To Destroy Is To Create

Two West Ashley shopping centers are getting improvements, one via its destruction.
After years of handwringing, letters, threats, and fines, demolition crews finally attacked the moribund Church Creek Plaza at the corner of Parsonage Road and Hwy. 61.
Big, heavy, daunting yellow wrecking machines, snorting and chewing, began the hard work of tearing down what had become the home for trash, graffiti, and according to neighbors, vagrants.
Dating back to the 1970s, the shopping center had been relatively robust at one time, being the home for a grocery store and several other retail spots. That ended.
Largely empty for years, save for a lone Chinese takeout restaurant, Church Creek Plaza was even struggling to succeed as a parking lot, with signs posted threatening towing for anyone who left their car there for any period of time.
The Michigan-based owner had seen the strip mall slip more and more into demolition by neglect, as weeds abounded in the back alley facing the bucolic creek, and smashed televisions littered the backroom of a former rental store.
The owner ignored requests to show the property to possible tenants, and to tear it down. The latest delay in its demolition came because of asbestos reportedly having been found in the building, requiring a special permit from the state to complete the work.
By the end of last week, the size of the plaza was evident, as the machines had stopped mid-building, with roofless stores looking like empty stalls for immense horses. Crews seemed to have separated the metal bits, perhaps for later recycling.
There are no plans for what may next go on the spot, which fronts onto Ashley River Road and has the creek smoothly flowing at its side.
Ashley Landing on Friday welcomed the opening of a new Starbucks on an outparcel that faces onto Sam Rittenberg Boulevard. It is the first of the outparcels to be rented and renovated since Charlotte-based Faison purchased what was considered the city’s first mall.
Replete with a drive-thru and contemporary styling, the stand-alone Starbucks building will soon be joined by another Starbucks, less than three miles away at the corner of Fairfield Avenue and Savannah Highway.
That one is currently a dirt patch that once was home to Andolini’s, which is relocating to a former Chinese buffet spot on Sam Ritt across from Best Buy.
West Ashley is beginning to have a near-urban concentration of Starbucks. The Fairfield Drive location is .18 miles from a Starbucks kiosk located in the Harris Teeter – a quarter of a mile if you get lost in the parking lot, according to MapQuest.
And there’s already a stand-alone Starbucks in the South Windermere Shopping Center, a little over 1.5 miles away via major roads. It’s 1.66 miles if you sneak through the neighborhood.