Charleston is offering to buy its way out of a two-decade fight over a small waterfront park on the peninsula.
City Council’s Committee on Real Estate on Oct. 26 approved submitting a $1 million offer to the Longborough Owners’ Association for part of Longborough Park, The Post and Courier reported. The city would get roughly 70% to 80% of the park, along with its crabbing dock, the newspaper reported.
“The property and the crabbing dock would be used as a public park that would be accessible to everybody,” Malena Dinwoodie, the city’s real estate management director, said, according to The Post and Courier.
Under the draft memorandum of agreement in the committee’s meeting packet, the association would survey and subdivide its parcel and convey the dock and the land around it to the city. Charleston County records list the parcel at 0.81 acre. The city would place $25,000 in escrow as earnest money, which the association could use to hire surveyors, and pay the rest at closing. The association would pay to repair the dock to accessibility and public-use standards within six months of closing, and the city would grant the association an access easement across the city’s portion.
The agreement hinges on a second dock. The association plans to seek a state permit for a private dock on the land it keeps, and the draft says its obligations depend on that permit. If no permit is issued within six months of the agreement’s effective date, the agreement ends and the earnest money goes back to the city. The payment also needs City Council’s approval.
“Obviously, waterfront land is not cheap,” Mayor William Cogswell told WCSC Live 5.
The dispute reached court in 2006, when the association sued The Beach Company, the property’s developer, The Post and Courier reported. In 2015, the city voted to acquire the park through eminent domain, and a circuit judge ruled that the association owned it. A 2019 agreement called for a public dock and a residents-only dock, the newspaper reported, but its deadlines passed without the land changing hands, according to the draft agreement.
