Charleston Housing Authority abandons plans for downtown apartment complex amid rising costs
CHARLESTON — The city housing authority has abandoned redevelopment plans for one of its smallest apartment complexes downtown where demolition was supposed to start at the end of last year.
Plans called for replacing the existing 12 two-story units at 275 Huger Street with a five-story, 77-unit building, but the project has been fraught with delays and rising costs.
On March 23, the Charleston Housing Authority Board of Commissioners voted to terminate the development agreement.
“This decision follows a comprehensive review of project feasibility, escalating costs, and a broader re-evaluation of the Authority’s current and future development priorities,” according to a statement provided by Aris Ferguson, the authority’s attorney.
“The board remains committed to responsible stewardship of public resources and ensuring that all projects align with the long-term interests of the Authority and the residents it serves,” the statement said.
It is unclear what this means for the two-acre site, and the authority didn’t answer questions from The Post and Courier about its future or how much money was lost in terminating the project.
Representatives from Ward Mungo Construction and Ray Nix Development, who were co-developing the site, did not respond to inquiries by the time of publication.
In November 2024, the city pledged $3 million toward the project to help cover budget shortfalls. At the time, the project was estimated to cost $31 million. It’s unclear how much projected costs have increased since.
Currently, the more than 40-year-old brick apartment buildings sit vacant. The families who had lived there were relocated years ago, and would have had first dibs on the new units, the authority previously said.
The housing authority has agreed to partner with the city to redevelop wide swaths of the peninsula, but the Huger site was left out because its redevelopment was already too far along, Mayor William Cogswell told The Post and Courier earlier this year.
When asked if it might now be folded into the sweeping housing plan — dubbed Project 3500 because it aims to add more than 3,500 affordable units by 2032 — a city spokeswoman, Deja Knight McMillan, said it hasn’t been mentioned.
The city’s housing goal relies heavily on the authority’s holdings, which account for a quarter of the new units.
The authority board’s decision to walk away from the project that was so close to breaking ground could signal how it might handle Cogswell’s request that it to back out of an agreement with an Atlanta-based developer that plans to redevelop two of the authority’s largest properties, Meeting Street Manor and Cooper River Courts.
The housing authority hasn’t made a decision on the Integral contract for those projects despite questions and pressure from community members urging the board to uphold its commitment.
“Nothing has officially changed,” board Chairman Gregory Voigt told a concerned resident during the March 23 meeting. “If something does change, we are going to address it and explain ourselves.”
No public discussion came before the vote to terminate the Huger Street development. The decision came after an hour-long executive session, where the board also named the finalists to replace the agency’s outgoing CEO Art Milligan.
