Twin Blows Befall The Port Of Charleston

A big part of the State’s focus on Charleston at the expense of developing Jasper actually traces back to the closing of the Charleston Navy base. Highly connected individuals bought up those tracts of land from the City of North Charleston back in the early 2000s with a view to develop them into a multi-use boomtown that needed an expanded business footprint by the Port to bring in the new businesses. The Great Recession put that effort on ice for about ten years, with the original developers having to fire-sell the properties; Hough Leatherman had one of our state agencies buy up the property so certain choice parcels could be used for the port expansion while the others not directly used by the state were sold off in de facto no -bid sales arrangements until some people started asking questions – but by that time all the choice pieces of property got into the hands of their favored intended buyers . Now a new group of developers have bought up all of the properties via a tightly held syndicated investor group; the acquisitions were spearheaded and facilitated by means of a very prominent Republican legislator who is now the Mayor of Charleston. His name is on the execution of practically every deed and land instrument that facilitated this deal. So he will draw a City of Charleston paycheck while profiting handsomely off of these insider deals in the City of North Charleston in a manner that will probably have him set for life. I wish some intrepid investigative journalist would sharpen their pencil and ferret all this out to see if there were any kickbacks or bribes paid – it is all far, far too cozy for their not have to been some backroom quid pro quo involved – but I speculate.