Last spring, just after cruise ship opponents won a key victory in the state Supreme Court, the South Carolina Ports Authority and the Coastal Conservation League began secret negotiations to settle the decade-long standoff on the waterfront. The talks failed, but they did show us what the ports authority has in mind for Charleston — not that it wants you to know.The vision, in short: More and bigger cruise ships, not on Union Pier as long planned, but a few blocks north at the Columbus Street Terminal. Union Pier, 63 acres of prime waterfront property abutting the historic district, would be sold and redeveloped, the only good news in this sorry never-ending saga.The intractable conflict over cruise ships, pitting the State Ports against Charleston’s neighborhoods and the environmentalists, has focused on the future of Union Pier, just up the Cooper from the current ratty cruise ship terminal. The opponents have fought the powerful and opaque State Ports to a standstill, citing a laundry list of concerns ranging from pollution to traffic to swarms of tourists who flood the downtown and spend little.Then in the spring, in the first serious settlement talks in years (virtual rather than in person given the times we live in), State Ports offered a surprise: handsome architectural renderings of an $80 million terminal and garage on the southern flank of Columbus Street Terminal near the S.C. Aquarium. The plans included a line-item budget for the project, say those who participated. A cruise ship loomed over the waterfront in the drawings.After years of rejecting Columbus Street as a home for cruise ships, State Ports had finally come to accept the obvious: Union Pier is too valuable to waste on acres of parking. In 2017, Lowe Enterprises, the Los Angeles developer, paid $38 million for State Ports’ headquarters and 6½ acres to build a signature hotel right down the street. Do the math on 63 acres.And there was more. The State Ports delegation, headed by Chief Operating Officer Barbara Melvin, said the authority wanted to increase the size and numbers of cruise ships — by a lot.Under the current voluntary agreement with the city — a deal that can be undone with a year’s notice — State Ports agreed to limit itself to 104 cruise ship visits a year, an average of two a week. The largest ship now calling on Charleston is Carnival Cruise Line’s Sunshine, with 3,000 passengers.According to the negotiators, State Ports said it wanted to raise that to 150 visits a year and bring in larger “Vista” class vessels, which accommodate 4,000 or more passengers. That is one almost every other day, or even more often than the peninsula floods (so far). More cruise ships plus bigger cruise ships equals its own flood of new visitors and cars — a nightmare for the downtown crowd.The Coastal Conservation League, led by executive director Laura Cantrell, liked the direction of the talks, these people said. State Ports was willing to commit to using shore power and scrubbers on ships equipped to use them. The deal included improved water quality and the use of solar panels on the terminal. The environmentalists loved all this.“They were ready to sign,” said one negotiator. The Historic Charleston Foundation was supportive, too.State Ports also asked the groups to agree not to challenge the new terminal in court or before the city’s zoning or design review boards.The Charlestowne Neighborhood Association, then led by Wiley Becker, and the Preservation Society of Charleston, headed by Kris King, objected. Shifting the terminal 600 yards to the south end of Columbus Street Terminal from Union Pier hardly mitigated the livability issues enough to compensate for the added tourists and traffic the bigger and more frequent cruise ships would generate.Their counter-proposal: Move the terminal farther up the river to the north end of Columbus Terminal. After all, Carnival had parked the Sunshine there when the pandemic paralyzed the industry. Do that, and the neighborhoods would accept a moderate increase in larger ships. State Ports said no.Over the years, it has been useful for some to diminish this as a battle of “snobs vs. jobs.” But putting the terminal at Columbus Street, near the East Side, created an uncomfortable problem: shifting it away from whiter, wealthier neighborhoods that had spent years suing State Ports toward a working-class, more African American community that was never part of the lawsuit.As mitigation, the proposed settlement said State Ports would contribute $25,000 annually for 10 years to the Coastal Community Foundation for a fund directed by the Eastside Community Development Corp., the neighborhood association. City Councilman Robert Mitchell, who represents the East Side, balked at moving the terminal.“We don’t need to open up that can of worms,” he told me.The talks collapsed in June, about 2½ months after they began. State Ports, as usual, declined to discuss any of this. In a statement, it said the permit application for the new terminal is still active and that “SCPA also plans to sell the non-maritime portion of Union Pier Terminal.”Those involved in the process believe State Ports intends to move ahead on Columbus Street and add more and larger cruise ships. “The port is going to do this,” one said.But please don’t tell anyone. It’s confidential.Steve Bailey can be reached at sjbailey1060@yahoo.com.
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Source: latecruisenews.com
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