Chiropractic Care in North Charleston, SC

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCIV) — Park Circle is officially getting a makeover.

The City of North Charleston is breaking ground Wednesday on a $20 million redevelopment project in the center of the community. The work looks to transform the circle.

Previously, there used to be a community center, a butterfly garden, a green space and baseball field. But the community center was demolished just a few days ago, with the baseball field torn up as well.

City officials say those amenities were outdated and didn’t fit the needs of their citizens today, which leaders hope will change with the completion of this project.

Improvements include a new cultural arts and recreation facility twice the size of the previous building, as well as an all-inclusive baseball field, a 55,000-square-foot accessible playground, and repaving of the walking path around the circle. The playground is expected to be one of the largest on the East Coast.

TJ Rostin, the city’s park and recreation manager, says he believes this will be the first facility of its kind in the Lowcountry and that it will help build a path for more like it in the future.

“This facility is going to be magnificent,” Rostin said. “When we open this, it's going to be one of the most state-of-the-art facilities this region in the Lowcountry has seen in quite some time [and will be something] everybody can have fun with. Just like I said, [the space will] really meet the needs of every citizen we have.”

The redevelopment is expected to take anywhere from 12-16 months, and Rostin says he hopes to welcome North Charleston residents to it by fall of 2023.

While this might be the biggest project to date for the city, it is certainly not the first project leaders have put together, as officials say they are making a commitment to bring more inclusive facilities to North Charleston.

The city just unveiled a new all-inclusive park in the Oak Terrace community in April. They also committed $26 million to improvements the Danny Jones Recreational Complex, which is expected to break ground by the end of the summer.

The new playground that will be built in Park Circle will also be a testing site for external research companies to analyze its impact in the community for future projects.

Rostin says these projects and resources put towards them will help citizens utilize the facilities more, which they hope will lead to more activity in the community.

“We’re starting with the Rec. Department facilities because we know those are the facilities that most people enjoy and use on a daily basis. We're really trying to reach out to every part of our community to make sure what we have and that we're here for them, they can utilize our facilities utilize our programs in any way that they need to,” Rostin added.

North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey said he would have started remodeling the Park Circle area sooner, but the city only received ownership of the land two years ago.

Funds for the project came from taxes and revenue bonds through the tax increment financing district in the city. Funding will also go towards improvements at the Danny Jones Recreational Complex.

The groundbreaking at Park Circle will happen at around 10 a.m. on Wednesday.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of people delayed regular screenings for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

And Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church in North Charleston, which has hosted free HIV testing events every year since 2000 through its HIV/AIDS Care Team Ministry, stopped holding them after 2019.

Now, the ministry is hosting its first free confidential HIV testing event since the start of the pandemic.

Marchelle Eichelberger-Brown is a retired registered nurse and heads the ministry.

She said the focus of the event, which will be held June 25 from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. at Mount Moriah, is to get people tested. The ministry will also provide education on the newest treatment options and raise awareness to reduce stigma around the disease.

Now entering the endemic phase of COVID-19, HIV testing is beginning to ramp back up. But Eichelberger-Brown is worried that there are more positive cases than currently documented.

Palmetto Community Care, a Charleston organization that provides routine care for those living with HIV and AIDS, partnered with Mount Moriah to put on the event and has done similar events with churches across the state.

PCC, like many health care organizations across South Carolina, saw a decrease in the number of people getting tested for HIV when the pandemic hit. Officials from the organization said those numbers are climbing higher now that COVID restrictions have tampered down, but they are still not up to pre-pandemic numbers.

And with more than 50 percent of new cases still occurring in Black men and women, the team at Mount Moriah and PCC are trying to get as many people tested as possible.

The good news for people who test positive is that treatments for the virus are available. There are also medications to prevent exposure and possible infection such as PrEP, pre-exposure prophylaxis that prevents people from contracting the infection using antiretroviral medication.

In recent years, scientists found that people living with HIV or AIDS who achieve and maintain an undetectable viral load cannot sexually transmit the virus to others.

This was the case for Betty Saucer, member of Mount Moriah’s HIV/AIDS ministry who was diagnosed with AIDS in 2000. It was her first time being tested for the virus. At the time, Saucer was 56 years old.

“I was no spring chicken,” she said.

Now at 79, Saucer said she’s been living undetectable for the last 19 years and is feeling good.

Stigma around HIV and AIDS persists even though advancements in treatment options are readily available and living with the disease is much easier than it was a few decades ago. But treatments can only help once a person has been tested.

“Don’t be afraid to get the test because it can’t do anything to you but help you move forward,” Saucer said. “Without it, you’re going to die.”

Officials from PCC say the organization is also offering home tests for people who can’t make it to the event. The test will be mailed to them with instructions included.

For more information on at-home HIV testing, visit https://palmettocare.org/at-home-hiv-testing-program.

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - Chalk up another honor for the Holy City: A new study says Charleston is maintaining its position as a top choice for summer tourists.

The study, published by WalletHub, ranked Charleston in 12th place among summer travelers. Despite rising gas prices, nearly 80% of Americans are planning trips this year.

“As many states in the U.S. and many countries have dropped the vaccine requirements and relaxed the COVID-19 restrictions, travel will go ‘crazy’ this summer,” Techas Tech Asisstant Professor Jing Li said.

WalletHub’s 2022′s Best Summer Travel Destinations study says the Charleston-North Charleston metro area has a lot to attract travelers.

It ranked the factors like the number of attractions, cheapest flights, and weather to come up with the top 100 destinations. For the Charleston-North Charleston area, the study listed the following rankings, first as “best” and 50 as “average:”

16th – Local Costs

21st – Number of Attractions

37th – Duration of Cheapest Flight

12th – Cost of Three-Star Hotel

3rd – Weather

14th – Activities

37th – Safety

47th – Average Daily COVID-19 Cases in the Past Week per Capita

If you plan to travel, analysts say you should avoid the mistakes that could cost you the most

“I think the most-costly travel mistake would be not booking in advance, Florida State University Assistant Professor Tarik Dogru said. “The closer the time to travel, the more costly the airplane tickets are and the more costly the rooms become due to increased demand and reduced supply. Also, traveling during the weekends, Thursday thru Saturday, when having the flexibility to travel during the weekdays, Sunday thru Wednesday, can be costlier, again due to increased demand during the weekends.”

Dogru said booking an Airbnb for shorter stays can be as expensive as if not more than booking a hotel room. That, Dogru said, is because of cleaning fees and other fees not reflected in the price.

Orlando came in first place in the study, with Washington D.C., Tampa-St. Petersburg, Austin and Salt Lake City rounding out the top five.

South Carolina’s capital city, Columbia, came in 23rd place, while Greenville came in at 51st place.

Copyright 2022 WCSC. All rights reserved.

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD) – A longtime City of North Charleston employee is accusing North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey of inappropriate sexual advances both before and during her time working for the city.

DeLisa Reynolds and Keith Summey have known each other for decades. In the late 1990’s DeLisa and her husband at the time, along with Keith, and his wife, Deborah, owned a post office together on E. Montague Avenue in North Charleston.

“So, the four of us renovated, we did work, we ran businesses, we opened a post office,” said Reynolds. “I took that service on.”

Being self-employed, Reynolds said she was concerned about her lack of health insurance. That’s when the Summeys offered her a part-time job working as a receptionist for the City of North Charleston in 2001.

At that time, Summey had been mayor for around seven years.

“I started about 21 years ago and have been there ever since,” said Reynolds.

Throughout her time working for the city, Reynolds moved up the ranks from a part-time receptionist to a secretary a year later, then to an administrative assistant in 2006, a special events coordinator in 2016, and earlier this year she became archives and history coordinator.

Reynolds says the sexual advances by Mayor Summey started before Reynolds began working at the city. She says they began at the post office the Reynolds and Summeys owned together.

“I was at the post office working and he came in. And I went into the closet and he followed me. and that’s where it all began. It was groping. and kissing me,” said Reynolds.

She approximates the time frame of that was in the summer of 1999.

“How many times? I can’t tell you…I can’t tell you that. I don’t….it was so many.”

She said things progressed over the following years and never completely stopped and Summey would still make comments.

“Up until November, this past November it was ‘Hey, let me get a kiss.'”

Reynolds says she was never comfortable reporting the alleged harassment out of fear of retaliation.

“No. I didn’t have anyone to report that to. At that time it was a man’s world. HR was a man director that was very close with the people in the executive department. So I didn’t think I was safe enough to say that or would I lose my job for saying that to HR? I didn’t want my family to know what was going on. I didn’t want my children to know, my husband. So, I just kept it.”

Reynolds considered leaving her job but was concerned about finding the same amount of money and a job she liked as much as her city job.

Reynolds says she started noticing what she describes as an “abuse of power” by Mayor Summey and other executive staffers at the city.

“I don’t know that I’ve ever really noticed so much of it until it actually happened to me directly,” said Reynolds. “Because I was dedicated to the city and the mayor. My goal always was to make sure my job reflected on him as me doing a good job for the city. It was to make him and the city look good.”

During her time working in the executive department, Reynolds says things would stick out to her.

“You notice promotions and things going on and people that were getting more than what others weren’t getting for doing double the work. Other people were coming in because they were friends or whatever. Granted, I was a friend of the mayor as well and the family. So I felt ‘well, they’re protecting me by offering me a position.'”

She says she really started to notice the “abuse of power” when she saw other women becoming involved.

“Just by the way they would disappear together,” said Reynolds. “But I didn’t give it a whole lot of thought.”

Reynolds’ job was switched and she began working at Riverfront Park, something she did not enjoy at first because she felt isolated.

“Maybe that’s because I was starting to see things a little bit differently,” said Reynolds.

Reynolds never planned on coming forward with the allegations. She tells News 2 she planned to stop working for the city at the end of Mayor Summey’s current term which ends in 2023.

“I had already started making a 2.5-year plan. That when the mayor left, I would go too. And I would go silently. And they wouldn’t let me finish out my tenure that way.”

Last October, Reynolds’ adult son made a negative comment on social media about Elliot Summey, Mayor Summey’s son.

Reynolds believes the actions of her son had a direct impact on her, even though she told the Summey family that those were her son’s beliefs and words and did not reflect her own.

“I took a direct hit. My workload got different, I did things that I should not have had to do as a salaried employee, I put in a lot of extra hours that I should not have to do,” said Reynolds. “When they stopped talking to me back in October, things were building and building and I was being scrutinized with everything I did.”

Fast forward to the beginning of 2022, Reynolds was removed from her role of being a Special Event Coordinator at Riverfront Park and given a new role.

“They created this position so they could remove me from what I had worked so hard for.”

Reynolds’ new title is Archives and History Coordinator. A job she says she’s not qualified for nor did she want or ask for.

“They were forcing me out of my position and creating a position I technically do not have the knowledge to do.”

Then, in February 2022, Reynolds filed a formal complaint to the city detailing what she calls the abuse of power.

Reynolds says because of this recent situation, she is upset and frustrated and has changed the way she is thinking about her future.

That’s why she decided to come forward with these allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct and abuse of power.

“I started to rethink…this is not the life I want to live.”

A press release sent to News 2 by the lawyers of Reynolds says if a formal investigation is not made into the allegations, Reynolds will take legal action.

The City of North Charleston responded with the following statement on Sunday. They declined a request for comment on Monday.

“On January 14, 2022, Ms. Reynolds was notified of a lateral move to Archives and History Coordinator. This transfer did not negatively affect Ms. Reynolds’ pay or benefits with the city. Ms. Reynolds’ complaint was received shortly thereafter.

Employment History:Part-time receptionist – 2001Secretary – 2002 Administrative Assistant – 2006 Special Events Coordinator – 2016Archives and History Coordinator – 2022

Mayor Summey and the City deny the allegations raised by Ms. Reynolds’ lawyer and will not comment further on threatened or pending litigation.

City of North Charleston”

Reynolds is currently on leave from her job as part of the Family and Medical Leave Act due to medical issues. She was approved for leave on January 21st, 2022, was reevaluated on April 14th and her leave was extended until June 24th.

This is a developing story, check back for updates.

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - The TopGolf in North Charleston is expected to open at the end of this year, but there’s another development right next to it that could bring hundreds of jobs to the Lowcountry.

Crews could be seen on Friday clearing around 30 acres of land for the Uptown at Centre Pointe development, which will bring more amenities to the area between Interstates 526 and 26.

The planned development is located across the street from the North Charleston Coliseum and the Performing Arts Center, along International and Tanger Outlet Boulevards.

“We have two hotels. We have 300 apartments,” RealtyLink Charleston Principal Lenn Jewel said. “We have retail, restaurants, Waterwalk, which is long-term corporate housing and a little bit of office.”

The developer said the project will also have an 800-car parking garage. It will also an entertainment space and several more retail stores to the region.

“What we’ve created here with this dense development is a place you can tailgate before a hockey game,” Jewel said. “You can have dinner at a nice steakhouse before a Broadway show at the PAC. You can have drinks after a concert, so we’re really tied into the Coliseum Complex in North Charleston.”

Last week, the City of North Charleston rezoned 120 acres of land, so the developer could build the project with more density. Overall, it spans around 30 acres, with another 90 acres of wetlands being saved for conservation.

The city said the development is expected to create around 750 jobs.

“The larger part of the development is going to include a lot of mixed-use, which is what we like to see throughout the city is mixed-use, meaning people can live, work and play right where they live,” North Charleston spokesperson Ryan Johnson said.

The developer said the apartments and the hotel should be completed in 2024, with some of the other restaurants and stores possibly opening next year.

“You have restaurants at your feet,” Jewel said. “You have entertainment in the Coliseum at your feet. You’re close to jobs. You’re in the center of all of Charleston and the intersection of both interstates. It’s a great location.”

Copyright 2022 WCSC. All rights reserved.