pandora Drive.

Their home, coincidently, sits across the street from a home that has a plaque on the front stating it was the site of the first Goose Creek Council meeting in 1961.

Over the past few months, Lisa Berry has gone to a number of meeting to urge leaders to put the brakes on the effort. She and her husband have lived in their current home since 2005. Now, they might move.

“We are considering moving where I can get some acreage,” Lisa Berry said. “... I don’t want to end up in this scenario again.”

“I thought we were going to retire here. I have my dream kitchen. We just did siding and windows over the past few months. And it’s like, wow, somebody else is going to benefit.”

The Berrys said they’ve had the go-round with the elected leaders since the plan was first considered last fall.

“The other thing they would throw in my face, was, ‘Well, that’s zoned general commercial now. Somebody could come in there and do this or that,’” she said. “And I said, ‘why haven’t they?’”

There is no set time frame for work to begin on the project. So for the Berrys, there is a little more time to search for some new land. Lisa Berry said she has learned some lessons along the way in the losing effort — and has some words for those facing similar battles.

“The biggest think I’ve learned is ... silence is consent. I don’t like to say that but it’s kind of what it is,” she said. “I still say we should and make our voices known. I don’t know how else we are going to do it. These are our elected officials, but I still think things are falling on deaf ears.”

There was not much discussion on the plan during the final the reading on May 9. The vote passed unanimously.

GOOSE CREEK, S.C. (WCBD) – Goose Creek could soon be home to… more chickens?

A new chicken ordinance in Goose Creek allows residents to have up to four chickens at their homes, but there are some rules you must follow.

“We’ve been trying to pass it for a while. It’s very contentious for reasonable reasons, and that is why our ordinance is so robust. It’s a four-page ordinance,” explained Goose Creek City Councilwoman Melissa Enos.

The ordinance allows homeowners to have up to four chickens, but no roosters, on their property. Renters can also have chickens with the landlord’s consent. Homeowners’ associations will still be allowed to ban chickens from neighborhoods. You must also have enough room in your yard for the chickens.

“You’re going to have to come down to the city and apply for a permit for $25, and the permit will have information on it that has the attached ordinance. You’ll have to have a coop, you have to have a chicken run- what the specifications of that is, your chicken food has to be in a rodent-proof container, all of those all of those sort of things. You can’t be able to see your chicken coop from your neighbor’s backyard, so you’ll either have to have a natural fence or a privacy fence. So, for all of those reasons you can’t have a rooster, you can’t have more than four chickens.”

The $25 permit will be an annual fee. Enos said that money will be used to help pay the code enforcement officers who will respond to complaints about chickens.

Some people have concerns about allowing chickens at all.

“One individual was saying he’s concerned about how it could increase rodents and snakes if your neighbor has one, what do you say to that,” we asked the city.

“Well, first of all, chickens are the closest thing to velociraptors- so they actually eat snakes. So, you’ll be okay with that. Responsible chicken owners have chicken mesh to keep them out of the coop and their food will be in rodent-proof containers,” Enos replied.

The ordinance is now in effect. Just head to city hall when they are open and apply.

GOOSE CREEK — A historic property in the Charleston suburbs soon could be transformed into a new housing development.

Beazer Homes paid $4 million on Dec. 19 for the 37.5-acre parcel that once housed the Oaks Plantation Golf & Country Club off Red Bank Road. The previous owner was Mims Amusement Operating Co., which held the site for more than 50 years.

The homebuilder’s spokeswoman did not have updated information to share on Dec. 20 on a construction time frame, but the Atlanta-based company plans to develop the site into 89 single-family housing lots, according to plans presented to Goose Creek officials. The city annexed the land in 2021.

The country club building, which suffered a devastating fire in 2008, was demolished in 2020, a year after the longtime private facility closed at the end of The Oaks Avenue.

The Oaks Plantation Golf & Country Club dates to the founding of the country. It was the site of Declaration of Independence signer Arthur Middleton’s 18th-century rice farm, which was established by a land grant in 1678.

The former yellow-colored Oaks Plantation house was built in 1892 for Maine businessman Edwin Parsons, whose family also once owned Woodlands Mansion in Summerville.

In 1956, the Oaks Co. Inc. paid $125,000 for the plantation house and the 140 acres of land surrounding the home.

It became the Oaks Plantation Golf & Country Club after Harold Mims, the owner of a now-defunct, coin-operated amusement business, bought the property in 1964. The main home was used for weddings and other events until the fire heavily damaged the site 14 years ago.

The plantation home, grounds and golf course shut their doors to the public in March 2019. The property’s land use allows single-family homes.

A Beazer Homes representative previously said the company was drawn to the property because of its close proximity to “commuting corridors” and the mature trees and ponds that make up the former club.

The Charleston-area industrial real estate market proved resilient in the first quarter despite rising interest rates and a cooling economy, with tenants absorbing 2.2 million square feet, according to a new report.

All told, according to Colliers, 3.7 million square feet of new space came online in the first three months of the year. Vacancy rates ticked up as well, but they remained near historic lows at 3.74 percent despite all the new construction.

“Since the beginning of 2021, the market has absorbed an average of 1.6 million square feet per quarter,” the commercial real estate firm said in its analysis. “This was largely driven by warehousing to support the advanced manufacturing sector, particularly internal combustion and electric vehicle manufacturing, and expansion of third-party logistics activity.”

Over the coming months, those business sectors will continue to drive demand for additional real estate, according to the report. About 11.8 million square feet of industrial space is under construction in the three-county region.

The Port of Charleston is still the main driver, even though cargo levels have fallen in recent months as post-pandemic consumers spend more money on services and experiences than on imported goods. Inflation has also tamed what had been a frenetic spending spree last year on items like furniture and electronics.

A plan by ZEB Metals to build an aluminum recycling plant on 32 acres along U.S. Highway 52 in the Goose Creek area was the largest industrial announcement dollar-wise during the quarter, Colliers said. The $80 million project is expected to create 28 jobs.

Second to that project was a $49.9 million cold-storage warehouse that Charleston-based FlexCold plans to build along Patriot Boulevard in Dorchester County. The 151,600-square-foot building on roughly 51 acres is expected to create 59 jobs.

A separate report by Avison Young shows average annual base rents for Charleston-area industrial properties hit $8.89 per square foot in the first quarter and are expected to continue rising on the back of strong demand.

“As larger tenants relocate to the Charleston market, demand has increased for industrial space,” the firm’s local office said. “The projected average building size for deliveries in 2023 is 346,000 square feet. Based on construction activity, this number is expected to rise to 540,000 square feet in 2024.”

The Palmetto Commerce Park area in North Charleston and the Summerville region along Interstate 26 continue to be the hottest spots for industrial construction, with a combined 42.7 million square feet of space — nearly two-thirds of the market’s total.

Up a notch

An economic development trade publication reports South Carolina is the nation’s seventh-best state for attracting industrial investment.

The ranking is included in Site Selection’s annual Prosperity Cup list, which measures the effectiveness of each state’s economic development efforts.

The Palmetto State moved up one spot in the magazine’s 2023 rankings. Neighboring states Georgia and North Carolina placed first and second, respectively.

A focus on electric vehicles and the batteries that power them helped the S.C. Department of Commerce recruit 120 businesses and expansions representing investments topping $10.27 billion in 2022 — a record year for economic development in South Carolina and an 80 percent increase over the previous mark set in 2021.

The new deals promise to create 14,083 jobs over time, with most of the activity centered around plants in the Charleston region and the Upstate.

Bottled up

South Atlantic Canners is spending $28.7 million on a multiyear expansion at its Lee County site that will create 15 jobs over the next five years.

The company is managed by Coca-Cola Consolidated Inc., the largest independent Coca-Cola bottler in the United States with production of more than 300 beverage brands and distribution to 14 states and Washington, D.C.

South Atlantic Canners plans to renovate its existing Bishopville facility and add new, state-of-the-art equipment. The expansion is expected to be completed by the end of 2027.

GOOSE CREEK, S.C. (WCIV) — Two women are speaking publicly after living in Goose Creek rentals owned by Conrex Property Management, LLC - rentals they say had harsh conditions, with little to no help from management.

"We moved to 29 Montclair, a Conrex house in March 9, 2022," Valerie Swabb said. "The amount of things wrong with the house was crazy. The back doors would be rotting and they would come out and scrape it out and fill it with wood filler."

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Swabb, who moved out on April 10, went to Facebook to talk about the rental after seeing it is available to rent again. Conrex has an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau, but for Sawbb and her family, their experience living in the rental only got worse. She says she sent long emails to Conrex management detailing the house's problems, but no action was taken.

"I ran a mold test kit on the air vent where it was the strongest," she said. "In nearly three days, the entire petri dish was covered in literally three different types of mold. I sent every contact at Conrex an email with the photos and offered to give them a kit. I called their maintenance department and they would not respond to anything."

Others described having similar issues.

"Once we moved into the property, I reached out to them there were a lot of infestation issues with roaches, rats, and lizards," said Jennifer Jackson, who moved into her Goose Creek rental from out of state. "They refused to come out and do anything about it."

Jackson says she had to deal with mold, electricity, and infestations. She sent management a long video of the house, but says no one came out to check out the property.

"Because I couldn't make any progress on any of the things that needed to happen to make the house livable, I gave them 60 days notice and paid out the last," says Jackson.

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Both Swabb and Jackson say they plan to take action against Conrex.

"That house has the potential to be a really good house, especially for the area that it's built in, but it's just not done properly," Swabb said.

WCIV

On May 10th 2023, Conrex Property Management responded with a statement saying:

At Conrex Property Management, we are committed to providing our valued residents with comfortable and safe homes, striving to ensure that their maintenance needs are promptly addressed.

After conducting a thorough review of our records, we have found no substantiating evidence to support the claims made by Ms. Val Swabb. Her assertions are contradicted by the findings of the home inspection conducted in April 2023.

Additionally, upon careful examination of the records pertaining to Ms. Jennifer Jackson, we did not discover any maintenance requests logged throughout her lease term.

So that the maintenance process is convenient for residents and also so that we maintain accurate documentation, we require residents to submit maintenance requests in writing using the online form available on our website. This procedure allows us to route and track maintenance requests until they are completed. As neither of these requests were submitted in our maintenance system, we are unable to provide any further details at this time.

GOOSE CREEK, S.C. (WCSC) - Christmas came early for a young man in Goose Creek but not before a couple of Grinches got in the way.

After realizing he dropped more than $1,700 in cash while riding his motorcycle down Highway 52 as he was headed to the store, 20-year-old Kyle Kons got to his destination Wednesday afternoon only to find his money missing. He retraced his steps to see several cars pulled over on the side of the highway - people were grabbing his cash and driving off.

“By the time I got there, the last car was pulling off,” Kons says. “I felt hopeless. I thought ‘I’ll never get this money back.’”

Kons says he had just bought a car with the cash and had put the leftover money in an envelope from the bank.

“I thought my front jacket pocket was zipped up all the way, but I guess not,” he says. “I thought I had felt something fall out and hit my leg, but I didn’t question it because nobody behind me was stopping.”

“My heart sunk. I felt like I was the laughingstock of the town,” Kons says. He says he moved to Goose Creek last year for his career in the Navy. He’s currently a Petty Officer.

In a Facebook post of his own in the group, Kons wrote, in part:

“I didn’t realize my money was gone until I arrived at Walmart, and by the time I got there, the last car was scooping up my money… I ask people to be decent human beings and return the money to the owner. I earned that money that you got for free.”

In addition to expressing his frustrations, Kons left his phone number on the post to see if anyone had extra work, so he could earn some money during the Christmas weekend.

He says he never would have thought the community would use his phone number to find his payment apps, like Venmo, CashApp and Zelle, and gift him his money back… and then some.

“I came home from work Thursday, and I had $300 in my account,” Kons says. “I was like ‘no way,’ and it was maybe five people total at the time sending money and saying ‘this sucks but have a great Christmas.’ I was so touched, like, oh my gosh, thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Kons says most of the payments appeared to be coming from other military members in the area. The payments ranged from a couple of dollars to $250.

In total, Kons tells us he’s been sent over $2,000 through the payment apps, and he doesn’t want to get any more notifications or payments.

He spent Friday with his roommates, John VanTatenhove and Tyler Roton, picking up litter on Highway 52 where he lost his money as a way of giving back to the Goose Creek community.

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