While life often slows down in the dog days of summer, we have some exciting local news to share this month about area athletes, accolades and records, improvement projects and environmental initiatives. Read on and be sure to use the links provided (click on the bold blue font) to find out more about the topics that interest you.
Let’s begin with news about some of our top area athletes. We have three Charleston natives participating in the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics! They are Ashley Hall graduate Emma Navarro in Women’s tennis, Fort Dorchester High School alumnus Jasmine Camacho-Quinn in Women’s 100 hurdles and Burke High School graduate Raven Saunders in Women’s shot put. Former College of Charleston player Canyon Berry will also be playing in Men’s 3x3 basketball. The Olympics run from July 26th to August 11th. We also have three local baseball players - all from Summerville High School - who were recently selected in professional baseball’s MLB Draft: PJ Morlando by the Miami Marlins and siblings Cole Messina by the Colorado Rockies and Carson Messina by the Toronto Blue Jays.
The accolades received and records set by Charleston keep on comin’! Perhaps front and center is our tourism industry! For the 12th year in a row, readers of Travel + Leisure have named Charleston the #1 U.S. City to visit. On top of that, tourism’s contribution to the Charleston area reached new peaks in 2023 across multiple measures including total visitors (an estimated 7.79 million), CHS airport travelers (6.15 million), tourism-related sales (average of $1,048 spent per adult, 24.7% of total area sales), tourism industry labor force (53,700), hotel performance (average occupancy of 70.7%, 4.9 million room nights sold) and economic impact (estimated total of $13.1 billion), according to the College of Charleston’s Office of Tourism Analysis. During the recent July 4th holiday period, CHS Airport welcomed a record 116,000+ travelers. With all this attention, we seem to be maintaining our southern pace of life. A recent study by WalletHub found that Charleston is the 14th least-stressed city in the US out of 180 reviewed! And for two years in a row RentCafe has named Charleston as the best city for renters. As for you dog lovers, James Island County Park was ranked 6th among the nation’s 10 best dog parks by USA Today.
While local improvement projects seem to never cease in the Charleston area, here are some that we have recently come across. Mount Pleasant has received $3.3 million in State funds, with $2.3 million approved for upcoming design and construction of the Mathis Ferry portion of Mount Pleasant Way and $1 million intended for the Shem Creek Sustainability project. The Isle of Palms plans to spend $1 million it will receive from the State budget to both renourish the beach near Breach Inlet with $10 million of free sand from the Army Corps of Engineers as well as manage the shoal near Dewees Island. Two parks in Hanahan will be enhanced (Hawks Nest Park, with pickleball courts and a stadium) or completed (Stewart Street Park, with a kayak facility, promenade and pavilion), using $15 million in municipal funds thanks to a prior referendum, $1.15 million in State funding, and other sources. Daniel Island will have a new 115-acre public park along the Cooper River, the first for the Berkeley County greenbelt preservation program, now that the County and SC Ports have finalized a $4 million land sale.
We’re also happy to report on some environmental initiatives underway in the region and we encourage you to get involved. To help collect flooding data and predict future flooding, SeaRise signs are being placed in key locations across Charleston so that the public can upload photos of high water levels witnessed around them to SC Aquarium’s Citizen Science app. New plastic bans - think extra-thick plastic bags and disposable cutlery - have also gone into effect in area municipalities. Check out the linked guide to see what’s now banned in your area. Mount Pleasant is the first municipality to partner with Dominion Energy to install EV charging stations, with 11 now at Town Hall, 12 now at Memorial Waterfront Park, and 12 more planned for Park West. Head to the City of Charleston’s Electric Vehicle Charging Stations website page for an interactive map locating available EV charging stations across the greater Charleston area and to take an EV Survey to help create a Regional EV Charging Infrastructure Plan.
