Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda

At which of these two places would like to spend an evening:

Question:  Does anyone reading this ever spend an evening at the IOP Front Beach Business District (also known as North Charleston at the Beach.)  Why not?  The answer, of course, is obvious.  There is one nice restaurant and a nice pizza place and that’s about it.

The top 2 photos are from Freshfields Village at Kiawah.  The bottom 2 photos are from the IOP front beach business district.

Here is the really sad part.  Had previous city councils had a vision and worked to implement it, we could have had something similar to Freshfield.  But all city council wanted to do was see how many parking spaces they could put on the street.  This, of course, was after they bowed to threatened lawsuits and permitted the front beach BUSINESS district to be built out with  condos instead of actual businesses.

Think for just a moment how nice it would be if there were shops and restaurants and nice pubs with outdoor seating and a large green space where all those cars are parked.  Would non-IOP residents come across the connector in the fall, winter and spring to spend an afternoon or evening there?  Of course they would.

The point is this:  Had city council been proactive instead of reactive, we could have had a really, really nice business district where residents could spend time with each other while their kids played in the greenspace.  Think about this as the election approaches.