Fired Up in Byrnes Downs

A proposed senior-living neighborhood next to another neighborhood turned neighbors against neighbors in that neighborhood.
Get all that, yay or “neigh?”
Earlier this year, Charleston City Council voted to allow the construction of a senior living apartment complex on the green swath of park-like land on the former Coburg Dairy property located behind the West Ashley Harris Teeter.
City Councilman Bill Moody hailed the project as a responsible, less-impactful use of the land that was far less intrusive than what could go there under its General Business zoning.
Council, acting on recommendations of the city’s planning office, also had the unanimous support of the board Byrnes Downs Neighborhood Association.
And that’s where the trouble started in Byrnes Downs, a normally welcoming collection of brick post-war cottages where kids, seniors, and professionals usually all get along.
Heather K. Powers, a professional organizer, was the president of the Byrnes Downs neighborhood association, and has since resigned a second time in as many years — this time partially as a result of the brouhaha the board’s support for the project started.
Powers said that Greystar, a Charleston-based international property development company, met this summer with the board to present the project. “I felt like they had done a good job,” she said, with an eye on the “bigger picture” of the rush of ongoing development in the region.
Powers said Greystar listened to and responded to board concerns about traffic and density, and improvements to the adjacent West Ashley Greenway. After checking with a boardmember better versed on zoning issues, Powers voted to recommend the 200-plus unit senior development.
Her feelings and thoughts didn’t jibe with everyone in Byrnes Downs, however.
The resulting uproar included a “splinter” group forming within the neighborhood that included hundreds of concerned homeowners, apparently incensed that the board did not represent their positions.
Fliers were distributed, spinoff social media pages formed, name-calling began, and ad hoc meetings were hosted in homes.
Some residents cried for the city to purchase the land and turn it into a park. Others called for a stay on the development until a second traffic study could be completed.
Kappe Manuel led one of the splinter groups that felt that the board’s vote represented only its thoughts, and not the perspective of the rest of the neighborhood.
Manuel, like Powers, has gotten zinged in the process. In a recent social media post, she said she’s been referred to as “alarmist petitioner,” an “elitist,” a “not in my back yard” protester, and “ill-informed.”
Manuel said Saturday that she has one big problem with the proposed development: “It’s too big.”
“A lot of people don’t realize that Coburg Drive is the only entrance or exit to our neighborhood that has a traffic light,” she said of the road that leads to the former dairy and forms the boundary between the neighborhood and the Harris Teeter complex.
With an eye also trained on the pace of development in West Ashley, she thinks the cars coming and going from the proposed apartment complex will have too big of an impact on her neighborhood.
Greystar, she said, has had a good run of convincing people nationwide that seniors don’t drive traffic numbers. Manuel isn’t so sure, and successfully demanded the city perform a second traffic study.
“We knew the first study was going to come back in favor of the development because it took place on only one day, from four to six,” she said.
Josh Martin, the city’s former lead civic planner and currently a lead advisor to Mayor John Tecklenburg, said the results of that second traffic study will be delivered Tuesday night, last night, at City Council, but said the early results are expected to be “negligible.”
Martin added that unless something “life threatening” pops up in the second traffic study, the city will allow the development to continue. “Unless there’s a big safety issue, there will be no reason to back off,” he said.
Manuel said she has accepted that the Greystar development will go forward. “I get it; it’s coming. And it looks like it will be nice place to live, no doubt about it,” she said, joking that she wouldn’t mind living in a unit looking over the marsh there.
Both Manuel and Powers agreed that the brouhaha is a prime example of how neighbors need to stay more involved, and not just show up outraged when a big issue crops up.