Greetings from MeadWestvacoville
December 11, 2009 by Al Harris
MeadWestvaco isn’t just making paper and plastic products anymore. Now they are getting into real estate development.
The Richmond-based company announced plans to transform a 78,600-acre tract of timberland outside of Charleston, S.C., into a master-planned community.
From the Charleston Regional Business Journal:
“These are places where people can live, work, learn and shop in close proximity,” said Ken Seeger, president of MeadWestvaco’s Community Development and Land Management Group.
The blueprint calls for preservation of 75% of the property as largely undeveloped green space that could be used for farming, hiking, biking, hunting, fishing and sparse development. The other quarter of the property is slated for a cluster of small towns separated by green space and intertwined with walking trails and parks.
Those communities will include educational and work opportunities and a range of housing types, Seeger said. The project is slated for two industrial parks, one each in Dorchester and Charleston counties.
The build out could take up to 50 years, according to the article.
The proposed community has a web site with a little bit more information:
For almost 300 years, East Edisto has been used for farming of one kind or another. Under MWV’s ownership, we’ve grown pine trees to supply local mills.
Recent improvements in technology now allow us to grow more wood on fewer acres. So, we’ve been looking at East Edisto in a new way: as an opportunity to be part of a planning process that helps manage the Charleston region’s growth, while creating new sustainable communities that remain true to the beauty and character of the Lowcountry.
This plan is excessively idealistic and has been largely influenced by environmental interests at the expense of everyone else. These same groups have been harping for years about “sprawl”, but a look at this plan shows it to be the ultimate sprawl with small clusters of development isolated from each other and the main urban centers. This will require residents to continually travel for work, shopping and social gatherings. The assertion folks living in these little burgs will work and shop only in the limited commercial areas they provide is pie-in-the-sky thinking. The development/open space ratio should be 75/25, which would still be way more than most developments today.
Charleston