Bohicket Road

Years ago, before Hugo and the Ryder Cup came to Charleston, the roads to Seabrook and Kiawah Islands were wonderful two lane tunnels of Live Oak and Spanish moss.

Somehow, sober people not using cells phones, and not in a hurry managed to make the trip along Bohicket (Main) Road or River Road without having a tree jump in front of them.

Kiawah and Seabrook seemed like they were a 1000 miles from Charleston at the time, far removed from the insanity of urban sprawl and continuously congested traffic.

Then progress and growth came, soon followed by the other two horsemen of the apocalypse, greed and arrogance and with them the need to destroy, make new, pave over, tame the wildlife, dam the waters, build shopping centers and the need to improve everything else at a massive cost to the taxpayers.

Looking back I can honestly say new and improved is not necessarily better.

I am certian that those who simply line their pockets with cash from the sale of what once were wonderful farms and family homesteads are the worst of mankind.

To quote Charleston developer Michael Bennett of Bennett Hofford: "This thing is so expensive. It doesn't make economic sense." Well, straight from the horse's errrrr ... mouth? Not that he was talking about John's Island only that his ego which can be translated to: "we are going to build because our ego and our bank will let us", speaks volumes.

And such is the attitude of Charleston's elite builders and developers; build it and they will come and if they don't we'll let the next generation worry about what to do with the massive empty boxes, vacant malls and strip shopping centers that line the streets that once were home to deer and fox and egrets on John's Island.

Too long the formula for developer’s success was build as big as you can and as dense as you can and then let the government take care of the infrastructure. Placing the burden for schools, roads, police and fire services on those who bought into the development and those who failed to sell out to the developers.

It is time to break the cycle!