The story below appears in today’s Charleston Daily Mail.

By Ry Rivard
Daily Mail Capitol Reporter

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will pay for a team of consultants to redesign Slack Plaza, the city of Charleston’s maligned transit mall.

The EPA announced Charleston as one of five state capitals that are meant to benefit from the agency’s “Greening America’s Capitals” program.

The federal agency will pay for a team to come up with a plan for the plaza. It will not provide the city with money to turn blueprints into reality, something that could end up costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In announcing Slack Plaza as its choice, the EPA said, “The city itself acknowledges that the area lacks any green space, has no real sense of place and is challenged by poor signage and safety issues.”

The other sites are in Boston; Jefferson City, Mo.; Hartford, Conn..; and Little Rock, Ark. Thirty-eight of the 50 states applied.

Slack Plaza is the site of a bus station that serves thousands of riders a month and is the main crossroads for downtown foot traffic.

But it’s also “barren, hot and unattractive,” according to an application submitted to the EPA by Charleston City Manager David Molgaard and Susie Salisbury, the vice president of the Charleston Area Alliance.

They said the transit mall is a stop for more than 640 bus trips a day but the riders, many of them low-income and without a car, have said they don’t like the plaza because of its design, poor security and blight.

“In addition, a lack of green space has resulted in an area this is barren, hot and unattractive. Citizens and visitors have expressed concern with the targeted area, and the statistics show that in the past two years, over 1,000 calls to Metro Emergency 911 have been logged in the immediate area we are proposing to redesign,” the application said.

The EPA said one goal in Charleston is to “establish a common vision for Slack Plaza that could transform it into a multi-modal transportation hub and well-used town square. Adding public art, trees, and redesigning the pedestrian corridors to serve a range of users will continue Charleston’s efforts to foster a more beautiful and sustainable community.”

The agency’s help doesn’t come with any money outside the fees to be paid to the consultants, who have yet to be hired. Design consultants can be costly.

Molgaard said in an interview Wednesday that the master plan for the city’s riverfront cost $120,000.

Once the city has the design provided by the EPA-hired consultants, it would have to find the money to do the work. That could cost $1 million or more, Molgaard said. The city would likely seek grant money and donations.

Molgaard suggest problems at the plaza have been endemic since it was constructed more than 20 years ago. He said the original design was “somewhat deficient.”

“Certainly it’s tired looking after the last 20 or 25 years,” he said. “But even the design itself constituted a gauntlet that required people who were using it as a throughway to pass other users who were sitting and whiling away the time but would oftentimes cause problems for those who wanted to get from one end of the walkway to the other.”

Some of the nicer touches in the original design are useless today.

Some of the trees that were planted were cut down when they matured and became a safety hazard.

A fountain in the plaza’s center would get clogged with trash and people would bathe in it. It’s been turned off.

There have been several attempts to fix the plaza’s problems, though they have been occasionally been beset by controversy. A few years ago, for instance, the city installed “loafer rails” – otherwise known as spikes – on low walls where people had been sitting. The goals was to prevent loitering.

Last year, Molgaard said he applied for an $800,000 grant to pay for a redesign that was drawn up in-house, but the city didn’t get the grant. He said having the comprehensive plan drawn up with the EPA’s help could help the city attract money.

City officials will meet with the EPA to talk about the project in coming weeks. After that, there will be some type of bidding process to hire the consultants, he said. That process may favor bringing in out-of-state consultants.

“I don’t think there’s an intention to favor local versus outsiders, but the goal is to hire people who have significant experience with urban design and the goals of providing sustainable, green, innovative benefits,” Molgaard said.