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MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (WCBD) – Proposed changes to the zoning for Carolina Park Elementary School in north Mount Pleasant have some parents fighting back.

Jonathan Mars is one of the nearly 1,100 parents who have signed a petition asking CCSD leaders to not rezone the school.

“There’s a failure of the district to address overcrowding in our school. So because of that, they’re really creating options that are going to penalize a lot of kids in different parts of north Mt. Pleasant, notably here in Carolina Park,” explained Mars, a father of two children who attend Carolina Park Elementary.

The problem he, and other parents, want to draw attention to is that children who live closest to the school may not be able to attend depending on which, if any, rezoning option is chosen.

Mars says many kids walk or ride their bikes to Carolina Park Elementary and changing that would mean more traffic on other roadways like Park West Boulevard and Highway 17 which are already heavily congested with school traffic during certain hours of the day.

“Don’t take kids away from the school that they live closest to. In Carolina Park right now there are people who don’t live here who will be able to send their kids here but people that live closest to it can’t,” said Mars. “So we think geography should play a role. Don’t make parents drive by their school every day, take their kids off their bikes, and bring them to a school that they don’t need to go to because there’s one right here.”

The Charleston County School District’s (CCSD) Department of Planning and Real Estate provided board members with three options for the proposed rezoning at a meeting on May 18. They are below:

The district said with residential growth in north Mount Pleasant, they’re expecting the population at Carolina Park Elementary to reach its peak during the fiscal year 2025. Projections from the district show the peak at 1,051 students before slowly falling back down in the following years. Carolina Park Elementary’s capacity is 968 students.

“So, there’s an overcrowding issue but then if you look at their forecast, I’m also wondering, and other parents are wondering, why we can’t use portable classrooms to kind of fix that two-year delta where the population starts to decline,” said Mars.

If rezoning should occur, students impacted would be transferred to Laurel Hill Primary School or Charles Pinckney Elementary School which are both located in Park West.

Below are attendance predictions for both schools:

Another question parents are asking is why Carolina Park Elementary can’t be expanded to accommodate a growing population.

According to the website for the Carolina Park neighborhood, the school is “expandable to 1,200.”

During the 2020 general election, Charleston County voters chose to implement a 1% sales and use tax to fund education projects. In a long list of projects included on the ballot, number 3 on the list was “Design, construct and equip an expansion at Carolina Park Elementary School.”

“If you want to feed kids that don’t live in Carolina Park, or don’t even live in Mt. Pleasant, into this school, then you need to expand it,” said Mars. “And there was a one percent tax in 2020 where this was one of the things that when they funded education that was going to be taken care of.”

If pushed forward, this would be the second rezoning in the school’s five years of operation. A rezoning plan was adopted in 2020 and put into effect for the 2021-2022 school year because of the same reasons.

News 2 reached out to CCSD for an interview, but the district was unavailable.

CCSD is looking for public input on this proposal at their next regularly scheduled board meeting which will be held on August 23rd at 6 p.m.

After that, the board will take comments into consideration and is expected to make a final decision later in the fall.

Carolina Park Elementary opened in 2017 and is rated “Excellent” by the state Department of Education. The land for the school was donated to the town by Carolina Park.

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (WCSC) - As Mount Pleasant continues to grow, the Charleston County School District is figuring out how to assign each neighborhood’s population to a nearby school.

A re-zone plan currently in the works has some Carolina Park parents pushing back. The Charleston County Constituent District 2 members will consider four map options in the re-zoning. Each map would move about 200 students who currently live in the Carolina Park district to another elementary school.

District 2 Constituent Board Chair Pamela Jouan-Goldman says the board will review the options and take input from parents during the process.

“About two years ago, we had a rezoning of Carolina Park Elementary School. We were right in the middle of the pandemic. We were fairly conservative about the rezoning that we did at that point. And we are now faced with unprecedented growth in this area and so we have to go ahead and rezone again,” Jouan-Goldman says.

The district’s department of planning and real estate projections says Carolina Park Elementary enrollment will exceed the school’s capacity by 2025. Nearby Laurel Hill and Charles Pinckney are expected to have space and bear the transfer of some Carolina Park students.

“We are really blessed to have amazing schools. So the schools that we do have the potential rezoning people to are all fantastic schools. Both Laurel Hill and Pickney are definitely top notch,” Jouan-Goldman says.

Jonathan Mars is one of more than 1,000 parents who have signed a petition against map option one, which impacts many children, including his own. He says he doesn’t want to see parts of Carolina Park split up.

“All of the options put every parent in North Mount Pleasant in a difficult spot,” Mars says. “However, we just think that creating a have and have not in the same neighborhood where kids are going to go to the pool and they’re not going to go to the same school as their friends there. It just creates a really difficult dynamic for our children.”

Mars says most of the Carolina Park neighborhood kids walk or bike to school and that’s a big perk to a lot of parents.

“It’s one of the reasons we moved here. I think anyone who lives in Carolina Park and has kids under 12 wanted their kids to go to this school,” he says. “It just doesn’t seem to make sense that we would want to take kids off of their bikes and put them in a car and ship them across town.”

Mars suggests the district look into solutions like long-term expansion or short-term portable classrooms instead of moving kids around.

“I think expansion is a good case and there was a vote for 1% tax increase two years ago to expand this very school. The issue for us as Carolina Park residents is this land was donated to the district with the understanding that Carolina Park children would be able to go to this school,” Mars says.

Jouan-Goldman says expansion is complicated and has been a tricky subject to accomplish for the school.

“We have asked the county board and CCSD to expand the school. We had hoped the school was going to be expanded already but it is not funded for an expansion. And so we are currently faced with having to do a rezoning,” she says.

She hopes to have an open discussion about the plans at the next board meeting

“We would just say that don’t be afraid of what potentially could happen because you might end up at a school you love even more than the one you’re in. You know, it’s unfortunate that it does have to happen,” she says. “We are going to have parents who are going to be unhappy about this. But it is also a public schools and public school does not belong to any one neighborhood.”

Mars and other parents plan to attend the Aug. 23 District 2 Constituent Board Meeting where the re-zone topic is on the agenda. Some are organizing to wear blue to signify Carolina Park Unity. The board is expected to hear public comments and consider the options. Members will likely make a decision later this fall for upcoming school years.

Constituent districts are used by the school district for the re-zoning process as well as to assign students to non-magnet local schools, to consider and determine student transfer requests, both inter and intra-district and to hear and decide student discipline appeals.

Copyright 2022 WCSC. All rights reserved.

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (WCSC) - What should have been a new chapter in their lives has turned into a nightmare for some Mount Pleasant homeowners. Mold, ventilation problems and structural issues are just some of the complaints listed in lawsuits filed against the builder and HVAC contractor.

The Midtown Townhomes by Lennar are one of the newer builds in Mount Pleasant. It’s located off of Hungry Neck Boulevard and they’re listed as luxury townhomes. From the outside, many would think it’s true but neighbors say things have gone wrong.

“I started looking around, I mean opening closets, and I was just like ‘Oh my God,’” Kim Conway, who bought her townhome in 2020, says.

Conway says she was gone last summer for about six weeks. But when she came back, there was mold on every floor.

“My furniture, my bed, my mattress… everything was damp when I came home,” Conway says. “Like my sheets were wet. Everything was wet. And I lived in here for four days like this. And my furniture, these chairs… they had to come in and clean every piece of furniture. Everything. There was nothing left in this house.”

Conway says she had to move into a hotel while Lennar cleaned it up. According to documents from her attorney, it cost about $14,000.

She’s not the only one dealing with issues.

“I need to have the air conditioner work properly so that there’s not too much humidity in the house and it won’t blow constantly,” Karen Tinsley, who bought her townhome in 2021, says. “I think the unit is not the correct type of unit. I have a sink in the kitchen that’s cracked from the factory. I have a water heater that I’ve replaced because the plumber said that it was too small for my unit.”

Tinsley says she’s had problems since day one.

“My oven didn’t work properly. I have a gas stove and it was flickering so they had to go in the attic and make a bigger line for that. And I’ve had cracking of brick on the outside. There’s all kinds of wall problems upstairs. I have a bowed out floorboard and someone came in and said, ‘well we’re going to have to take out the wall because the plate and the wall isn’t attached to the sheetrock.’ So that means they’re going to have to come in and tear out the wall and fix that.

Tinsley says of the laundry list of items she has sent to Lennar to fix only about 25 percent has been done. And she’s wary if they’re actually done correctly. She says the most concerning thing to her, though, is the cracking bricks.

“I have these dreams where that my entire house is falling down from the outside and everything inside is all going to just fall down,” Tinsley says. “It’s like how scary is that? That’s what I’m stressed out about.”

All in all – neighbors just want their new homes fixed and for Lennar and the other companies to own up to the problems. That’s why they filed the lawsuits.

As of Thursday, the lawsuit against the HVAC company, Fogel Services, is pending in Charleston County. A federal court dismissed the lawsuit against Lennar for procedural reasons, but a motion for reconsideration of that dismissal is currently pending. Neither company has responded for a request for comment as of Thursday.

“I think Lennar should accept what they’ve done and they know they’ve messed up these buildings,” Conway adds. “They should fix them. They should be responsible and just fix them. And learn how to build.”

They’re also offering some advice to home buyers.

“I would say don’t rush into buying anything get an inspector,” Tinsley says. “Maybe get two inspectors. Get some advice from other people to go in and look at the history of the place. Don’t rush into a brand new construction because they’re taking shortcuts these days to sell.”

This isn’t the first lawsuit against Lennar. There are more than a dozen listed in Charleston County alone listed on the court’s website dating back more than a decade alleging similar problems.

Copyright 2022 WCSC. All rights reserved.

A new game-and-restaurant venue is on the way to the growing town of Mount Pleasant and will serve as the flagship operation, with two other locations planned across the Southeast.

Crush Yard will offer eight pickleball courts, shuffleboard and other activities along with backyard bites, beer and wine at the vacated site of a former gun and fishing gear merchant.

Plans call for an opening this winter in the 38,773-square-foot space formerly occupied by Palmetto State Armory at 3365 S. Morgans Point Road in the northern end of the state’s fourth-largest municipality.

Crush Yard also will feature an outdoor space in the back with fire pits where patrons can listen to live music and play games such as cornhole and giant Jenga-like features.

The name was selected because players often use terms such as “crushing it” for someone playing well, according to Andrew Ladden, chief marketing officer and an investor in the enterprise. “Yard” came into play because of the outdoor element planned for the site, he said.

Visitors can pre-book courts through an app, and the new venue will offer memberships, both annual and month-to-month. The more patrons play, the more they can earn freebies that include complimentary drinks, snacks and merchandise, Ladden said.

Members can enter tournaments where they will be matched with players of similar skill levels and will have court-booking preference.

The site will include self-serve ordering kiosks along with self-pour beer, wine and soft drinks.

The menu will include hamburgers, cheeseburgers, chips, dips, chicken dishes, house-made cotton candy and healthier options such as lettuce wraps.

“We are debating adding pizza, too,” Ladden said. “We want people to come and hang out, even if they don’t play pickleball.”

Ladden, who lives in New Jersey, has partnered with four Charleston investors and others outside the area to produce the flagship Crush Yard. Others are planned in Orlando and Nashville in 2023, with expansions into other cities in the future, he said.

The business partners plan to spend $5 million to $10 million to upfit the former Palmetto Armory space with a kitchen, interior renovations that will include a balcony, a façade facelift and backside exterior improvements.

Ladden said the investors selected Mount Pleasant for the first venue because its a sought-after community in the Charleston area.

“We think it’s the right kind of audience for pickleball,” Ladden said. “It’s sweeping through suburban neighborhoods throughout the country, and Mount Pleasant is a popular suburb in the Charleston area. There are not a lot of places like this there. It seems like a really natural fit.”

Earlier this month, MIX, an “eatertainment” project that will offer food, drinks, axe-throwing, duckpin bowling and other indoor games, announced it will move into the former space where Butcher & The Boar restaurant was located in Brookgreen Center off Coleman Boulevard. A November opening is targeted.

“There is a trend of dining with athletic entertainment,” Ladden said. “People want to do stuff. They want to get up and move around. They want to do something and not sit still.”

Construction on the former gun shop has not begun. Investors are now drawing up plans to present to the town, and Ladden is hopeful the new business will open by late fall, but he realizes plans and permitting take time.

“It could be December or even January,” he said.

Palmetto State Armory moved from Mount Pleasant to a former Bi-Lo supermarket store in West Ashley, where it opened earlier this year.

MOUNT PLEASANT — A national specialty outdoor gear retailer plans to move into a former supermarket space in the state’s fourth-largest city, bringing its third outpost to South Carolina.

Recreational Equipment Inc., or REI Co-op, announced June 6 it will take over the 21,535-square-foot space GreenWise Market that Publix vacated in 2020 in Indigo Square Shopping Center off U.S. Highway 17. The company plans to hire about 50 workers.

Washington-based REI plans to open in the fall and stock an assortment of apparel, gear and expertise for camping, cycling, running, fitness, hiking, paddling, climbing and other outdoor activities. It also will include a full-service bike shop staffed by certified mechanics.

The self-proclaimed largest consumer cooperative in the nation offers members who join a range of benefits, including a used gear trade-in program, discounts on experiences, rentals and shop services, a share of the co-op’s annual profits based on qualifying purchases and other perks.

REI also partners with nonprofits to help maintain local trails and public lands.

In South Carolina, the co-op has invested nearly $184,000 in South Carolina-based land agencies and nonprofit partners since 2017. Recent recipients include Anne Springs Close Greenway, Conestee Foundation Inc., Friends of Harbison State Forest, Friends of Paris Mountain, Friends of Sesqui and Palmetto Trail-parent Palmetto Conservation Foundation.

The recreational equipment and gear retailer will be positioned about two miles north of competitor Dick’s Sporting Goods, which opened in 2015 near Highway 17 and Bowman Road. Other East Cooper businesses that could be affected by the newcomer include Haddrell’s Point Tackle & Supply, Henry’s Sporting Goods, Timeout Sport & Ski and Half-Moon Outfitters.

Billy Richardson of Play It Again Sports said REI’s entry into the market may help his business more than hurt.

“We have one category that crosses with REI, and that’s bikes,” Richardson said. “The majority of ours are lower end of $400 or less, and theirs are probably mostly boutique brands. I don’t think it will cross over too much with us, and it might help our business with people doing more trade-ins.”

Beezer Molten, CEO of Half-Moon Outfitters, said REI’s move into the region wasn’t unexpected.

“Anytime a big competitor moves into your marketplace, you are going to have some concerns,” Molten said. “I’m not surprised, not alarmed and not particularly worried. ... If you are intentionally trying to build a business, you try to come in under a big-box retailer and that requires more thoughtful urban infill decisions.”

REI also will be vying for business with big-box outdoor rival Sportsman’s Warehouse near Tanger Outlets in North Charleston.

In Mount Pleasant, the company is expanding to an affluent, fast-growing town with a population approaching 100,000, a median household income of about $105,000 and a median sales price for a single-family home of $820,000 as of April.

REI’s two other stores in the Palmetto State are in Greenville and Columbia.

The chain was founded in 1938 when a group of 23 climbing friends, united by their love for the outdoors, decided to source quality and affordable gear for their adventures. The retailer now has 175 locations in 41 states and the District of Columbia and employs 15,000 workers.