On River's Doorstep

Northbridge Park, dedicated on Tuesdsay, May 27, just become an even better place to let an hour float away down the Ashley River and into the morning sunrise.
Last week, with highs only creeping into the upper-70s, the wind came off the Ashley River and whipped pant legs like vertical windsocks as fish jumped out of the water along the shoreline.
Burrowed holes in the brown sand showed how mole crickets and other subterranean sleepers erupted in the night and early morning hours. Long grasses tussled in the wind, keeping ripples out an ersatz pond about the size of a kiddie pool.
Here, in what resembles a smaller version of the Mt. Pleasant Memorial Waterfront Park, there’s access, literal and physical, to the Lowcountry. Walk down to the end of the footing, down a slanted ramp, out to where kayakers will be able to put in, and anyone can have a real experience with nature.
All the while, cars whiz by at speeds more than 60 miles per hour along Old Towne Road as it climbs onto Northbridge and before it descends, becoming Cosgrove Avenue.
Last Thursday, Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. arrived at the park, having just been to a public breakfast gathering at the municipal W. L. Stephens Aquatic Center on Playground Road.
When he arrives, suit jacket jauntily draped over his shoulder as he guides the photographer to his best side, Riley sees a bigger picture than most.
“This park has to withstand and meet the 50-year, the 100-year test,” says Riley, whose gaze and hands are drawn to the massive textured concrete bricks that are used to retain the wall of the parking lot.
Criticized by some for the way his “vision thing” for the city stalled downtown and never made it over the bridges to West Ashley, Riley is moving fast, his time in office coming to an end. He hopes whoever succeeds him will understand what he helped start at Northbridge Park.
Riley envisions a series of parks along the Ashley River, connected by a riverwalk, jumping from Northbridge to Charles Towne Landing, on to a converted equestrian center, down to the new park beginning to take shape at Higgins Pier, through to a six-acre former dump site the city just purchased in Maryville just behind the old Cross Seed building, now home to West Ashley Veterinary Clinic.
According to City Councilman Bill Moody, Riley didn’t start on these projects without a little help, a little push from a foursome of City Councilmen representing much of West Ashley – Aubry Alexander, Marvin Wagner, Perry Waring, and himself.
Moody said his fellow “Westkateers” wanted to push the mayor to provide public spaces and access to the water that wasn’t planned in the 1940s when West Ashley was taking shape as a disconnected group of neighborhoods.
“When I first got elected, I went to the mayor and told him I was embarrassed by the entrances and egresses in and out of West Ashley,” said Moody. “And to his credit, every time we’ve called him, he’s responded.”
Alexander, mulling a run for Riley’s office, is a big fan of the park, but doesn’t think it’s quite complete. He’s called for and the mayor has approached the state Department of Transportation about a guardrail along Old Towne to protect strollers walking with their backs to traffic from speeding cars.
Alexander would like to see a “burnished guardrail, the kind they have out at Kiawah” adorn the several-hundred-yard stretch along a new asphalt sidewalk.
Alexander said the next piece of the public waterfront puzzle could be a bank-owned acre-and-a-half locate behind the Boy Scout headquarters, perfect for more parking and picnicking, he said.
Moody said he’s eyeing the former home of radio station WPAL and its tower site along Wappoo Road near Edgewater Park neighborhood. “It’s not a big piece of property, but it would provide a perfect launch spot for kayakers and canoes,” he said.
And there’s still the matter of connecting the sidewalks from the bridge all the way down to Charles Towne Landing. And on, and on.
Moody admits there are more great ideas for West Ashley than there is money in municipal coffers to fund them. But at least the conversation about improving this part of town is flowing.