2 weeks Ago
The Charleston Parks Conservancy has canceled “Light the Lake,” its hugely popular, free and family-friendly Christmas party at Colonial Lake. Instead, it will compete in the Christmas tree decorating contest at Charleston Place. This isn’t a bad joke.
It’s an absolutely awful idea, though. In the eight years since Colonial Lake was revived at a cost of $5.9 million, the conservancy has built “Light the Lake” into one of the premier events of Charleston’s Christmas season.
Last year, more than 2,000 people turned out to see the Christmas lights come on at the city's iconic Colonial Lake. It was a spectacular night with more than 1,500 candles ringing the lake. Steve Bailey Over the years, “Light the Lake” has grown to include food trucks, an outdoor movie across Ashley Avenue at Moultrie Park, kids' games from fake snowball fights (whiffle balls) to a photo booth and letters to Santa.
The mayor is usually there to light the lake, and there are parties in houses all around the park. Now the conservancy has pulled the plug on the party (or “sunsetted” it in the words of the conservancy’s new boss, Darlene Heater). The reason? The rising costs, Heater told me while sitting on a bench at Colonial Lake.
"Trying to run the conservancy as a business, we are looking at everything," she said. The conservancy tried and failed to secure sponsorships for “Light the Lake,” she said. One Colonial Lake party the conservancy isn’t sunsetting is the adults-only “Palm Royale,” a fundraiser billed as “Where '60s Glamour Meets Charleston Charm!” Tickets for the Nov.
2 event were priced at $175 to $300 and sold out in a day. “Light the Lake” and “Teddy Bear Picnic” at Hampton Park in March were the conservancy’s two big free annual events. Now one is gone.
The conservancy needs to be solvent, but it isn’t a business. It’s a nonprofit that gets $250,000 a year, 10% of its budget, from the city. It’s surprising City Hall didn’t intervene.
Sadly, it gets worse. Colonial Lake, the crown jewel of Charleston parks, is a mess. The corner of Colonial Lake near Rutledge Avenue and Broad Street is one of several barren stretches in the city park.
A walk around the lake tells the story. The corner of Broad and Rutledge is barren — no grass, no flowers, no nothing. At Broad and Ashley, there’s a jungle of weeds, live oak seedlings and Mexican petunias; it bleeds into yet another barren nothing.
The once-glorious Peggy Martin roses on the palmettos on Rutledge have withered to sticks. We gardeners know that every garden is forever a work in progress, one of the joys of it all. With love and care, though, they’re supposed to get better, not worse.
Colonial Lake has gone backward in an alarming way. Within months after Colonial Lake was reopened in June 2016, it was swamped by Hurricane Matthew. Much of the park had to be replanted.
Subsequent storms haven’t helped. But the flooding alone doesn’t explain what ails Colonial Lake. The park is huge, 10 acres including the lake, and it suffers from inadequate maintenance.
Maintenance being what makes great parks. In addition, the conservancy has faced enormous turnover in both its professional staff and its critical corps of volunteers. Two years ago, its previous executive director was shown the door after only 18 months.
The conservancy has raised $160,000 and is about to embark on yet another replanting of Colonial Lake. Let’s hope it gets it right this time. Sometimes less is more.
Think more grass, fewer plants to maintain. Shockingly, more than 25 gorgeous bald cypress trees along Beaufain Street are going to be removed because they will grow to 50 feet and their roots will destroy the sidewalks. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise to the conservancy’s horticulturalists who planted them.
The conservancy is a valuable asset for Charleston, helping to oversee 26 of the city’s 120 parks. Colonial Lake and the conservancy are personal to me: My Aunt June, when she was a teenager and I was an infant, used to put me on her hip, and we would take the bus to Colonial Lake from our first-floor tenement apartment on East Bay. I’m a proud WS-1 (Weed Specialist 1st Class), having spent hundreds of hours pulling weeds in Colonial Lake.
I am a lover of both Colonial Lake and the conservancy, not a critic. But things have gone awry. “It doesn’t meet my standards,” says Heater, who is just a year into the job.
This is painfully obvious. Colonial Lake is the People’s Park, and the people should be able to celebrate it, even if they can’t afford a VIP ticket. The city, the conservancy and a few good sponsors should find a way.
Steve Bailey is a regular contributor to The Post and Courier Opinion section. He can be reached at [email protected] .
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