Pressure Washing in Johns Island, SC

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.

Traffic. Charleston is awash with it, and the same people who created the problem now want to put a new road through your front yard or your front door in order to fix it.

“You can just move,” they say. They are wrong. We live here.

Plato opined in 400 B.C., "The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." However, no love interest ever whispered, “You had me at the latest traffic study.” It is boring.

I am not indifferent. I live here. Johns Island requires a new comprehensive plan (Main, River, Brownswood, Maybank, Bohicket, Edenvale) that includes the needs of James Island, West Ashley and Red Top. Whether you are Finish 526, Nix 526, Fix Our Roads First or something entirely different, we need fresh ideas.

We have them in the form of Rational Roads, Johns Island Advocate, Charleston City Councilman Jim McBride, Charleston Mayor William Cogswell, Charleston County Councilman Joe Boykin, Coastal Conservation League and Lowcountry Land Trust. It’s a new day.

We also have thousands of residents who have been mocked, underrepresented and silenced by a system that is flush with cash and politically connected. The “destroyers” in this system cite hurricanes and killer grand oaks as the reasons we should suffer instead of them.

What we don’t need are outdated traffic models, bureaucrats or anonymous sources saying that we should have “the moral rectitude to take the few steps necessary to remedy this existential threat" and that "the preservation of a few trees is much more important than peoples’ lives” and throw-away phrases such as “Developers gonna develop,” as metro columnist Brian Hicks wrote in his June 30 column.

Charleston’s City and County councils, the S.C. Department of Transportation, Mayors Joe Riley and John Tecklenburg, the Chamber of Commerce and their lackeys have sold out Charleston and made millions for Centex, Pulte, Toll Brothers, Kiawah et al., while proposing to bulldoze the property of folks who can’t fight back. The median price for a home on Kiawah in May was more than $4 million.

The county's proposed improvement to Segment C of the Main and Bohicket corridor would cut through acres of pristine wetlands in a highly sensitive area of Bohicket Creek, through the natural buffer of four protected conservation easements, destroy private homes and businesses and threaten the groundwater surrounding the Angel Oak while, according to its own studies, only modestly improving traffic flow.

Safety was not mentioned in the public handout provided at the public meeting in May.

Don’t be fooled. This is not about you. This is about money.

Andrew Geer, M.D., is a Johns Island resident.

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.

Mike Fielding can’t wait to be his own landlord — and he's taking extra care on the land part.

The owner of Low Tide Brewing has purchased a 10-acre plot on Johns Island, down the road from his current operations at 2863 Maybank Highway. There, he envisions more entertaining spaces, grassy areas for pets and slots for even more local food trucks.

More than anything, Fielding is eager to build a permanent space on land he can work with, not against — preserving the trees, the water and the rural lifestyle that defines Johns Island.

Fielding spent years searching for a plot that could sustain his large brewery operations. It was no small feat given that he had no desire to leave Johns Island or lease again.

“I want the longevity and certainty to do what we want to do and really invest in the space,” Fielding said. “We’re fortunate enough that we found the property and are able to really make a place our own.”

The future setup on Slack Tide Drive will have two buildings: a taproom for customer interaction and a 21,000-square-foot main space with an office and production site that Fielding could open for tours. He's also planning a room for VIP events and classes.

Low Tide's new spot will offer four bars between the buildings with space for three food trucks simultaneously and a commissary kitchen for basic appetizers.

Overall, a third of the property will be devoted to the brewery, another third to parking and a final third to a retention pond as a stormwater solution.

Fielding anticipates the new brewery — he bought the property for $600,000 in January 2023 under the name Beer Baron LLC — will take 12 months to construct from the still-to-be-determined groundbreaking. He’s hoping for a 2026 opening that will include new state-of-the-art brewing equipment in addition to using his current back tanks.

JOHNS ISLAND — These Bohicket Road trees, or at least the people speaking for them, are kinda scary.

There are signs planted next to several of the grand live oaks lining this canopied road that warn: “WE KILL DRIVERS & THEIR FAMILIES.”

That’ll certainly get your attention, particularly given the proof. Several trees have crosses or flowers nailed to their trunks, suggesting fatal crash sites.

Next to some of those menacing messages, there are others signs that also purport to speak for the live oaks. And they are pleas for mercy: “DON’T CHOP ME DOWN.”

These days, the trees — or at least some Sea Island residents — have a lot to say.

All this is prelude to a showdown coming soon to Charleston County Council. It’s a triple threat — Johns Island, traffic and trees. Which is the political equivalent of gasoline, oily rags and fire.

As part of the “Main Road Corridor: Segment C” project, the county and the S.C. Department of Transportation plan to improve several intersections and add roundabouts and multiuse paths on a stretch of Main and Bohicket roads from roughly St. Johns High School to Betsy Kerrison Parkway.

Most folks support much of the plan, funded by the current transportation sales tax, including the additional lanes of traffic slated for a short stretch of Main and Bohicket around Maybank Highway.

But there are elements of the proposal that have Johns Island residents fighting mad. As usual.

One sticking point is a proposed 12-foot bike and pedestrian path along Bohicket between Haut Gap Middle School and Betsy Kerrison. That's where the signs are popping up.

Including this one, which gets to the heart of the underlying politics:

“Johns Island is NOT Kiawah’s Driveway.”

There it is. Folks generally disagree with the idea of cutting down trees and taking property for a bike path, but others want to do the same for additional lanes on a dangerous stretch of Bohicket Road.

One Johns Islander who spoke to me questioned the priorities here. He points out there are about 40 grand live oaks (out of hundreds) so close to the road — many in the shoulder — that they pose a threat.

“Anyone who values people's lives should have the moral rectitude to take the few steps necessary to remedy this existential threat,” he says. (He requested anonymity because this is a contentious issue among his neighbors.)

“One side of the issue has demonstrated that their desire (for the) preservation of a few trees is much more important than peoples’ lives,” he says.

His count on the number of dangerous trees probably isn’t far off, given the yellow and black caution road signs planted in front of dozens of them. Still, those are fighting words.

Other residents, and elected officials, say this campaign is really more about widening the busy road for commuters from Kiawah and Seabrook.

Of course, they aren’t the only ones clogging this road. Johns Island is going through some pretty harsh growing pains. Developers gonna develop.

Islanders worried about overdevelopment see the removal of those trees as destroying the character and natural beauty of Johns Island. County Councilman Joe Boykin is among them.

“I’m for safe roads, but not at the expense of place,” Boykin says.

The county is all about removing dead or diseased trees, the councilman argues. He recently lobbied to remove some non-oaks that obstructed Main Road lines of sight near Mary Ann Point Road.

But Boykin, like many of the island’s vocal environmental advocates, doesn’t want to touch the live oaks on Bohicket. Because DOT owns the road, Boykin says, any widening would require a multiuse path.

Two more lanes for traffic, along with a required bike path, would pretty much wipe out the road’s natural canopy — which is maybe the most scenic one this side of Ashley River Road.

Boykin says he’ll fight a multiuse path along that stretch of Bohicket with his last breath. And he will have help.

The county recently finished collecting public comments on the project, and is expected to deliver the results to County Council at its August meeting.

That'll be a wild one, and no one knows what'll happen. Controversial decisions tend to slow down county action (see: 526, et al.), and if the issue is framed as people vs. trees, it could get ugly.

Kiawah commuters, Boykin argues, already have two lanes off the island: Bohicket/Main and River Road. If they want to improve traffic, he suggests they support the completion of 526. But that's another story.

So, bottom line, Boykin can't predict what happens here. But he expects, probably correctly, that the majority of Johns Island residents will be on his side.

We already know where the trees stand.

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Reach Brian Hicks at bhicks@postandcourier.com.