Signs of Life?

There are “no parking” signs, “no trespassing” signs, “no dumping” signs, and even county code violations signs and unsafe structure signs.
There is a huge VIDEO store sign hung above one of many empty storefronts, advertising a dead industry.
Missing are the signs of life at the Church Creek Plaza Shopping Center at the corner of Ashley River and Old Parsonage roads.
There’s also not any broken bottles, as even vagrants and bored teens seem to be avoiding the place. Timbo’s peanut trailer down the road looks more hospitable, even when it’s closed.
Walk behind the L-shaped mall, and the back walls are covered with various graffiti images, mostly poorly done. One proclaims “The Warriors,” doubtfully done by anyone old enough to have seen the original movie in a theater.
There’s an open back door, seemingly kicked in, to the old video store. The storeroom floor is covered with old televisions and bags of trash. Walk through into the showroom, and holes have been kicked through the sheetrock and the drop ceiling tiles sag from age and apparent leaks.
Mold climbs up the walls from the damp floors. Plywood sheets have turned windows along the front into walls.
One final tenant, a Chinese food counter that does delivery, remains but has announced plans to close. Right outside its front door, plastic cola crates have been place around what appears to be a tire-eating pothole.
“They were supposed to be long gone,” Morton Scholnick, head of the real estate development and property management company that owns the plaza, said of the food counter. “They are there because we have been gracious to let them be there.”
Troy, Mich.-based Scholnick said his company is “optimistic with what can be done there, but we have not decided what to do.”
Scholnick said there’s a lot of interest and opportunity with a piece of property that size along the historic scenic highway, but that it would have to be revamped completely or rebuilt.
There was a local petition to have the strip mall razed. It garnered 107 signatures. One signer, selected as the citizen of the year by the local police department, complained four months ago that it was “attracting a criminal element.”
City Councilman Aubry Alexander, a real estate agent, wondered how interested Scholnick really is in improving the center. “A couple of years ago, maybe as many as three, I called with a client interested, but got no call back.”
Asked why he didn’t return the call, Scholnick said he had no memory of it, adding, “I‘m not going to get into the politics of that area; that’s not my role in that area.”
Alexander said his client eventually found something in North Charleston.
One local living nearby said his friends have complained that their cars and trucks have been towed after using the empty Church Creek lot while shopping at an adjacent auto parts store.
Scholnick confirms he’s instituted towing. Signs dotting the site warn especially against overnight and trucker parking.
Last year, a series of complaints began to pile up over how Scholnick was maintaining his property. Those resulted in court action by county code officers. Scholnick said his company responded by taking care of the complaints.
But, to this day, there is a sign alerting passersby on Old Parsonage that the code office is keeping its eye on the strip. And there is a warning on the sign saying that if anyone removes the sign, they could be arrested.
Scholnick said his was not the only property not meeting its full potential along the highway.
The death and decay at Church Creek Plaza seems at odds with its setting.
Twenty feet out the back of the center is Church Creek, and a marsh teeming with life. Down the road is a BI-LO-anchored shopping center at the Bees Ferry Road intersection that has almost as many cars parked there as it has spaces.
Trailer parks and clapboard and vinyl clad neighborhoods that surround the center soon give way to the marshfront Battery Gaillard, where interior lots and homes are on sale for $59,000 and $342,500, respectively.
Deeply green, verdant trees bend over the scenic highway leading motorists back to the Citadel Mall and Sam Rittenberg Boulevard areas, where local officials and business leaders are working on a revitalization plan.
New commitment to the area from local officials and a revitalized national economy is breathing new life into West Ashley. But it’s no telling when signs of life will be seen at the Church Creek Plaza Shopping Center.