Charleston has grappled for years with the need for more housing, particularly downtown, where so many of the city's jobs are, and Mayor William Cogswell has set a worthy goal of creating 3,500 new affordable housing units by 2030. Achieving that goal wouldn't simply provide more places to live but also would reduce future congestion, as more people would live closer to where they work.
So it makes sense that Mr. Cogswell is moving to take complete control over developing the remaining 18 acres of the WestEdge project near Brittlebank Park and refocus its mission from a medical research hub to significantly increasing housing. The original vision -- where the city and the Medical University of South Carolina partnered as developers -- is shifting as MUSC focuses its research and innovation work on the Calhoun Street property next door that Roper Hospital plans to vacate.
Mr. Cogswell hopes the city can buy out MUSC's share for $25 million, about $10 million less than it's worth, as The Post and Courier's Ali Rocket reports. That seems reasonable, since MUSC is one of the peninsula's largest employers and therefore has a big stake in making sure the housing supply keeps up with demand.
But the effort remains in the early stages and raises major questions far beyond whether the city will fill Gadsden Creek, as it has the right to do and as some believe it should do, given that the creek's water is tainted by passing through an old landfill. Others say the creek's water quality isn't much worse than the Ashley River's and keeping it open would be a better plan.
These major questions include:
How will the city plan what is built? As developer, the city should face even more scrutiny than private developers regarding the height and density of new buildings, plus questions about how much affordable housing, parks, open space and drainage infrastructure it will provide.
How will the city find its partner(s)? The city should seek qualifications from private developers once the time is right. It skipped that step in its effort to redevelop its former Piggly Wiggly site in West Ashley, partly because that redevelopment was folded into a much larger project involving the Ashley Landing shopping center next door. Ashley Landing was in private ownership, but that won't be the case with WestEdge.
And most importantly, how will the city finance all this? Ms. Rockett reported the $25 million sale could be financed through $10 million that the WestEdge Foundation already has agreed to pay MUSC and $15 million from the existing tax increment financing district that was created to pay for the public infrastructure related to WestEdge's redevelopment. But buying the property is only the first step. If the tax increment money goes to MUSC, there will be that much less to pay for infrastructure, such as whatever will be done to the creek, whatever public space is created and whatever subsidy is included in whatever new housing is built.
As former WestEdge CEO Michael Maher recently noted, "How you're going to pay for it is one of the earliest design decisions you're going to make because it's going to drive other design decisions along the way."
We don't ask these questions to cast doubt on the wisdom or feasibility of Mr. Cogswell's big plans but rather to get everyone -- City Council members, community advocates, neighborhood leaders and city voters -- thinking about the big decisions that lie ahead, decisions all of us ultimately will have a stake in.
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