The Greater Park Circle Film Society is working on a great addition to our growing neighborhood!

Check out the article on thedigitel.com:

right here

Nonprofit film society is in works for North Charleston
By Jasiri Whipper
The Post and Courier
Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Several Park Circle residents and business owners have come together to form The Greater Park Circle Film Society.

The organization, which is seeking nonprofit status, is still in the early stages of its formation, said Richard Campbell, a Park Circle resident and owner of Park Circle Coffee.

Campbell is spearheading efforts to create the film society, designed to promote independent filmmakers both locally and abroad.

“It’s a void that needs to be filled culturally,” Campbell said. “We want to involve local filmmakers and students.”

Organizers have not yet secured a venue to show the films, but plan for it to be within the Olde North Charleston business district, Campbell said.

Park Circle Film Society events should begin in early December.

Initially, there will be two weekly showings: a Saturday afternoon matinee and another on Saturday evenings, he said.

Membership is open to anyone with an interest in media arts, Campbell said. The society is patterned after the Columbia Film Society, whose Nickelodeon Theater in Columbia was established in 1979. The Park Circle Film Society will collaborate with Nickelodeon and other film groups in the Southeast to attract directors and producers who are touring the country with their films, Campbell said.

The film society fits well with efforts under way to revitalize the city of North Charleston, Cultural Arts Department Director Marty Besancon said.

“The film industry does bring jobs and economic development and a sense of synergy and community.” Besancon added. “It really supports the businesses in the area.”

For more information, call 225-4520 or e-mail www.parkcirclecoffee.com.

Reach Jasiri Whipper at 937-5589 or jwhipper@postandcourier.com.

Copyright © 1997 - 2007 the Evening Post Publishing Co.

Another beautiful Park Circle day with a great crowd at the newly relocated Farmers Market!

What kind of summer would it be without a refreshing watermelon?

Check out this spread: Plums, Orages, Bananas, Peaches & Peppers!

Locally grown tomatoes…yummy.

See you next and every Thursday at the Park Circle Farmers Market in the center of the circle by the Felix Davis Community Center.

Noisette area wins praise
Cottage Living magazine honors neighborhood as a top 10 reuse community

By Warren Wise (Contact)
The Post and Courier
Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Tyrone Walker
The Post and Courier

The editor of Cottage Living magazine said he was so impressed with the Noisette area of North Charleston that the magazine is considering building a show house in I’On’s Mixson Avenue project in 2009.

The Post and Courier
The 10 best
Cottage Living magazine’s top 10 reuse neighborhoods:

1. Serenbe, Palmetto, Ga.

2. Baldwin’s Run, Camden, N.J.

3. Northwest Crossing, Bend, Ore.

4. Parkview, Redding, Calif.

5. Agritopia, Gilbert, Ariz.

6. Arbolera de Vida, Albuquerque, N.M.

7. Holiday, Boulder, Colo.

8. Westside, Kansas City, Mo.

9. Noisette, North Charleston.

10. Prairie Crossing, Grays- lake, Ill.

The 3,000-acre area around the old Navy base in North Charleston has been named a top 10 cottage community in the nation by Cottage Living magazine for its adaptive reuse of existing buildings and in-fill development.

“At North Charleston’s historic core … is a critical 3,000-acre zone that by the 1990s had mounting problems, including deteriorating prefab-home neighborhoods, rundown public housing projects, outdated utilities and a decommissioned Navy yard,” Cottage Living magazine said.

“Today, those 3,000 acres — dubbed Noisette, after an 18th-century botanist — are being reshaped in a massive effort that may indeed result in a model new city, where sustainability and quality of life are the top priorities,” the magazine said of the community’s No. 9 ranking.

Cottage Living’s criteria include styles of homes with unifying design elements and walkable streets, the people who live there and worked to change the area, the concepts behind the changes and the uniqueness of the homes.

“We look at quality of space rather than quantity of space,” said Lindsay Bierman, executive editor of Cottage Living. He said the magazine was so impressed that it might build a show house in 2009 in I’On’s Mixson Avenue project.

“It puts us in a category North Charleston is not accustomed to being in,” Mayor Keith Summey said. “While we are still a leading industrial and business community, what we are doing for development and redevelopment is being recognized as being a good place to live. It’s come a long way from where we have been.”

It started seven years ago when the city targeted five severely blighted areas: the old war-era houses at Century Oaks and John C. Calhoun Homes near Park Circle; the state’s largest public housing project at North Park Village between Rivers and Spruill avenues; the rundown Garco mill village north of Olde North Charleston’s then-struggling business district; and the mothballed Charleston Naval Base.

“These were cancers to the community in that they were not only detrimental to themselves in property values, but they were also affecting surrounding properties,” Summey said. “Nothing worked, so we went to radical surgery and tore them all down.”

Oak Terrace Preserve, formerly Century Oaks, is now home to the first phase of 374 new environmentally friendly homes. Mixson Avenue, formerly John C. Calhoun Homes, is starting to sprout in the initial phase of 950 housing units. Horizon Village, formerly North Park Village, has nearly finished its 484 housing units.

The old Garco plant near Olde North Charleston is scheduled to be transformed into shops, residences and offices, and the Noisette Co. plans to redevelop 350 acres of the old Navy base into water basins, businesses and thousands of housing units.

Also, Clemson University’s planned Restoration Institute around the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley promises to bring thousands of jobs to the former Navy base, further transforming the area that extends from Filbin Creek to Reynolds Avenue.

North Charleston will officially announce the magazine’s ranking at 10:30 a.m. today at City Hall at 49

Summey adds electric car to his collection
By Warren Wise (Contact)
The Post and Courier
Friday, June 20, 2008

North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey is going green.

The car enthusiast has added an electric car to his collection. It goes 25 mph and can travel 30 miles before its six batteries need recharging. He simply plugs it in overnight to recharge it.

The Tomberlin E-Merge Super Sport, which looks like a souped-up golf cart, can be driven on streets with speed limits of 35 mph or less, which means the mayor can’t drive it to City Hall from his house on Spaniel Drive near Park Circle because the speed limit on Montague Avenue is 45 mph.

“I have no plans to build a tunnel,” he said with a chuckle.

He plans to drive it on short trips to the drug store, Park Circle, East Montague, Riverfront Park and around nearby residential neighborhoods.

The car costs about $7,000 and requires everything that a regular car requires such as a license plate, insurance and driver’s license. He traded in his upgraded golf cart for $3,000 and will get a $2,500 federal tax credit next year for buying the car.

“It saves on gas, and it has no emissions,” Summey said. “I see it becoming the next thing for everyone who want to use it for short trips.”

The electric car gives the mayor seven vehicles, including the city-owned Saturn Outlook he drives for work. His wife, Debbie, has two others.

“I’m a car freak,” Summey said.

To see what kind of cars area elected and appointed leaders drive with taxpayers’ dollars, read more in tomorrow’s editions of The Post and Courier.

Noisette, North Charleston, South Carolina
City leaders and a private developer bring walkable streets, sustainable building practices, and plenty of parks to North Charleston.
By Logan Ward

photography: Brie Williams

Community Profile
Location: Eight miles north of downtown Charleston

Category: Adaptive reuse and infill

Number of homes: 5,000-plus anticipated during the next 20 years

What $300K will buy: A high-quality 1,800-square-foot cottage, with $50K left over

Closest latte: Park Circle Coffee n’ Cream

photography: Brie Williams

Civic Pride
The developer’s tagline for Noisette—”The New American City”—is a bit misleading. A city already exists here: North Charleston, which has grown from 7 to 73 square miles and to a population of more than 85,000 since it was incorporated in 1972. At North Charleston’s historic core, however, is a critical 3,000-acre zone that by the 1990s had mounting problems, including a deteriorating prefab-home neighborhood, run-down public housing projects, outdated utilities, and a decommissioned Navy Yard. Today, those 3,000 acres—dubbed Noisette, after an 18th-century botanist—are being reshaped in a massive effort that may indeed result in a model new city, where sustainability and quality of life are the top priorities.

“Our decision-making process takes into account three things: people, planet, and prosperity,” says Elias Deeb, a project manager for the Noisette Company, which created the master plan and is redeveloping the 340-acre Navy Yard. “We try to find the sweet spot where all three are represented equally.”

Cottage Connection: The Noisette Company LLC; 843/302-2100 or noisettesc.com

Madra Rua goes crazy for The Dude
The Scene

BY SVETLANA MINX
Unchecked Aggression

I had almost forgotten how fun it was to smoke and drink at a bar. Being able to light up and down a beer was just one of the highlights from Saturday night’s Big Lebowski Celebration. Up the neck in North Charleston, where smoking in restaurants is still allowed, Madra Rua Irish Pub was busting at the seams with folks for their second annual Lebowski bash. Madra Rua hosted a costume contest, offered specials on White Russians, and turned up the fun meter with Big Lebowski trivia before showing the cult classic film. Actually these people weren’t just fans, they were fanatics. They happily sipped Caucasians (The Dude’s pet name for White Russians), addressed each other by character names, admired one another’s costumes, and aggressively argued in library-quiet voices about the answers to trivia questions. It felt like I had fallen out of the sky and landed in the virtual world of Second Life, that is if the entire world was centered around the Coen Brothers’ comic creation. My idea of participation was leisurely donning a bathrobe over my galoshes as I scuttled around snapping pictures and stealing trivia answers. But these fans, they weren’t amateurs like me. Strict attention was paid to details. One guy dressed as The Jesus wore an embroidered purple bowling shirt and a purple press-on nail on his pinkie while a gal playing a girlfriend of one of the Nihilists wore a sawed-off boot, exposing a bandaged and missing pinky toe. It was some serious business. —Svetlana Minx