Location for Mt. Pleasant Arts Center Should be Transit Oriented

 By William Hamilton

Executive Director, Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit- www.bfltransit.com
Resident- 32 Sowell St., Mt. Pleasant, SC 29464
Ph. (843) 870-5299 or wjhamilton29464@gmail.com

Presented to Mt. Pleasant Town Council on March 14, 2023. 

At the end of his remarks, William Hamilton offered to restore and donate his late wife Julia's beloved 1920 mahogany Ivers and Pond Piano to the new art center. Julia was a stalwart supporter of music East of the Cooper, founding and performing with I'Onissimo! for ten years and playing 1st violin in the Mt. Pleasant orchestra. Julia played the large parlor grand instrument for 50 years. 

The proposed East Cooper Plaza location for an Arts Center is far more useful to the community and will generate less traffic because it can be served by strong public transit connections to outer Mount Pleasant and the Old Charleston area and transit hub. A greenfield site on currently undeveloped land on the north side of town would be impossible to reach by transit in the evenings and would have far larger environmental impacts.

I am the Executive Director of Best Friends of Lowcoutry Transit and run our East Cooper Hungryneck Straphangers unit. I have been riding public transit to and from the locations mentioned in this memo since 1978. I am a resident of I’On and take the bus into Charleston several times a week. Our organization is considered one of the leading Transit advocacy groups in the Southeastern US and the Town/Transit Teamwork effort which achieved a 308% increase in transit ridership in Mt. Pleasant between 2007 and 2012 is still a subject of national study today. Mount Pleasant wrote the book on suburban transit ridership development.

On the Reliable #40 Bus Line

East Cooper Plaza is currently on the reliable Mt. Pleasant #4O CARTA Bus line with stops right in front of the Plaza on it’s West end and in front of Sesame Burger just to the north, where two restaurants provide a pleasant place to wait for the bus and perhaps contribute to local economic activity and town tax revenue by enjoying a drink or meal. These restaurants and businesses also provide rain shelter while waiting. Transit riders don’t have the concerns about DUIs that car drivers have. While you can’t ride visibly inebriated, the professional drivers of CARTA, many with million mile perfect safety records are our designated drivers. The BP station also has snacks and a lighted place to wait out of the rain near the outbound stop.

For trips inbound to Charleston, there is a CARTA bus stop with a bench in front of First Reliance Bank, pm the frontage road across from CVS.. This inbound stop is also near Wood and Grain, Second State Coffee and several other pleasant places to eat or find a snack while waiting. The bank drive through provides rain shelter at this location. While the inbound stop could be improved by a shelter and the necessary space is available, it’s a perfectly acceptable all weather stop now.

Since inbound transit rides to Charleston require crossing Johnnie Dodds Blvd. Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit would recommend improved cross walk striping. Pedestrian push buttons are already in place and functional. Access to and from all directions is already fully sidewalked. The East Cooper Plaza location is also within walkable distance of over 1500 residences.

Student and Youth Visitors

Image, Right, Children planning future transit system for the Lowcountry.

Since this facility will have many student and youth visitors, who cannot drive access to transit provides a major opportunity to reduce traffic congestion. Parents or those assisting transportation challenged adults often make four trips between their origin point and the location of activity. One to take the young person to their practice or other activity, another to return to home or work, another  to pick the child up and finally another to return child and parent home or elsewhere. For students without a parent or guardian driver, youth cultural and civic opportunities are often inaccessible. Transit access is also of great value to Senior Citizens and the Differently Abled. Everyone who reaches this center buys tickets, fills seats and gains value for us all.

While it is a bit of a walk. The Coleman Blvd. #41 bus also has stops at extreme walkable distance of this location on Coleman Blvd. and Pelzer and Houston Northcutt, near town hall.

Image, left- Bus Stop at Mount Pleasant Town Hall, which with it's partner across the street linked by a world class pedestrian crossing with center Island is without question the finest bus stop on the CARTA system. 

The East Cooper Plaza location is also the closest available place for an arts center which could draw patronage from visitors staying at the Ravenel Gateway Hotels, all of which have very short, reliable transit links between Hotels and the Plaza.  It is also an easy ride from the transit hub at the Visitor’s Center Parking Garage downtown in Old Charleston, where CARTA lines link to the entire region and planned Lowcountry Rapid Transit System. Free DASH buses there bring tourists from throughout the city to make connections. If plays and concerts at our arts center are to succeed, strong transit is needed to fill seats. It’s also critical to provide access to the elderly and disabled.

If the town wants to take on a very ambitious cultural effort, this East Cooper Plaza Location, Town Hall, the Farmer’s Market, the I’On Mount Pleasant Amphitheater and Waterfront Park could all be effectively linked by a combination of existing CARTA public transit and town provided shuttles similar to that operated for the Blessing of the Fleet. Mt. Pleasant could go big with the sort of locally grounded cultural festival the City of Charleston, which has lost most of it’s citizen performers can no longer provide. Piccolo Spoleto was once a feast of local talent. Mt. Pleasant could take over that tradition with our own talent and voices, while Old Charleston services tourists with whatever out of town talent it chooses to market.

I attended a wonderful, but quite chilly Christmas concert on the lawn of Town Hall last December. The holidays remain hard on my because my beloved wife Julia, who filled our holidays with music as the leader of the I’Onissimo! Chamber Music organization was an accomplished violinist. The silence of the three Christmases since her death always burdens my heart. Hearing the music we shared performed by a local group of musicians and singers I knew filled by eyes with tears and drained away, for a precious hour, some of the grief and loss which arises from the silence of her piano and violin when Christmas trees glow. I remain grateful for that hour. I was able to find a ride with friends when holiday weekend surge pricing for Uber would have made the trips to and from town hall cost over sixty dollars.

Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit is already preparing a major summer 2023 effort called Bus Pirates, Queen Renee and her ladies in Raiding to support and build ridership on this summer’s Beach Reach Shuttle. We would be happy to reinvigorate our historically successful teamwork effort with the town to supercharge a cultural center at East Cooper Plaza with transit enabled access. We have ten years of experience producing cultural events in the I’On Community and 20 years of experience working to build transit ridership in Mount Pleasant. We can do this cheaply and effectively. We eager to help.

We’ll see you on the Bus.

Together, We Go Forward

William Hamilton

Century Forward- City of New Charleston

North Charleston was founded on June 12, 1972. City of New Charleston will depart from the Lowcountry’s obsession with the past to imagine the possibilities of a Transit enabled, future adapted North Charleston at its centennial, fifty years ahead of now. 

Upcoming Events- We do more than talk about the future

See our Facebook Transit Events page for upcoming transit oriented events in this effort. 

See our Lowcountry Up is Good page for events involving the Schools, Affordable Housing, and the Living wage efforts. 

Sponsors and Background

Image, Left- Community Shrine Gazebo Bus Stop Shelter in Chicora Community Garden, North Charleston.

Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit, Inc. & Lowcountry Up Is Good, PAC, Inc. have now been working towards a transit enabled North Charleston with many other organizations for 10 years. 

Marvin Pendarvis has been a partner in our efforts since he stepped on the #11 Dorchester Airport bus during his first campaign. He was impressed by the number of people riding in N. Charleston and shocked at how long and slow their bus trips were. From that moment, he's joined us in working for something better. So have many other officials and organizations focused on planning, affordable housing, human needs and education. 

Best Friends helped win the Transit Complete the Penny Campaign to fund construction of the LCRT in 2016. We worked with Rep. Marvin Pendarvis to obtain the SCDOT’s commitment to a complete streets policy in 2019 and are currently working with him to pass his Transit Oriented Development bill, no pending in the SC Legislature. In 2017 we canvassed every business we could reach along the full length of Rivers Ave. with information on the voter approved rapid transit project, helping start the ongoing transit planning process. In 2016 we build and deployed the Tiny House Fit for a King as part of what ultimately became a short lived tiny house village of five residences attached to a group home on Carner Ave. We’ve worked to improve the quality of life of residents in North Charleston with demonstrations and political actions to win the living wage and defend the independence of the community’s public schools. 

While we continue to work in other Lowcountry Communities and have dedicated projects on the Sea Islands, in Mt. Pleasant, in Lincolnville, Summerville and Ridgeville, we have always seen North Charleston as the Lowcountry’s essential hub. It still has functional communities focused on the needs of its own people. It has a magnificent store of installed infrastructure and will have the state’s first Rapid Transit System. While it struggles with problems and a sprawling, diverse landscape it has the potential for greatness as a home for the varied families of the future. 

The City of Charleston, while still essential to the region, has gentrified its urban care out of relevance to the future. It has largely become a tourist-oriented city of the past. It’s decision to accept having no portion of the planned rapid transit line within its boundaries, but instead to merely have LCRT buses operating in traffic south of Reynolds Ave. in N. Charleston is conclusive proof that while the future will happen to Charleston, the pressures of sea level rise and the need to accommodate competing for tourism income will shape its future.

A Year Long Effort Has Started 

Citadel Cadets and North Charleston Citizen, North Charleston Public School Teacher Jennifer Saunders planning a transit system for the Lowcountry at Park Circle Creamery in N. Charleston in October 2016 as  part of the Transit Complete the Penny Campaign. 

City of New Charleston will be a year long effort to imagine the transit enabled community of tomorrow which can grow up along and within one walkable mile of the LCRT line. 

The effort began on Feb. 23, 2023 when SC State Representative Marvin Pendarvis (D-CHS) introduced bill H. 4013 in the SC House of Representatives to amend Title 6 of the S. C. Code by adding Chapter 39 regarding Transit-Oriented Development Projects.

On March 1st. a lobbying, outreach team from Best Friends and Midland's Transit Riders went to the SC Statehouse to help build support for the Transit Oriented Bill, talking to over 250 people, including 50 members of the SC Legislature and SC DOT Transit office about the bill and planning a SC transit enabled future. We also made contact with over a dozen organizations representing the disabled, the Governor of SC, the University of SC and attended and leafleted a reception for all the State's transit agencies at the Columbia Convention Center. Co sponsors began signing on to the TOD bill by the end of the day. 

City of New Charleston will continue by organizing and funding a youth driven visioning project for the City’s future involving College and High School students across the state of South Carolina. These young citizens will be charged with imagining what the city could best become by its North Charleston centennial in 2072 and South Carolina’s Quadro Centennially in 2070. The students will use the internet and wireless technologies which have been integral to their life experience to share their work with the people of South Carolina, beginning with a preliminary statement of scope and goals before the end of the Spring, 2023 school term. 

An informal group discussion of the project is planned for Sunday Afternoon at Emergence, the burning may style event outside Summerville in April. 

There will be events sharing parts of the work with the community throughout the summer and early fall. Online and real world conferences, meetings and workshops will be held to both formulate detailed plans and to develop the real world capacity of these young people to lead the state towards a future which rewards its citizens with mobility, prosperity and the gifts of creative patrimony. 

North Charleston resident, the late Mary Smith, appearing as our Transit Fairy at the Atlanta International Transit Exhibition in 2018

The initial effort will conclude in late Fall of 2023 with the New Charleston Future Festival, where to the extent that we can, we’ll share all that they have learned and dreamed with the community and the entire state with participatory activities which will extend the creative process of shaping the future to everyone willing to join the effort. 

Once we have begun the future with the Festival, we’ll continue to support our young planners and visionaries as they join the traditional, often challenging effort to drive government controlled planning efforts towards the future they dream of, in N. Charleston an d across the state. 

The target for funding this effort is Eight Thousand, Five Hundred Dollars ($8,500.00) in cash funding, and an additional contribution in kind support of supplies, facilities and transportation services. Fifteen hundred dollars has already been raised by a grant of support from Marvin Pendarvis and the project can launch as soon as we have Twenty five hundred dollars committed, which will be sufficient to fund the largest visioning unit composed of undergraduates at one of the State’s Colleges or Universities for the first half of the project. 

More Information

Support and Contact Us

• You can support our continuing efforts for better transit by making a contribution online on Act Blue
• Contact State Rep. Maving Pendarvis through his office at the State Legislature in Columbia
• You can reach us by emailing executive director William Hamilton at wjhamilton29464@gmail.com or by calling 843-870-5299.