Charleston is being asked for 300 more hotel rooms at 411 Meeting Street, and the housing that came with the deal now sits on a different lot.
The Courtyards, an apartment complex that opened in 1984 with affordable rent, came down in October 2017. By the end, a studio ran $980 a month. The plan for the block paired a 300-room hotel with 159 new apartments.
The apartments were the city's condition for the hotel. The Board of Zoning Appeals cut the number to 100 in 2022. In August 2025, an affiliate of Bennett Hospitality asked to drop the requirement entirely, arguing that more than 2,000 residential units had gone up nearby. The board refused. In November, City Council let the developer put all 100 units on Mary Street instead, on the former Hughes Lumber site, bought in 2022 for $12.25 million. The Post & Courier editorial board noted that a charred historic structure still stands there.
On Oct. 14 the hotel went back to the Board of Architectural Review with a smaller design and no housing in it. It's nine stories, with a conference wing and a spa on site. Final approval came in February 2023.
That is a big ask on a peninsula where Historic Charleston Foundation says pending applications could push the room count to 8,500. A project this size should replace what it tore down, unit for unit. The requirement has already fallen from 159 to 100, and nothing I found says those units will be priced anywhere near what the Courtyards charged.
The city hasn't posted the board's Oct. 14 decision yet.
Sources: the Post & Courier (Oct. 10, 2026 report on the redesign), the Post & Courier (Dec. 12, 2025 editorial on the council vote), the Post & Courier (2017 demolition and original plan) and WCIV ABC News 4 (Nov. 20, 2025, Historic Charleston Foundation on room counts)
