It's His Turn

Sitting in one of Citadel Mall’s biggest success stories, Sesame Burgers and Beer, City Councilman Peter Shahid says last Friday that there’s reason to celebrate at the slouching mall.
“Look across the street at that strip mall,” West Ashley’s Shahid says, pointing at the shopping center where Bed Bath and Beyond and Monster Music reside. “Someone just paid $17 million for it. I don’t know who, but it says we’ve got something of value here.”
Everywhere Shahid looks, he sees opportunity. And he was just handed a big opportunity.
Two weeks ago, Shahid chaired the first-ever meeting of the West Ashley Revitalization Commission, a 19-member collection of youth, experience, concern, and expertise.
Mayor John Tecklenburg named the first-year councilman to run with one of the most kicked around, and some say flattest, political footballs in Charleston — revitalizing West Ashley.
Former Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. had previously pledged to push projects on our side of the river. But the biggest result was several, smaller riverfront parks. Riley handed off the revitalization to former city planning director Tim Keane, who now runs Atlanta’s traffic and planning office.
Consultants were considered and hired, plans were hatched, and public meetings held. And the upshot? Not a lot.
Work was begun by City Hall staffers on creating a special tax zone in West Ashley to benefit the revitalization effort from Citadel Mall to the Sam Rittenberg Boulevard commercial corridor.
But that work didn’t begin to bear fruit until Riley and Keane were long gone. And the money from the taxes in that area won’t be spent for months.
“I sat in those meetings, I saw what was happening, and that’s what got me to run,” says Shahid. Especially galling was when the bank that owns the mall wouldn’t even return calls from Keane, who proposed tearing down the interstitial areas that link the anchor stores.
Shahid pooh-poohs City Hall’s contributions to West Ashley in the waning years and months of Riley’s tenure.
“At those parks, where can you put in a boat? Where can you swim? Rivers are some of the best things we enjoy here, and other than the Wappoo Cut, where can you put in a boat? They’re nice to have, but they didn’t go far enough,” says Shahid.
Shahid knows the public’s patience is wearing out in West Ashley, that its tired of empty promises and fruitless studies. “West Ashley deserves better,” he says.
At the commission’s first meeting, Shahid sent up a trial balloon that he would champion a multi-sport facility in West Ashley — similar to the ones he visited in other cities on trips watching his kids play travel sports — at Citadel Mall.
Friday, the councilman doubled down on his idea, saying that it could include an indoor swimming pool — key to attracting support from Councilwoman Kathleen Wilson, a long distance swimmer — and basketball courts, baseball fields, and so on.
Families already love coming to Charleston for its weather, shopping, and golf, he says, and with travel sports never having an “off” season, “there’s no reason our hotels shouldn’t always be full.”
Shahid says he will lean heavily on commission members like Jimmy Palasis, the owner of the Town and Country Inn and Suites near Interstate 526’s current terminus in West Ashley. Palasis is investing, and risking, millions on new hotel projects near where Savannah Highway slides under the inner-loop’s overpass.
While he won’t be able to control everything the commission tackles, Shahid is a very strong proponent of the I-526-completion effort. “I guess we’re going to have to get out there with flashlights and shovels and do the work ourselves,” he says, adding that commercial health of the mall will only be further enhanced by a completed inner loop.
Also, Shahid says he hopes the other commission members would welcome a more robust infrastructure, allowing West Ashleyians to find quick commutes to the burgeoning job market up I-26. To his mind, I-526 is the linking piece.
Shahid hopes that the special tax zone will raise enough money for City Hall to be able to offer attractive incentives for business and commercial redevelopment at the Citadel Mall.
Sesame co-owner Casey Glowacki, talking business on the phone, pauses to shake Shahid’s hand and chip in his two-cents worth.
Glowacki, who has his hand in six local restaurants and a juice bar with his business partner Joe Fischbein, wants the mall to go ultra-local, making it a destination for anyone wanting to sample real Charleston flavor.
And, Glowacki adds with a laugh, he’d like to see an indoor skatepark at the mall.
Going from pie-in-the-sky, to shovels in the ground will take some more time, Shahid admits. He will split up the commission into specific subcommittees in December. From there they will wait for the city to hire what is hoped to be a top-notch urban planning consultant firm.
Six months, he says, until changes will begin. But, he adds, no one is going to be idle on the commission until then. “You can bank on that,” says Shahid.