Chiropractic Care in Charleston, SC

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD) – One of the Lowcountry’s leading hospitals is set to construct a new medical campus in the heart of North Charleston.

Roper St. Francis Healthcare announced Wednesday it will invest $1 billion to build a new Roper Hospital Medical Campus at the site of the former North Charleston City Hall off Mall Drive.

The campus will occupy 27 acres near I-26 and I-526 which leaders say will make the hospital and its services easily accessible for patients who live in Berkeley, Charleston, and Dorchester counties.

Roper announced in November 2021 that it planned to move off the Charleston peninsula, a move they said would allow patients to “easily access care closer to where they live and work.”

North Charleston’s Finance Committee voted in favor of selling the former city hall building to Roper Hospital on Tuesday evening. City Council then approved the sale in a brief meeting afterward.

“It was a deal we are all proud of. The hospital is something we need. It’s going to bring thousands of jobs. They’re moving the whole campus to North Charleston and that’s a good thing,” said Mayor Pro Tem and City Councilman Jerome Heyward.

“This new medical campus will be a paradigm for providing healthcare, whether that’s complex surgeries in a hospital or an annual checkup in an outpatient office,” said Dr. Jeffrey DiLisi, president and chief executive officer of Roper St. Francis Healthcare. “We made the bold decision one year ago to move Roper Hospital, and I’m grateful to our North Charleston partners for breathing life into this dream. This new campus will ensure our ability to continue delivering the quality care that’s been the hallmark of our brand for generations.”

Roper’s leaders say the new medical campus is expected to include a full-service acute care hospital with a 24-hour Emergency Room. It will also have a medical office building where myriad outpatient and specialty care will be offered.

“We welcome Roper St. Francis Healthcare to the North Charleston hub of economic development,” said North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey. “The new Roper Hospital Medical Campus is the next exciting chapter of this healthcare system’s 167-year legacy, and I am honored that the third largest city in South Carolina can host this tremendous benefit for our citizens.”

The new campus will be the fourth location for Roper Hospital since it opened downtown in 1856. Leaders say it will be technologically and structurally upgraded to better withstand natural disasters, such as floods, hurricanes and earthquakes.

Construction is likely to take up to five years. Important services will continue to be offered on the peninsula to “remain convenient to those in need downtown.”

Percentages: FG .431, FT .692.

3-Point Goals: 4-11, .364 (Kochera 2-5, Mennenga 1-1, Skogman 1-1, Logan 0-1, Watson 0-1, Loyer 0-2).

Team Rebounds: 6. Team Turnovers: 1.

Blocked Shots: 2 (Logan, Watson).

Turnovers: 16 (Bailey 4, Loyer 4, Huffman 3, Kochera 2, Skogman 2, Mennenga).

Steals: 7 (Huffman 2, Loyer 2, Kochera, Mennenga, Watson).

Technical Fouls: None.

Percentages: FG .458, FT .917.

3-Point Goals: 12-32, .375 (Larson 5-7, Bolon 5-8, Miller 1-1, Burnham 1-5, Faye 0-1, Horton 0-1, Brzovic 0-3, Robinson 0-3, Smith 0-3).

Team Rebounds: 0. Team Turnovers: 1.

Blocked Shots: 2 (Faye, Scott).

Turnovers: 11 (Horton 3, Robinson 2, Scott 2, Bolon, Brzovic, Burnham, Smith).

Steals: 9 (Brzovic 2, Burnham 2, Faye, Horton, Larson, Robinson, Scott).

Technical Fouls: None.

A_5,017 (5,100).

A new park on Charleston’s West Side offers a hint of what the neighborhood once was.

Shiloh Park features a winding gravel path, local flora, a fountain, benches and a mural. It’s named after Shiloh African Methodist Episcopal Church, which stood at the site for over 130 years.

Like many African American churches on the peninsula, Shiloh AME’s parishioners started moving farther and farther away from the neighborhood they worshipped in once gentrification took hold.

Between 1980 and 2010, the peninsula’s black population dropped by more than half from about 30,000 to around 15,000. Simultaneously, its white population rose from 15,000 to just above 20,000.

Shiloh AME closed its original location at 172 Smith Street, where the park now stands, and is in the process of relocating to West Ashley.

At a Nov. 17 ceremony commemorating the opening of Shiloh Park, church leaders spoke fondly of the park and hope that more signage can be put up to remind people in the area of what once was.

“It gives us the opportunity to honor those who came behind us as well as those who come after us,” said the Rev. Norvel Goff Sr. He is presiding elder of the Edisto District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Rev. Eugene Collins of Shiloh AME said he’s happy that his church is still able to reach Charlestonians whether that’s though the park that serves as a reminder of its origins or its forthcoming house of worship in West Ashley.

“In the Book of Genesis ... the name Shiloh is there and it means a place of peace,” Collins said.

The park is one of three in the area that honor the West Side’s Black history. Simonton Park and DeReef Park on Morris Street both stand on significant sites. Simonton Park was once home to the Simonton School which was the first public school for African Americans in the city. DeReef Park is named after formerly enslaved brothers Joseph and Richard Edward DeReef who bought their freedom and later the land the park stands on.

Charleston native Andrea Hazel said she was excited to see something done to honor the history of the neighborhood. Her grandparents used to own the house across the street. And she could point to other buildings that once belonged to other family members, her pediatrician and a pharmacy.

“It was all family,” she said at the commemoration. “So if I didn’t come today, then I wouldn’t have been able to sleep because they would have been haunting me.”

As a water color artist, she plans to come back and paint in the park, using it as her inspiration.

Her art wont be the only art at the park. Columbia-based artist Cedric Umoja painted a mural along a brick wall in that pays homage to the past and looks to the future.

“It looks somewhat abstract but there’s actually something written on the wall,” Umoja said. “It pretty much says, ‘we are everlasting.’”

About 20 years ago, when North Charleston began adjusting reluctantly to the reality that the southern end of the former Charleston Naval Base would become a new container terminal, the city approved a plan that would balance the emerging port presence there with the desire of nearby neighborhoods to remain protected from industrial sprawl. Specifically, city planners noted that industrial uses should be welcomed on the east side of Spruill Avenue, while the future of the street’s west side should be more mixed use in nature.

City Council has an important opportunity, perhaps even an obligation, to follow through on that long-term plan when it votes Tuesday on final approval of rezoning 10 lots on or near Spruill from industrial to general business.

Mayor Keith Summey said the city’s long-range goal has been to help attract different kinds of businesses to the nearby neighborhoods of Union Heights and Chicora Cherokee, according to The Post and Courier’s Rickey Ciapha Dennis Jr. Using Spruill as a sort of zoning boundary between port uses and quieter neighborhood uses would help protect the residential qualify of life in a gradually evolving part of the city. “We did not want to end up with industrial zoning in between two neighborhoods,” Mayor Summey said.

Some owners of these 10 properties oppose the change, but there’s another point for City Council to keep in mind beyond the city’s long-term plan. The zoning change won’t disrupt current industrial operations on those properties; it only would limit any expansion of them. There’s a big difference between rezoning a property and using a more controversial process known as amortization, which aims to phase out certain preexisting enterprises. Amortization is not what’s happening here.

What’s perhaps most concerning is the memory lapse inside North Charleston’s collective planning brain when it came to this matter. When the issue first came before the city’s Planning Commission on Oct. 10, no one educated the commissioners on the history here, a history that began long before work did on the new Hugh K. Leatherman Terminal. Instead, commissioners heard mostly from property owners interested in maintaining their storage, warehousing and truck repair operations. That’s likely why the Planning Commission recommended against the rezoning.

We typically expect and often urge city councils to follow the counsel of their respective planning commissions, but we make an exception in this case for all the reasons listed above.

Spruill Avenue is an important north-south corridor that runs just east of and parallel to Rivers Avenue for about three miles, ending at East Montague Avenue near Park Circle. Spruill has a checkered past as a scene of much of the vice one can expect wherever there are thousands of sailors stationed nearby, but in the generation after the base closed down, the city has worked to reposition the thoroughfare as a more vibrant, mixed-use corridor.

The city has taken ambitious steps along these lines, including putting the street on a road diet years ago — making it far more attractive to cyclists without causing any significant traffic delays — and acquiring a more northern section from the state in order to allow for additional on-street parking to support emerging restaurants and businesses.

The current rezoning effort makes clear the city’s vision for a more dynamic urban boulevard as the avenue runs south toward North Charleston’s southern city limit. It made sense when the city first came up with the plan 15 years ago, and it still makes sense today.

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CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD) – Growing up in the Lowcountry between 1960 and 1980 meant mosquito bites, 75 degrees on Christmas Day, and spending afternoons and Saturday mornings watching our hometown hero, “Happy Raine” on television.

Lorraine “Rainey” Evans did not wear a cape, but if you watched – and we all did – you know she wore a band around her head and her heart on her sleeve.

Time stopped when Happy Raine came into our living rooms by way of television.

For two decades, she convinced kids across the Charleston area that learning and laughing could happen at the same time.

42 years after she came into our homes, Happy Raine invited us into her home and displayed her memorabilia for everyone to see.

Evans credits another Lowcountry icon, Charlie Hall — a beloved meteorologist who signed on Charleston’s CBS station in 1953 — with giving the Lowcountry one of its greatest gifts: the Happy Raine Show.

“He said ‘how would you like to do a children’s show,’” she recalled. “He said, ‘go out and get some braids and a headband and some jewelry and we’ll take a picture of you.’ I said, okay.”

Evans recalled going to Kay Drugs on King Street to get her braids and tied them onto her headband.

But how did she come up with the name?

“Well, Charlie said think of a name. I was driving my little sports car, I was going up the bridge, I go into work and I tell Charlie – he said it will never fly!”

The show did more than fly. Despite its simplicity, it soared.

“I had cartoons, visits from firemen – they would come and talk, and then the dentist with a big toothbrush.”

“At first, I didn’t have kids I said to Charlie I need kids he said ‘you’ll be sorry!’ But then I said I need kids, and these were the first children on the show.”

One person who made an appearance on the show was Evans’ daughter, Elizabeth.

“She is someone who had a celebrity who was her mother how did she deal with all the attention? The kids at school said I wish Happy Raine was my mother and she said no you don’t!”

Evans not only charmed children and Charlestonians, but Hollywood celebrities also came calling, too. Jim Nabors, Eddie Albert, Chad Everett, Leonard Nimoy, Esther Role, and Tim Conway, just to name a few.

Evans holds the unique distinction of having her celebrated children’s show on the three networks: CBS, ABC, and NBC. But Happy Raine’s reign ended because she was married to Buddy Evans who also worked at the TV station.

“They came to me and said we can’t have husbands and wives at the same channel. That was very, very hard for me. I hated to leave it,” she said. “I was sad to see the end of the show but in retrospect… I think that God always gets us ready for the next step.”

Her next step also involved making children feel better.

“That’s when I just volunteered for the Ronald McDonald House, and I helped build the Ronald McDonald House and helped build the 15th house in the nation.”

Evans’ commitment continued as she joined the staff at the Medical University of South Carolina where she helped raise money so they could build a world-class children’s hospital.

If you are wondering what Happy Raine has been up to in recent years, she has explored the world.

“I started doing some traveling. I’ve been to Africa, all over Europe. Went to Ecuador, went to the Galapagos and to the Canary Island.”

Holding her final costume as Happy Raine, she had at least a dozen costumes from that time, she reflected on all that she has seen and done, and finds comfort that she gave children a happy place to be every day.

You can hear Carolyn’s full conversation with Evans on the next episode of the ‘Let’s Talk’ podcast this Sunday at 11:00 a.m.