2 weeks Ago
Not far from her lecture hall, first-year medical student Kendall Parsons can wander into greenery and shade in the midst of the Medical University of South Carolina campus and relax. "I feel like I'm a little bit more remote," she said. Nearby, pulsing rhythms from a disc jockey at Fiesta Latina drew people into a corner framed by flags from Mexico, Colombia and Costa Rica "to offer and promote diversity on the campus," said Nilsy Rapalo of Circulos de Bienestar .
"We bring them in and we dare them to dance." Along the MUSC Greenway , a mix of people, some seeking lunch or coffee at food trucks, others picking out a table to set up a laptop, others just sitting and watching people, rest in shade and dappled sunlight filtered by surrounding trees. What once was a busy and hazardous street in the Medical District, in the shadow of Roper Hospital and MUSC's hospital and clinics, has become something else entirely.
People walk down the MUSC Greenway Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024 in Charleston. It began to take shape about a decade ago, soon after Dr.
David J. Cole became president of MUSC. Back then, the campus could be best described as an "assembly of parking lots and buildings, which is not atypical for most health systems," he said.
Roper Hospital, which sits cheek by jowl with MUSC, was trying to decide on replacing its nearby medical office building and its parking lot with something else. Cole and Roper officials began discussing whether it might be possible to create greenspace instead. Rather than a new parking deck, officials shouldn't miss the opportunity, and "actually start to at least get a foothold on what could be a gathering place, now the Greenway," Cole said.
MUSC already had begun trying to beautify other areas of the campus and, after lengthy discussions with Roper, arrived at a solution: Tactical urbanism. Roper sale opens possibilities for MUSC to create more than a medical district "You take a street one day and the next day you block it off," Cole said. "You say, this space is for pedestrians and it's for people.
" That was a stretch of Doughty Street in the midst of MUSC and Roper, which at the time was extremely busy and hazardous. "This was a street, you'd get run over if you were trying to cross it," joked Sean Mummert, president of Green and Healthy Inc., the nonprofit that supports the Greenway.
"Emergency vehicles and service trucks and all kinds of cars roaring through every day," said Jacob Lindsey, a member of the nonprofit's board. Arielle Alpino with Obviouslee Marketing, volunteers Thursday, Nov. 16, 2017 to help complete the Doughty Street transformation into a greenway in Charleston's hospital district.
The street is closed to regular traffic between Erhrardt and President, but traffic still can approach from Courtenay Drive to Roper's offices and garage. Grace Beahm Alford/ Staff The road section was closed and volunteers and grounds crews painted the street green, with trees in wooden box planters added on the sides. It was dedicated with fanfare in 2017.
Along with other beautification efforts across the campus, it has truly fulfilled part of the university's mission, Cole said. "Our campus, in the best sense, should be a place of healing and education, you know, and that place of healing and education should be reflected in our environment," he said. It took an enormous amount of behind-the-scenes work with city and state officials to get the okay to close the stretch of state road, Mummert said.
That also meant working with utility companies, whose lines run under the space. Partners included the City of Charleston and the nearby Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center.
People use the outdoor space at the MUSC Greenway Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024 in Charleston. The next phase included installing a brick sidewalk, expanded seating areas and more park-like structures, including a deck built around an impressively gnarled oak tree that is raised to help protect the roots.
Off to the side is an expanded seating area tucked behind more greenery, nicknamed The Lazy River because it wraps around a planted bed in the middle, said Sharon Fowler, coordinator for the MUSC Greenway. Tables with umbrellas dot the landscape and a daily roster of food trucks line up to serve during lunch on weekdays. The food trucks pay a fee that helps cover the cost of ongoing Greenway maintenance, Fowler said.
Every Wednesday, the Lowcountry Street Grocery sets up 11 a.m. to 2 p.
m. and brings in people from the surrounding community, Fowler said. Some in the surrounding community may not be aware of what the Greenway offers, Lindsey said.
"If more people from the public knew about the food trucks and the grocery that was here, I think that people would come here more often," he said. The nonprofit Green and Healthy holds fundraisers to pay for ongoing maintenance, and the Greenway is the site for some big campus events. The Angel Tree Parade, which winds around campus to the Shawn Jenkins Children's Hospital and ends at the Greenway, will be held on Dec.
10. Smaller events, like birthday parties and even a baby shower, also are planned, Fowler said. From left, Peyton McLeod, Michael McLeod and Cat Kesler wait for their Millers All Day order on a lunch break at the MUSC Greenway Thursday, Oct.
24, 2024 in Charleston. While there are no current plans to expand the Greenway, a long-term goal is to connect it to busy Courtenay Drive, with some traffic calming on Courtenay. The Greenway also could expand in tandem with a raised pedestrian connector between certain buildings on the oft-flooded campus, Cole said.
"The connector is really about resilience and how we get separated" during flooding and storms, he said. The Greenway would be "a significant complement of that," Cole said. But $34 million to fund it was cut from the state budget this year.
New project could help MUSC visitors, employees navigate often-flooded campus Ultimately, any future expansions of the Greenway would be done in conjunction with the city, other partners, and potentially with an eye toward flood mitigation and resilience, Lindsey said. But the space is continuing to evolve, he noted. Cypress trees that once were housed in planters were moved next to a parking deck and tripled in size, now nearly screening the deck from view.
Nature seems to be taking over the space. "This is one of those things where everyone agrees" it was a good idea, Mummert said. Charleston mayor presents design changes to Ashley River pedestrian bridge — again It is becoming the heart of the campus, noted Caroline Davila, coordinator for the Center for Healthy Aging at MUSC and faculty advisor to the Alliance for Hispanic Health, which hosted Fiesta Latina.
The Alliance used to hold the event elsewhere on campus, but "this is more in the middle now," she said. People can attend the event, get free screenings and information or wander off to a corner with lunch and leave the campus behind for a while. "It's a real break," Davila said.
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