Charleston's $2 billion upper peninsula bet just revealed its first two parks

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Magnolia Landing is the kind of project that's easy to lose track of because it moves in phases over decades, not months. So here's a useful marker: the nearly 200-acre, $2 billion development on Charleston's upper peninsula just cleared its first parks through the city's technical review committee.

Two parks, reviewed Sept. 24, will bookend opposite ends of the site. Heriot Street Park sits at the north end near the Heriot Street Bridge, overlooking the Ashley River, and is planned around a formal garden. Oceanic Street Park anchors the south end next to Monrovia Cemetery and will include a dog park. Combined, the two cover 10.6 acres, part of a larger 26 acres of parks planned across the full development.

"Ample space for walking, gathering and seating" is how development spokesperson Maddie Short described the intent to the Post & Courier, the kind of language that signals these are meant to function as real neighborhood parks, not decorative buffers between buildings.

Worth remembering what these parks are actually bookending. Magnolia Landing, developed by Houston-based Highland Resources, broke ground in February and is slated to eventually include a seven-story commercial complex, up to 4,080 multifamily housing units and 1,080 hotel rooms. The first office building, at 115 Bachman Blvd., covers 1.2 acres on its own. Toll Brothers is set to start residential construction by spring 2027, with site groundwork wrapping by the end of this year.

The upper peninsula has spent the last few years shifting from industrial backdrop to the area developers actually want to be building in, and Magnolia Landing is the largest single bet on that shift so far. Two parks with real programming, rather than green afterthoughts, is a signal about which direction that shift is heading.

None of that happens fast. The full build-out is projected to take roughly 20 years, which makes each individual approval, like this one, more of a checkpoint than a finish line. The parks still need final sign-off before construction actually starts.

Still, for a project whose scale is easy to describe in the abstract and hard to picture on the ground, two named, located, designed parks are the first pieces of Magnolia Landing that Charlestonians will actually be able to walk into. A formal garden on the Ashley River at one end, a dog park by an old cemetery at the other, both a long way off from a $2 billion mixed-use neighborhood, but a real start.

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