Cardinal Newman site, Forest Drive traffic: Waiting for a project, waiting for its impact

With Cardinal Newman School preparing to make its official exit from Forest Drive, future development on the property could affect the ever-increasing flow of traffic along the stretch between Beltline Boulevard and Trenholm Road.

While no official plans have been filed with the city of Forest Acres, city administrator Mark Williams said the city expects it could get a proposal from a Charleston-based development company interested in building a mixed-use commercial and residential development on the site.

The property, owned by the Bishop of Charleston, is up for sale, Cardinal Newman principal Jacqualine Kasprowski said.

No developers have approached Mayor Frank Brunson or City Council officially or unofficially regarding interest in the property, Brunson said.

The Beach Company real estate developers of Charleston, which developed the Canalside apartments and condominiums in downtown Columbia, said this week it could not comment on whether or not it has expressed interest in the Cardinal Newman property.

Murmurs of a Kroger store being built on the property have been nixed, Williams said, because the company decided the property was not an appropriate fit for a store.

“These are just my feelings, but I don’t think I’d want to see a kind of big-box store there,” Brunson said. “What I’d like to see would be some kind of mixed-use property that had limited commercial and limited numbers of residential.”

Whatever comes of the roughly 12-acre property stands to influence the highly traveled commercial stretch of Forest Drive, much maligned for its ill-timed traffic signals, dangerous left turns and speeding cars. Earlier this year, an 81-year-old man died after a crash in front of Trader Joe’s near the Cardinal Newman site.

“We know that we’re going to have something (at the Cardinal Newman site), and we know that whatever it is is going to produce some kind of traffic,” Brunson said. “Even one more car seems to be too much for people these days. ... People will still come out about traffic no matter what. That’s a tool of opposition for anything you want to do now as far as (development).”

Williams noted that if the Cardinal Newman property does become a commercial development, traffic may not increase significantly compared to the number of cars that already come and go from the school in a day.

The city is wrapping up a nearly year-long corridor study, with recommendations for safety and aesthetic improvements that include retiming traffic signals, burying power lines, installing medians, limiting where left turns can be made and increasing connectivity among lots off the main road.

The number of vehicles that travel Forest Drive daily, now about 27,000, is expected to reach the road’s capacity – about 30,000 – in the next eight to 15 years, a traffic data analysis found as part of the $125,000 study.

“There’s a kind of tension between supporting the local business community and just shuffling traffic through town as quickly as possible, and you want to be able to accomplish both,” Williams said. “Both are responsible goals, although they’re somewhat in competition.”

The most immediate fix that could come of the study recommendations would be retiming the traffic signals and determining whether adaptive traffic signals, which respond to real-time traffic conditions, would be appropriate in the area.

Taking on any other of the other, more intensive solutions likely wouldn’t happen for years down the road, Williams said.

This story was originally published July 12, 2015 at 9:19 PM.