Quartz CountertopsNear Mount Pleasant, SC

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The new storefront is located in the National Crossing shopping center at the main entrance of the Charleston National neighborhood, according to a news release. Graze Craze is a part of Big Flavor Brands, the food service division of Starpoint Brands, a family of companies affiliated with United Franchise Group.

At Graze Craze, charcuterie experts, known as grazologists, design arrangements that feature an array of ingredients that are ideal for grazing, like fresh fruits and vegetables, premium meats and cheeses, artisanal sweets, nuts and more, the release stated.

The Mount Pleasant Graze Craze is the only one of its kind in the Charleston area, and the franchise owners behind the new store Keith and Kendra Lovas are thrilled to share something completely new with the community they call home, the release stated.

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“The wonderful people of Mount Pleasant love to gather and celebrate,” said Keith Lovas in the release. “There is no better centerpiece for a special occasion than a Graze Craze charcuterie board — it’s unmatched in quality, beauty and functionality.”

The Lovas enjoy playing a role in their community with Kendra working at a local elementary school and Keith coaching youth sports teams through the Mount Pleasant Recreation Department, according to the release. In addition to serving exceptional grazing boards, the Lovas plan to use their Graze Craze to expand their local involvement and sponsor sports teams, further supporting kids in being active and chasing their dreams. The Lovas are also interested in bolstering regional business development through their involvement with the Mount Pleasant Chamber of Commerce.

Graze Craze charcuterie arrangements incorporate an assortment of flavors, like the popular Gone Grazey board, balanced to provide a bit of everything – a mix of cured meats, premium cheeses, crackers, fresh produce, nuts and more. The Vegegrazian is designed with a medley of fresh fruits and vegetables for anyone embracing a plant-based lifestyle.

The artisan-inspired charcuterie offerings at Graze Craze are available in different size options, from Char-Cutie-Cups and Picnic Boxes for nibbling to sharing-size boards with enough fresh food to feed a large party, the release stated.

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (WCSC) - The town of Mount Pleasant is looking to extend limiting building permits for another five years in an effort to slow growth down and build infrastructure up.

A proposal to extend the building permit allocation system was presented at a planning commission meeting Wednesday night with one more final vote left from the town council.

As people continue to move to the Lowcountry, the town of Mount Pleasant put this building permit allocation into effect back in 2019 and is now looking to extend it until 2029.

“The council is very serious about maintaining our level of service,” Mount Pleasant’s Director of Planning, Land Use and Neighborhoods Michelle Reed says.

“Keeping the growth slowed down, the way they have the last five years, and slowing that growth rate down, has really allowed them to continue the levels of service that we provide to our citizens,” she adds.

The goal is to finish major capital improvement projects before allowing more growth to happen in the town.

“I think the idea is really to allow the town to continue with their infrastructure improvements and to catch up with all the growth that occurred over the years,” Reed says.

The system is broken down into three categories single-family units, accessory dwelling units and multifamily units with a certain number of permits to be issued on a semi-annual basis.

Reed says they never maxed out single-family permits with 480 available and a large amount carrying over into the next year, not really affecting single-family builds.

But if you want to add another dwelling unit to your property, only 20 permits are available each year with a large waitlist putting people on a list for July of 2024.

Five hundred multifamily units were available on a first come first serve basis when the system was put into place, with the permits going quickly to builds at Patriots Point and South Bay.

“Those are the two really that were most affected; your average person that’s coming here and is going to build a single-family home, really didn’t affect them,” Reed says.

But looking at the status of real estate in Mount Pleasant, Charleston Trident Association of Realtors Government Affairs Director Josh Dix says they find the most problems with the dwelling unit permits.

“You have this permit allocation taking place on single-family residential, but it extends beyond just single family,” Dix says. “It’s if you want to add a grandmother, in-law suite, or some duplex on a single-family lot, all of that is contained by this extension.”

Dix adds people are going to be priced out of the area with regulations like the building permit allocation system.

“You have folks in Mount Pleasant, this is an aging demographic, and we want them to be able to age in place,” he says.

“I think permit allocations and caps like what we’re seeing in Mount Pleasant is not the answer to keeping communities and residents in place, where they currently live and exist in their neighborhoods,” Dix adds.

Pricing is also affected, with single-family homes in Mount Pleasant that used to cost $500,000 are now in the millions, Dix says.

“The everyday, middle American that lives here in Charleston, they are being priced out of Mount Pleasant because of these onerous regulations,” he says.

Mount Pleasant Town Council will vote on the final approval for the permit building allocation system in January.

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The Town of Mount Pleasant is considering a ban on new slab-built single-family homes in flood zones. Also known as “slab-on-grade” or “fill-and-build” construction, the method involves placing homes directly on a concrete slab foundation, which can make those buildings vulnerable to flooding.

The practice can also create a domino effect that impacts adjacent homeowners. When trying to ensure new homes reach a certain elevation above sea level, developers often will raise a plot by importing dirt. That practice, multiplied across an entire development, can dramatically shift the hydrology of an area and worsen flooding. Developers often clear-cut trees and other plant life that help capture and control flood water — further complicating an already problematic situation.

Charleston City Council approved an essentially identical ban in April. It was a years-in-the-making policy that involved input from local environmental organizations and developers, according to the Southern Environmental Law Center, one of the ban’s key supporters.

Mount Pleasant’s ban would only bar new slab-built homes in the 100-year floodplain. Those are areas that have a 1 percent probability of flooding in any given year.

The proposed ban would go into effect July 1, six months after Charleston’s takes effect. Katherine Gerling, Mount Pleasant’s floodplain manager, said the proposed timing of the ban was intentional.

“This effective date was chosen to kind of see how the city of Charleston is going to manage their ordinance,” Gerling said at a Dec. 13 meeting of Mount Pleasant’s planning commission, where the proposal was under consideration.

Rising Waters

Planning Commission member Adam Ferrara expressed concerns that the ban could make it more difficult to build affordable housing in Mount Pleasant, which has seen rising rents and home costs as a result of a decadeslong population boom. Mount Pleasant’s population has roughly tripled since 1990.

“Just bear in mind, that does kind of go against the narrative of trying to build workforce housing that is single-family,” Ferrara said at the meeting. “That does create a cost burden to builders and to homeowners. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong, I’m just saying that is a result of what we’re doing.”

Despite those concerns, the commission passed the measure unanimously. The ban still needs approval from Mount Pleasant Town Council.

Also at the Dec. 13 meeting, planning commission members voted unanimously in support of a measure extending restrictions on new residential construction in Mount Pleasant. Town leaders enacted that measure in 2019 to curb traffic and strain on local resources in the growing suburbs.

“In response to people that said, ‘We need to have all this development because it’s the only way we’re going to keep real estate reasonable,’ — they are wrong,” commission member Kathy Smith said. “That argument only works when the supply and demand curves are in a state of equilibrium. As long as we are net positive in demand in Mount Pleasant, no matter what we do, prices will go up. You can build until your brains blow out, and the prices will go up.”

The proposed ban would extend the restrictions, which would only permit up to 600 new residences annually, until January 2029. The restrictions also still need approval from the full town council.

If you’re dreaming of a white Christmas, you’ve come to the wrong place. It’s not likely that snow will be in our forecast for the holidays, but in these days of wacky weather, you never can tell. We’ve had our share of sunny and warm Christmas days here in the Lowcountry, but there have also been a few harbingers thrown in. In 2018, just after the holidays ended – and two days after the new year was ushered in with temperatures in the 70s – the year started out with more than 5 inches of snow, the third highest amount ever recorded here. The snowfall was followed by nearly a week of below-freezing temperatures and highs reaching only into the teens. Drivers were warned to stay off the roads due to the hazardous icy conditions, but several fatalities occurred when people attempted to simply walk on the ice.

Another bizarre winter storm that many long-time locals remember is the 1989 snowstorm, which happened just three months after Hurricane Hugo wreaked havoc. That one did give us a white Christmas – and even provided a bit of Christmas magic by covering up the mounds of debris and devastation that the hurricane had left behind. Eight inches of snow fell from the evening of Dec. 22 to the 23 and stayed around through Christmas Day.

But even without snow in the mix, there have been terrible ice storms when sleet and freezing rain has chilled the Lowcountry to the core, like in January 2011 when icicles draped live oak and palm trees as well as power lines. That meant many folks lost electricity when those power lines came crashing down—which made things pretty miserable since it meant that many homes had no heat. Along the coast, nearly an inch of ice accumulated. Three years later, the Lowcountry was hit with two consecutive ice storms – one in January and an even more severe one just weeks later which brought a third of an inch of freezing rain. That one forced the authorities to close the Ravenel Bridge when giant icicles hung on the bridge’s cables and later fell onto unsuspecting vehicles.

Even though such occurrences might (thankfully) be the exception rather than the norm for our area, early European settlers in the Lowcountry found that their new home would have its trials and tribulations during the winter. A local newspaper, the South Carolina Gazette, reported on Jan. 2, 1737, that frozen ponds and creeks were covered with a layer of ice 3 inches thick.

But winter storms don’t confine themselves to January, often considered the coldest month of the year. On Feb. 12, 1899, a severe blizzard blasted most of the Southeast, including the Lowcountry. Temperatures here plummeted to 7 degrees F and 4 inches of snow blanketed our area. Another February storm occurred in 1934. Lowcountry resident Yvonne Kanapaux said her parents got married on Feb. 10 during that ice storm. She remembered being told that her father had always jokingly predicted that “it would be a cold day in hell when he got married!” And February 1973 brought a record snowfall of 7 inches. Some locals seized that opportunity to use the old Cooper River Bridge as a ski slope.

The winter of 1784 proved to be a particularly bizarre set of weather anomalies. Due to the El Nino effect ushering in unusually cold temperatures to eastern North America coupled with the effects of an atmospheric low caused by a volcanic eruption in Iceland, frigid water temperatures froze up Charleston Harbor. It was reported at the time that some daring local residents ice skated on the surface of the harbor. Hard to imagine, but fact or fiction, it does allude to an extreme weather event.

Snow and icicles adorning the Palmetto State’s namesake trees might make for an interesting holiday photo replacing the iconic images of snow that appear on commercially produced Christmas cards – scenes that Lowcountry residents have never been able to relate to anyway. But when Old Man Winter pays a visit to our area, it’s not exactly picture-perfect. So this holiday season, just be careful what you wish for!

By Mary Coy

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Mount Pleasant Town Council seems intent on proceeding with another extension of its strict limits on building permits, possibly for another five years, but it’s important to understand that the town’s restrictions on new residential construction affect more than the East Cooper area and that the town essentially is trying to solve one difficult problem (traffic congestion) by worsening another (soaring housing costs).

As The Post and Courier’s David Slade reported, the town is looking at extending its building permit caps for another five years, allowing only 600 new residences to be built each year in South Carolina’s fourth-largest municipality. Voters are increasingly concerned about the town’s rapid population growth and its effect on the local road network and, to a lesser degree, on drainage, public schools and other public infrastructure and services, so it’s understandable that the mayor and council members are eager to address those concerns.

That concern over growth is shared by many residents in neighboring municipalities, but they have taken a different approach by trying to address growth-related problems directly rather than capping construction of new apartments and homes. Their efforts remain a work in progress as no local government has solved its growth concerns or the persistent problem of rising housing costs.

But any effort to limit the supply, whether it’s capping the number of single-family home permits issued in a year or placing a moratorium on new apartment construction, as Mount Pleasant also has done for years, is bound to drive housing prices even higher, especially when combined with more defensible steps the town has taken, such as stricter zoning rules on building height and density and higher development impact fees.

The permit limits that Town Council put in place since 2019 haven’t always been needed, as hundreds of single-family home permits have gone unclaimed, which real estate professionals say is a sign that the town is largely built out and available land often carries a hefty price tag. All but 10 of the 500 multifamily permits were claimed, as were all 100 of the permits allowed for accessory dwelling units, since 2019. While the permit caps would not apply to affordable housing developments, there has been only one such development in the town during the past five years. And the likelihood for more appears slim, again due to high land costs.

Town Council should allow more permits for multifamily housing, which would help create more housing affordability, even if the units were rented at relatively higher rates. It also would work to keep traffic congestion from growing worse if those new apartment units let workers live closer to their jobs.

Some council members are skeptical that more multifamily housing would lower housing costs, but they should not be: It’s a simple matter of supply and demand. When production slowed on car manufacturing during the recent pandemic — which affected the supply of economy cars, luxury cars and everything in between — used car prices suddenly rose. When every new unit of housing is built — from luxurious mansions to efficiency apartments to everything in between — there is more supply to address demand. That doesn’t necessarily cause prices to drop, but it helps them not rise as quickly — and that’s exactly what our region really needs to do to address our worsening affordability problem.

While limiting construction may satisfy voters who already live in the town, it does nothing for those who work there but can’t afford to live there.

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