AC Repair in Nexton, SC

BERKELEY COUNTY, S.C. (WCBD) – The school board in Berkeley County will discuss several new school projects during a meeting Tuesday night.

The first phase of several projects for the Berkeley County School District is a plan to construct a new elementary school at the corner of Black Tom Road and Cane Bay Boulevard.

Darlene Thigpen and her husband, Gary, purchased a home in the Nexton community when moving to the Lowcountry from New York.

“It’s a weird story,” she said. “My husband looked on Google Maps, found out there was water here, and we just decided to move here from New York – that’s how we picked Nexton.”

But there is one minor issue: their middle school-aged son attends classes at a different school from the one they expected.

“Well, they actually do need another school in this area because actually, this area is booming. We have a son who’s 13 and he goes to Sangaree which is on the other side of town,” she explained. “When we moved here, we were just assuming he was going to go to Cane Bay, but it’s overcrowded so they actually do need a school in this area.”

The overcrowding is why Berkeley County residents passed a sales tax referendum to build new schools. The district anticipates about $385 million from the one-cent tax that begins in March.

School board members are set to discuss, and possibly pass, approval for phase one of that plan during a meeting Tuesday night. The plan would build a new middle, or possibly even K-8 school at the corner of Nexton Parkway and Blueway Avenue.

A new elementary school would be built at the corner of Cane Bay Parkway and Black Tom Road. Hanahan Middle School would have a new wing built as part of that phase.

Another K-8 school and major renovations at several other schools are planned for later phases to address the growing population in the district.

Darlene and Gary say they are looking forward to the new school in Nexton.

“We’re happy to have the school in the area. The kids need a school, someplace to go. I mean look at all the homes they are building back there,” said Gary Thigpen.

The regular session of Tuesday night’s school board meeting is expected to begin around 6:30 p.m.

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At the mid-year point, South Carolina boasts three of the top-selling 50 master-planned communities in the U.S.

RCLCO Real Estate Consulting ranked Cane Bay Plantation in Berkeley County at No. 5 with 525 sales during the first six months of 2022. That’s down 9 percent from last year’s midpoint.

Nexton, also in Berkeley, came in at No. 22 with with 308 sales, down 5 percent from the first six months of last year.

Latitude Margaritaville in Hardeeville near Hilton Head Island ranked No. 39 with 234 sales, down 29 percent from last year from January through June.

The top-selling, master-planned community continues to be The Villages, between Ocala and Orlando, Fla. It had about 1,500 sales, down 25 percent from last year at the midpoint.

Almost all of the top 50 are in the southern tier of states. Texas posted the most with 20, Florida landed 15, Nevada had four, California and Arizona saw three each, and Utah and Washington state notched one each.

Total new home sales among the 50 top-selling master-planned communities declined by 18 percent in the first half of 2022 compared to the same time period last year, according to RCLCO.

“Supply chain issues and inadequate new home inventory have continued to pose problems for developers, as price increases and interest rate hikes have begun to impact traffic from potential buyers in recent months,” RCLCO said in its mid-year report.

Nationally, the average price among all new single-family homes is up 15 percent since mid-2021.

“The results of this updated mid-year report confirm that supply chain disruptions continue to have an impact on the ability of master-planned communities to meet new home demand, though climbing interest rates and price appreciation??????? have begun to have an impact on that demand, at least in the near-term,” said RCLCO principal Karl Pischke.

“However, it is important not to overreact to the slowing of sales seen over the last year, as these are still short-term trends,” he said.

“The long-term future of the for-sale housing industry, as evidenced by favorable demographic tailwinds, is strong,” Pischke said. “And the future of master-planned communities, particularly in their ability to capture an outsized share of buyer demand during uncertain or difficult economic times, provides another reason for optimism.”

An affiliate of King and Society Real Estate of Charleston bought the 1.5-acre parcel in 2019 for $1.25 million and plans to open a 38-room new lodging??????? with a restaurant and other amenities on the edge of Beresford Creek.

4427: Address on Spruill Avenue in North Charleston for a new alcohol-making business called Wind & Waves??????? Brewing.

28,200: Square footage of new Buy Buy Baby store soon to open in North Charleston. It’s the company’s second store in South Carolina.

5,703: Square footage of new sports bar The Natural coming to Johns Island, tentatively in mid-August.

+ Sold: The historic Two Meeting Street Inn changed hands earlier this month for nearly $7.7M. It’s had just two previous owners in its 131-year history.

+ The scoop: Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams plans to open a second Charleston-area venue in Mount Pleasant Towne Centre.

+ Breaking ground: Charleston kicks off work on $42 million affordable senior housing complex??????? at former Archer School.

Developers Capital Square and Method Co. plan to open the 50-room ROOST Apartment Hotel??????? by early 2024 at the site of the former Dixie Furniture Store at 529 King St. in downtown Charleston.

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A new office and commercial condominium development is coming to Summerville.

Atelier Downtown Nexton is planned by an affiliate of New Jersey-based Sharbell Development on 7.5 acres on Brighton Park Boulevard off of U.S. Highway 17A.

Located in the developing mixed-use Nexton community, the project″s campus-like setting will include multiple two-story buildings up to 18,000 square feet. Office, service and commercial space will be for sale or lease.

“The design for Atelier Downtown Nexton was inspired by a modern think-tank environment with common green spaces and connectivity to the surrounding community,” said Thomas Troy, president of Sharbell Nexton LLC.

He called the finished product a place “where work happens, creativity thrives and people want to be.”

The project is expected to break ground later this year, with the first phase completed in 2024.

Bridge Commercial will provide leasing and sale services for Atelier Downtown Nexton.

Downtown Nexton is a nearly 100-acre development between Sigma Drive and Brighton Park Boulevard. When completed, it will provide retail, dining, hospitality, residential, service, office and commercial options within walking distance of many of Nexton’s neighborhoods.

Previously announced plans include The Ames multifamily community, The Lofts mixed-use development and Daybreak Market and Fuel.

A six-story building with 134 studio-only apartments is planned on Spring Street in downtonw Charleston.

11: Number of new gates proposed in the 20-year expansion plan for Charleston International Airport.

19: Number of Chick-fil-A restaurants now serving the Charleston area after the recent opening of a new restaurant in Berkeley County.

26: Number of years women’s clothing store Ellington??????? has operated in Charleston before recently moving off the peninsula.

+ Rezoning rejected: Developers’ plans to build a 150-unit apartment project on Charleston’s upper peninsula, where a restaurant and bar operate, hit a roadblock Oct. 19 when the Planning Commission unanimously opposed the change in land use.

+ Eyes have it: A national eyewear company recently opened its second Charleston-area location and 10th in South Carolina.

Patriots Annex is a 31-acre development at Patriots Point and will include a mix of hotels, offices, shops, conference center, amphitheater, parking decks, park and a boardwalk. The Grand Patriot Hotel, in background, will serve as the centerpiece of the new multiyear project.

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While Alzheimer’s disease has traditionally been a painful subject that many have previously kept in the shadows, Lake Murray-Irmo Rotary officer Rod Funderburk is pulling out all stops to shine a light on the incurable — and highly pervasive — malady.

As the President of The Cart Fund, Funderburk is visiting with several organizations in the quest to raise monies for research that will lead to permanently thwarting Alzheimer’s. One of his most recent public appearances saw the USC graduate share his knowledge at the Rotary of Club of Summerville’s Feb. 1 session at the Nexton Hilton Garden Inn.

Funderburk invited the audience to imagine a few all-too-common scenarios that some of our parents, grandparents, friends and relatives unexpectedly encounter on a frequent basis.

“You’re in a parking lot, I don’t care what parking lot, and you are looking around. You can’t figure out where you are and you don’t remember how you got there,” he began.

“You are in a room. Somebody is talking to you and you’re studying their facial expression and studying their voice inflection — and trying to figure out who this person is.”

When introducing a third scenario, he asked listeners to picture themselves at a table filled with sumptuous food. But despite being hungry, they are paralyzed by the fact that they don’t know how to feed themselves despite the presence of kitchen utensils.

“Any of these three can be an Alzheimer’s patient. Alzheimer’s is a dreaded disease. It affects families just like it does a patient, and so it’s a cloud that hangs over our heads. And it’s a cloud we don’t want to deal with.”

While people typically equate Alzheimer’s with the deterioration of one’s memory, Funderburk depicted the condition as a series of neurological hiccups emanating from the brain.

When the million or so neurons — functioning as the connectors that move messages from the brain down to other parts of the body — misfire, he explained, those mental directives experience a lag or get diverted, resulting in the affected individual’s inability to perform mundane tasks.

“That happens millions of times a day with all kinds of decisions you try to make. If the neurons are not working, the messages get slowed down. Sometimes that’s not a big deal and sometimes that’s critical,” continued the guest speaker who also serves as a independent energy consultant.

Local Rotarians also learned that even though Alzheimer’s disease was initially identified in Frankfurt, Germany in 1906, it took about 90 years before a concerted effort was made to examine the affliction, which ranks as the sixth leading cause of death nationwide behind heart disease, accidents, COVID, stroke and chronic lower respiratory diseases.

Funderburk noted, however, that while the five diseases ahead of it all have preventions and cures, Alzheimer’s currently has neither.

The reason for this, according to Ten-Star Rotarian and benefactor, is that back in 1996 fewer than two cents for every medical research dollar was being invested in Alzheimer’s.

It wasn’t until former Rotary Club of Sumpter member Roger Ackerman — who passed in 2018 — inspired his fellow Rotarians to begin collecting change for research that extensive studies took flight.

Those donated monies, recounted Funderburk, were tucked away into research grants that are annually awarded to scientists/physicians who are plugging away in hopes of unearthing a silver bullet that can ultimately neutralize the form of dementia afflicting one in eight people 65 and older.

It was noted that Ackerman was the driving force behind creating what would be known as The CART (coins, checks, credit cards, cash for Alzheimer’s research trust) Fund, which reportedly dedicates 100 percent of monetary contributions to research.

The first grant in 1999 poured money into Dr. Allan Levey’s discovery of LR 11, a human gene mutation recognized as the greatest risk factor in predicting the late onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

What the conclusive study proved is that every Alzheimer’s patient possesses the LR 11 gene (sometimes referred to as SR 11). On the note, Funderburk clarified that not every individual with the LR 11 gene will develop symptoms of Alzheimer’s.

“We Rotarians in CART do not give money to our friends. We have a science and review panel that tells us who to pay because of their propensity of success,” he added.

Over the years, inroads have been achieved relative to doctors now using innovative methods to detect this most prevalent form of dementia, including placing anything from spinal and eye fluid under the microscope to analyzing blood samples.

But until a cure is found, certain measures only serve to delay the progress of Alzheimer’s in folks at risk of contracting the life-altering disorder. To that end, Funderburk advised adopting a diet rich in greens, fruits and fish, as well as recommending that people embark on a “vigorous” cardio exercise routine.

In the meantime, the numbers only continue to increase for the insidious disease, as there’s been a 145 percent rise in diagnosed Alzheimer’s cases in the U.S. over the past decade. Moreover, two-thirds of current Alzheimer’s patients are women.

What’s more, though the total of Alzheimer’s patients in the U.S. is about 6.5 million, The CART Fund president and spokesperson estimates that twice as many are victims of Alzheimer’s who have yet to be diagnosed.

“I’m sure you’ve read in the paper or in magazines [about] wonderful breakthroughs in the Alzheimer’s area,” concluded Funderburk. “Some of those are in trials, some of those have already failed. We’re looking forward to one of them succeeding.

“We are chasing a cure; we really are. You can be the power of one. Your contribution can put us over the hump and fund the researchers who can actually find the cure.”

If it seems like parts of Berkeley County are being invaded by new out-of-state residents, you’re only halfway wrong — or correct.

Almost half of new home buyers in Nexton and Carnes Crossroads — two of the most flocked-to master-planned communities in the Charleston region — are coming from places beyond South Carolina’s borders.

In 2021, this group represented 47 percent of purchasers in Nexton and Carnes Crossroads. The other 53 percent came from within the Palmetto State, with 70 percent of those originating from inside the Charleston area, according to data provided by the developers.

“It’s been that way from the beginning,” said Nexton spokeswoman Cassie Cataline. “Since we’ve opened, the percentage has been about the same – 50-to-60 percent of the buyers have come from South Carolina and the rest from out-of-state. I don’t know if it’s a price-point thing or what.”

The 5,000-acre Nexton property is expected to put about 7,000 homes on the ground with a population of about 17,500 at full buildout over the next decade. Over roughly the same period, the nearby 2,300-acre Carnes Crossroads development could have about 4,500 homes with more than 11,000 residents.

A common misconception among Lowcountry residents is that the majority of buyers are moving from either the Northeast corridor or Ohio.

“No, we are not being invaded by people from Ohio,” Cataline said with a chuckle.

Last year, the largest percentage of out-of-state buyers in Nexton moved in from North Carolina and Georgia, specifically from the Charlotte and Atlanta metropolitan areas.

The other top referring states were New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania as those buyers were made up primarily of retirees.

“It’s not just the home itself anymore that’s important,” said Roni Haskell, a realtor with Keller Williams, who has sold more than two dozen homes in the two mixed-use mega-developments. “Yes, the home and affordability are huge factors, but it’s also the neighborhoods now. More and more buyers are looking for the master-planned communities — what I’d call macro-communities — like Nexton and Carnes Crossroads.

“They don’t want to feel isolated; they want to feel like they are in the heart of things, but they don’t want have to go too far to get that lifestyle,” she added. “They want a community feel.”

Nearly 85 percent of buyers in Nexton were made up of either baby boomers or millennials, although there was a smaller percentage of younger buyers as well.

• 49 percent are boomers.

• 36 percent are millennials.

• 15 percent are gen-Xers.

Caroline Ayres, 29, grew up in the Hilton Head Island area and had been living in an apartment in Summerville with husband, Lee, since 2018. The couple wanted more space and went in search of a home in early 2020, finally settling on a property in Nexton’s Brighton Park.

“Everything is super convenient and anything we need is about 10 minutes away,” she said. “Summerville is close by, and we can hop on the interstate and get to downtown Charleston pretty quickly. There’s a lot to do, some great restaurants, some great walking trails, there’s green space, we have a dog park near our house, so everything we need is right here. Those factors were huge for us when we were making our decision on where to buy.”

Tucker Martinelli, 61, was stationed at the Navy base in the early 1980s and was familiar with the area. When his wife, Elizabeth, retired as a school teacher in the summer of 2020, the Charlotte coupled moved to Carnes Crossroads.

“South Carolina is a retirement-friendly state with some of its tax policies,” Martinelli said. “I knew the Summerville-Goose Creek area pretty well. We looked at some homes in the Del Webb section of Nexton, but we fell in love with Carnes Crossroads. We’re still pretty active, so we like to get out and do things. That’s very important for us.”

Ayers said the mix of families in her Brighton Park neighborhood offers a unique generational blend.

“We have young families with kids and without kids and also some retired folks,” Ayers said. “I think it’s an interesting mix because most neighborhoods are normally either young families or an older crowd. Nexton offers a little bit of everything to every generation and that gives it a real community feel.”

Nexton sold 576 homes during 2021, giving the community a total of 2,000 sales. At the end of 2021, Nexton had 1,675 occupied homes and another 250 sold and under construction, with 1,258 completed apartments and 602 under development, Cataline said.

Carnes Crossroads had 480 completed homes in 2021 with 57 under construction, 42 in the planning and approval stage and 823 apartments on the ground, said spokeswoman Julie Dombrowski of DI Development Co., the development manager for the project.

Cane Bay, another large housing development in that area of Berkeley County, did not respond to a request for comment.

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The runaway home market during the pandemic couldn’t last forever, and in January sales plummeted to their lowest level in 8 years across the four counties in the Lowcountry market.

Residential transactions fell below 1,000 for the first time since January 2019 and dipped to a level not seen since January 2015.

January is usually a slower month for home sales???????, but inflation, the higher cost of borrowing and a paucity of available housing stock contributed to the plunge in the Charleston-area housing market.

The developer trimmed an entire floor off a proposed apartment project??????? on the Charleston peninsula in a fourth attempt to win approval of the design, but the effort failed to sway the city’s Board of Architectural Review, who voted 4-1 Feb. 8 to defer a decision on conceptual approval and called for more modifications.

2: Number of new bagel shops coming to the Charleston-area from a Philadelphia-based company.

3: Number of Charleston-based sushi and sports pub locations in the Lowcountry after a new one opens on James Island by the spring.

681.5: Millions of dollars sought by Charleston and Greenville airports??????? from South Carolina lawmakers over the next four years to pay for expansions.

+ Under renovation: A new co-working site is in the works for downtown Charleston as a three-story building south of Market Street soon will be redeveloped as part of a larger project expected to start in a few months.

+ More multifamily: A 337-unit apartment development is coming to West Ashley after a $5.6 million land sale.

+ Setting a limit: Folly Beach votes to cap short-term rentals at 800 in closely watched election.

Charleston-based Perry Hospitality Group now owns Irish pub St. James Gate on the island that’s called “The Edge of America.” A new restaurant that’s familiar to many beachgoers is coming to the corner site about a block or so from the sand and surf of the Atlantic Ocean.

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