Charleston’s About to Get Taller and Techier

Tuesday night the Charleston City Council unanimously approved the City of Charleston’s request to change the height zoning on a particular area of Morrison Drive from 55 feet to 85 feet.  Why does this matter?? 1. Because that rarely happens, and 2. Because it was done so to enable the construction of new 76-foot tall buildings up to 350,000 square feet with the express purpose of housing technology company incubators via the Charleston Digital Corridor. Yes, the demand for that kind of space is high as existing incubators currently have a waiting list.  Silicon Harbor is for real folks!

Check out this video from Live 5 News for interviews, renderings and more….
Live5News.com | Charleston, SC | News, Weather, Sports

But why else is this important? Because this signals the City’s commitment to the Morrison Drive area, turning what was once a strip of car dealerships, turned industrial wasteland, into the next hot live/work center on the Peninsula.  The Flagship3 incubator will join other transformative projects in the works – the apartment building at 930 Morrison Drive, and the Half Mile North project which currently houses Blue Acorn, Edmund’s Oast Brew Pub, and SIB Development.  One Cool Blow was a trailblazer when it was built in 2008, but it has since been joined by countless local businesses and restaurants (see the red dots on my map), with more to come.

All of this is related to yet another exciting initiative called CharlestonUP – which in their words is:

“an innovative, community planning and urban redevelopment effort focused on an 865 acre area on the Upper Eastside of the Charleston peninsula.”

I highly recommend you spend some time pouring through their website, as it will give you an idea of just how tall, techie, and frankly, exciting and beautiful, this area of the Peninsula is going to be!

 

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