North Charleston City Council on Thursday approved a development contract for Battery Park, a 70-acre waterfront site on the north end of the former Charleston Naval Base, The Post and Courier reported.
The vote was 7-3, the same margin as an initial vote Dec. 4. Council members Jerome Heyward, Rhonda Jerome and Mike Brown voted no.
“I’m not against the project, I’m against the process,” Heyward said.
The developers are Jamestown L.P., WECCO and Weaver Capital Joint Venture, the team already behind the Navy Yard Charleston project on the old base. The contract covers both plans, about 130 acres in all, the newspaper reported.
Under the deal, the city will sell the developers more than 37 acres for $10,478,000, a price that assigns no value to roughly 10 acres set aside for roads, parks and other infrastructure. The city also granted an option on 21 acres of Defense Department property it expects to own, at $400,000 an acre, or $8.4 million.
The agreement runs five years with two five-year renewal options. The city can buy back land if the developers miss their milestones.
The developers’ schedule calls for 2,958 homes and 891,800 square feet of commercial space at Battery Park over nine years, assuming the city gets the remaining federal land, the newspaper reported. The contract requires that 17% of the residential units be affordable to people earning no more than 120% of the area’s median income, and that at least 15% of contractors during construction be minority contractors.
The developers estimate the Battery Park and Navy Yard Charleston plans together could create 17,300 construction jobs, 11,900 permanent jobs and $57.4 million in annual tax revenue.
“I think what it does is it gives us an opportunity to create the first, true downtown environment that we’ve ever had,” Mayor Keith Summey told The Post and Courier before the vote.
The vote came at council’s last scheduled meeting before a new mayor and five new council members take office. Summey, first elected in 1994, is finishing his final term.
The city built an $8 million pedestrian bridge linking the site to Riverfront Park in anticipation of the development, the newspaper reported. A federal Opportunity Zone designation will provide financial incentives, and the city’s tax increment financing district will help pay for infrastructure such as roads.
