On August 6, knee-deep water accumulated beneath Interstate 26 along the main ridge of the Charleston Peninsula as Tropical Storm Debby swept through, submerging portions of the future Lowcountry Lowline.
The long-awaited linear park is planned to stretch 2.7 kilometres from Mount Pleasant Street to Marion Square, following an old railway embankment that passes under the freeway and eventually connecting to other pedestrian and bicycle path networks throughout the city.
However, a city official and project planner said the trail is not just a mobility project, but also an opportunity to prevent flooding along the corridor and in surrounding neighborhoods.
“That’s why the Lowline offers so much opportunity and is so valuable,” said Logan McVey, Mayor William Cogswell’s policy director. “Because it also gives us the opportunity to create infrastructure to move the water away from these places.”
The fact that parts of the site were underwater after the recent storm “puts an exclamation point behind the need for this project,” he said. “Not a worry, not a delay, but an exclamation point.”
Floodwaters cover the skateboard park under the Interstate 26 overpass in Charleston on Tuesday, August 6, 2024. The area borders the future Lowcountry Lowline, a planned pedestrian and bicycle path that follows an old railroad line beneath the roadway.
McVey was part of a group of city officials who recently traveled to Atlanta to get inspiration and advice from a nonprofit behind a 300-mile network of interconnected trails across Georgia on how the Holy City could approach this issue.
“This project has been on hold for so long that people aren’t sure it will ever happen,” McVey said. “We want to find a way to get it done quickly.”
But to move forward quickly, the city may have to turn down a $7 million federal grant it will receive in 2022 for the project’s planning and preparation work.
The city hoped to use the federal funds to remove toxic and contaminated soil from the site. However, after the grant was approved, the U.S. Department of Transportation informed the city that the money could not be used for “re-excavation” but only for planning purposes, extending the timeline by three to five years.
“With federal money comes federal requirements, and those federal requirements can be burdensome,” McVey said. “We believe we can meet that timeline to figure out a way on our own.”
Much of the planning has already been done by the nonprofit Friends of the Lowcountry Lowline, which developed a conceptual master plan in 2020 that divided the project into phases with a total cost of $35 million. Some of those deadlines have already passed, but construction on the public portion has not yet begun.
According to McVey, the federal grant money has not been touched. If the city does not use the grant, it will have to find other sources of revenue to fund the project. Currently, the city has about $1.3 million set aside for the project, he added.
The city purchased most of the railroad line from Norfolk Southern Corp. in 2017. A partnership with nonprofit organization Friends made the $4.6 million purchase possible.
The last half-mile of the proposed trail – from Line Street to Marion Square – is privately owned. The city has commitments from several developers and approved plans that incorporate the Lowline into these private projects.
One of those owner-developers is Evening Post Industries Inc., the former parent company of The Post and Courier. It plans to demolish the former newspaper building and build a mix of retail, office and residential space on a 3.7-acre block between King, Columbus and Line streets and the future park.
One acre of the site, now called Courier Square, was designated as public space to integrate into the Lowline, and developers provided $2 million to jumpstart the city’s park project.
Plans like the Courier Square development are what have made the Atlanta Beltline so successful, McVey said. Not only is it a park where residents can get out of their cars to traverse downtown, but he hopes it will also become a destination for shopping and dining.
Private developers must also meet the city’s stormwater disposal requirements, which include flood protection.
Floodwaters inundate the intersection of Huger and King Streets in Charleston on Tuesday, August 6, 2024. Rainfall from Tropical Storm Debby inundated the area near the future Lowcountry Lowline, a linear park.
On the public portion of the trail, the city plans to install pipes beneath the permeable and elevated trail that will connect to the city’s existing stormwater system to divert excess water away from surrounding residential areas. Below the I-26 interchange, where Newmarket Creek flows into Charleston Harbor, a “stormwater park” is planned that would capture stormwater from the highway and retain water that currently overflows existing wetlands and floods a dirt road, skate park and a nearby intersection at King and Huger streets.
“We wanted to see how the Lowline could help with our flooding problems,” said Scott Parker, a landscape architect whose firm, Design Works, helped develop the master plan years ago. Parker is a board member of Friends of the Lowline and joined city officials on the trip to Atlanta.
“When you’re dealing with stormwater, you want to retain it so it doesn’t cause flooding, and you want to treat it so it has good water quality,” Parker said. “Nature does that with wetlands. So we’re proposing to create a large wetland there, collect the water from the elevated highway, bring it here, have the wetland clean it, and then have it drain into Charleston Harbor via Newmarket Creek.”
In Atlanta, McVey, Parker and others met with representatives of the PATH Foundation, the nonprofit organization that helped build the Atlanta Beltline, which circles Georgia’s capital and also runs along old rail lines.
Although there is no timetable for when construction will begin, the city has invited the foundation to visit Charleston in the fall to discuss the best way to begin construction.
Parker said the nonprofit was “very encouraged” by the July 24 meeting in Atlanta and the administration’s push to bring the park to life.
The Friends and the City seem to favor a step-by-step approach and are curious to see the strategies Georgia’s road builders will use to tackle the project.
“Whatever phase one it is, when it’s done, it has to be so good that it really captures the imagination of the larger community,” Parker said. “So that when people actually go there, they’re excited. They want to come back.”
And they would like to see the next phase completed, he added.
