Magnolia

When people talk about the Neck region of Charleston, S.C., they tend to mention its scale. It’s an area the size of Manhattan that holds enormous potential for the city’s growth. But it’s hardly a clean slate. Tucked away beyond the sea of port containers and past the clumps of scrubby oak trees, you’ll find two tiny neighborhoods: Rosemont and Silver Hill. Home to roughly 150 residents (a majority of which are African-American), they’re the Achilles heel of contemporary urban planning, reminding us that all have not benefited from the process called development.

The area’s future is currently in the hands of Robert Clement III, a 5’4” real-estate developer with ambitious plans. He speaks in sound bites, preparing for an anticipated catapult into national prominence. In 2001, his firm purchased an undeveloped tract of land that had long languished as a contaminated industrial site. Where others saw abandoned land too expensive to restore, he saw enormous possibility — a place where greenways could exist alongside affordable housing, mixed-use buildings and high-density development. Construction on the project has only recently begun, but in 10 to 15 years, Clement intends for the area to become an economically diverse, New Urbanist paradise — with crowded, safe streets, green buildings and renovated brownfields.

As with any major development project, there’s distrust. But even more so in Charleston — a place both burdened and buffeted by the grip of Southern history. Here, the past means slavery, and tradition means persistent and insidious racial hierarchies. Nearly half of the African captives first entered their new world through the Port of Charleston, and much of the city’s fabled architecture was built using slave labor. The past 300 years have been a constant narrative of land wrested away from the people who worked it. And the grievances are not relegated to textbooks; recent history is laden with developments that have ignored African-American rights. Urban renewal projects such as Gaillard Auditorium’s 1968 construction were undertaken with no consultation of African-Americans. In 1972, Interstate 26 was built using eminent domain, slicing through the neighborhood of Rosemont without any community input, resulting in wounds that have yet to be attended. The question becomes, Will this new development take residents’ homes? Can they expect the familiar melodrama that has historically pitted black and white interests against each other? Or will it be different this time around?

“As a young developer in Charleston, I witnessed time and time again the African-American skepticism towards the white developer,” Clement recollects. He knew that for his Magnolia project, he would have to reach out to community leaders. He recruited the help of Reverend Jimmy Gallant, city council member for the area that includes Rosemont and Silver Hill, asking him to act as point man for the project. Gallant agreed. “In order to be successful, Robert needed to understand the fabric of the community, the intake, the hurts, the distrust of African-Americans when you talk about building a huge development,” he says. “His eyes needed to see what I see on an everyday basis.”

Clement did indeed open his eyes, and he proceeded to forge an intimate relationship with the neighborhoods that had for so long been ignored. This was something that had never been done in the acutely segregated city of Charleston. “For six months, we would meet in secret, in churches, in little old community centers,” Clement recollects. “We would tell the residents what we were doing, tell them that we would only move as fast as they would allow us.” The press was kept in the dark while property was under contract, keeping the rumor mill from grinding. “In Charleston, the gossip center of the world, this was all going down,” says Clement with satisfaction.

No matter how sensitively they tried to treat the project, age-old concerns arose. “The fear of displacement was serving as a tremendous distraction, and we couldn’t get anything done,” says Tim Keane, the former city planner who helped organize meetings with residents of Rosemont and Silver Hill. In response, Clement recruited Gallant’s help, who looked everywhere for a way to assuage the community’s fears. Finding nothing, he came up with the Stay Put Initiative, an allegedly first-of-its-kind fund that will pay any increase in property taxes brought by the development over the next 10-15 years. Once the Stay Put Fund was in place, it allowed the residents breathing room to talk about what they wanted for their neighborhood. Dreams poured out of these meetings, dreams of economic opportunities long denied to the community of minority-owned businesses; dreams of finally having access to the water nearby. Time will tell whether those dreams will shape into reality.

To accuse Magnolia development of anything [disingenuous] would only succeed in stifling discussion. But I have to wonder whether all of their promises will be delivered upon. Already, we’ve yet to see a clear indication of where the Stay Put Fund money will come from.” -Michael Brown, president, Low County Alliance for Model Communities

There is, however, still skepticism. Charleston Watch, an online news source, accuses Magnolia of being a pawn in a behemoth development scheme headed by Charleston Mayor, Joseph Riley. “As time goes on, urban neighborhoods tend to become more attractive to developers, which is understandable,” says Michael Brown, president of the Low County Alliance for Model Communities, a local nonprofit. “To accuse Magnolia development of anything [disingenuous] would only succeed in stifling discussion. But I have to wonder whether all of their promises will be delivered upon. Already, we’ve yet to see a clear indication of where the Stay Put Fund money will come from.”

“Those who are the quickest to criticize are the ones that chose not to participate in the process,” says Reverend Sidney Davis of the Greater Charleston Empowerment Corporation, who worked closely with Gallant and Clement in the project. Indeed, Clement has covered nearly all of his bases and made all public aspects of Magnolia transparent. By sponsoring a recent Civil War monument project, he received the endorsement of the local African-American Historical Alliance. Most resonant, however, was the unscripted moment in 2005 when Jimmy Gallant stood up before a city council meeting and shouted to a project naysayer, “You know, Robert Clement is almost good enough to be black!” With those words, he effectively silenced all those who would dare suggest that Clement didn’t have the neighborhood’s best interest at heart.

But Robert Clement III isn’t black, and neither are his developers. He’s a pedigreed Charlestonian who runs his firm like a gentlemen’s club, adjourning his meetings with cries of “all right boys!” He’s a local real estate legacy who confronts the tenuous issue of race by sharing feel-good anecdotes about his relationship with the members of Rosemont and Silver Hill: “I don’t shake hands with them,” he says, “I hug them.” He espouses authenticity, and has pledged that Magnolia will be a place that never shies away from the past, that doesn’t present feigned apologies. But what does authenticity mean in Charleston, South Carolina, a place whose city motto instructs residents to guard “her buildings, customs and laws.”? The question befuddles; which customs, and whose laws?

Perhaps an interpretation is best offered by Clement himself, when he states his desire to do right by the black community. “You need to treat them [African-Americans] as you would your own child,” he says, in his reassuring, trademark lilt. “If it was your child, you would never lie to them, beat them, do evil to them … No, you wouldn’t.”