Sports Bar in Mount Pleasant, SC

MOUNT PLEASANT — A local restaurateur is spreading the love for his Italian sandwiches east of the Cooper.

Downtown Charleston’s pint-sized Italian deli The Pass Panino and Provisions is opening a second location, bringing its piled-high sandwiches and antipasti platters to Mount Pleasant.

The new location will feature an expanded dining room with roughly 25 seats and a small provisions market stocked with Italian specialty items.

The Pass will be located at 976 Houston Northcutt Blvd., at the corner of Coleman Boulevard, next door to La Pizzeria.

Owner Anthony Marini expects the location to open by mid-November, serving lunch only. Evening dining will remain exclusive to the downtown location under his chef’s table-style dining experience “Italian Boy After Dark.”

Marini, a Philadelphia native who spent 35 years in fine dining and moved to Charleston during the COVID-19 pandemic, said he never imagined expanding to a second location just four years after opening his first.

The downtown deli faced a major setback when a Maserati crashed through the front windows in 2024, forcing months of closure. That incident delayed plans for a second location, he said.

“I've been very happy with the reception that we've received from Charleston, and we get a lot of customers from Mount Pleasant and I thought it was a natural place to land for a second shop,” Marini said. “We are thrilled with the amount of support that we got, certainly after the accident, and from the restaurant community and the community at large.”

The Pass in Mount Pleasant will employ six to 10 staff members and offer the same menu.

Marini plans to bring a personal touch to the space with memorabilia on the walls alongside a large display featuring the restaurant’s name.

The Mount Pleasant location occupies a space that had been outfitted for a poke bowl restaurant that never opened, giving Marini the chance to create a clean, inviting environment for lunch-goers. Patrons can look forward to enjoying their sandwiches alongside a glass of wine or beer.

The Pass joins a growing list of restaurants recently announced for that area of Mount Pleasant, which includes a new wine bar and tapas restaurant, Charlotte’s Wine Bar.

Matt Brady, economic development manager for Mount Pleasant, said, “We are thrilled to welcome the expansion of Pass Italian deli to its new Houston Northcutt location, further enriching Mount Pleasant's vibrant culinary landscape. We have no doubt they will absolutely crush it in their new spot.”

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (WCBD) – Mount Pleasant planning commission members discussed Monday the possible plans for Mount Pleasant Towne Centre.

The 2025 master plan proposal for Towne Centre hopes to bring a hotel, office space, green space, housing, and entertainment to the popular shopping destination. The developers are aiming to create a long-term strategy to minimize store vacancies.

“Bed Bath & Beyond has been vacant for over a year. I bring that up because the longer it’s vacant the harder it is to open up. Retail experience in places like Towne Centre has changed the last couple of decades,” John Darby, CEO of The Beach Company, said.

The Beach Company is an investor of Towne Centre, which was purchased by Continental Realty Corporation in 2020.

However, some of the center’s anchor tenants are pushing back as certain conditions must be met for the plan to go into effect.

“Belk is not in receivership. We’ve met all our obligations in Towne Centre, we’re financially strong, and we’re not in bankruptcy,” Janet Smith, senior vice president of strategic initiatives at Belk, said. “Second, Belk holds long-term leases for both our main store and men’s store. We have options that have allowed us to stay in operation 2043 and 2053.”

Belk’s representatives added they were disappointed and not aware of this plan. The store has remained in the popular shopping destination for 27 years.

“We contribute millions of dollars. If you look at not just what we pay in taxes and revenues to the city, and also to Towne Centre. We’re a gathering place. We’re the center of Towne Centre. So, when you look at traditions like the tree lighting – that happens right in front of our building,” said, Rob Nickel, regional vice president of Belk.

Darby, who spoke for Towne Centre, said he has concerns if this master plan does not go through as the group wants to plan ahead.

“Do you want Towne Centre to thrive? Or do you want to turn your back on it and let it fail? It could be the next Citadel Mall. You let it be long enough, it could be the next Towne Square Centre.”

Council members did not take any actions. The plan may be voted on during the full town council meeting on August 12, or it could go back to the planning commission next month.

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (WCSC) - After more than a year of construction and a $4.8 million investment, one of Mount Pleasant’s most historic and scenic public landmarks is back open.

Alhambra Hall, located on Middle Street in the heart of the Old Village, reopens to the public Tuesday morning following a complete renovation project that closed the site for over a year.

The waterfront venue has long been a centerpiece of Mount Pleasant’s community spaces.

Though it now serves primarily as a wedding and event venue, the building has a deep local history.

It was originally constructed as a ferry terminal but was moved to its current location in 1937 by Mount Pleasant residents who wanted to create a dance hall.

Over the years, it became a central gathering space and even served as the original location for the town’s Blessing of the Fleet Festival, which honors Mount Pleasant’s fishing and shrimping industries.

During a town-wide assessment of public facilities, officials determined that Alhambra Hall needed significant repairs. The decision was made to close the entire facility for the duration of the work. The project included structural upgrades, interior and exterior refurbishments as well as safety and accessibility improvements.

All of it was part of the town’s larger renovation project, which aimed to update aging infrastructure, preserve historical features and make the area more accessible for all residents and visitors.

Now, the building and its grounds offer far more than just event space.

The site features a large waterfront park with panoramic views of the Charleston Harbor, wide green lawns, walking trails and a playground located across the street.

“When people walk up… they see the detail that we went into making this building brighter, again… highlighting all the existing features that are part of it,” Frankie Pettit, the asset manager for the Town of Mount Pleasant Public Services, said. “But when you walk in, you see it’s brand-new wood floors all throughout. You come upstairs; there’s a brand-new air conditioning unit. And the biggest thing is that, if you’re in the hall, especially on a warmer day, with all of our improvements that we did to the building envelope itself, it feels better. It’s quieter.”

The updated Alhambra Hall now features new hardwood flooring throughout, refinished trim and siding, insulated energy-efficient windows, a new HVAC system, patios and porch rails, a modern fire sprinkler system and ADA-compliant improvements including expanded handicapped parking and accessible building entryways.

Across the street, the playground was entirely rebuilt with inclusivity in mind.

The town constructed it from the ground up with a smooth pour-in surface for mobility devices, ramps and handlebars at varying heights to accommodate children with disabilities. Though the playground opened ahead of schedule in June, Tuesday marks the first time the full grounds are open again for public use.

“It’s kind of opening up in phases, but [now] everything will be accessible to everyone. The playground was ahead of schedule, so we saw an opportunity to go ahead and open it up and let people start using it. But, this site, we were putting the final touches even [Tuesday] on it,” Pettit said.

He said what stands out most about Alhambra are the scenic views surrounding it.

“This site, we’re lucky that it just has so much natural beauty and great features already… the only thing we did was enhance what was already there,” Pettit said. “So, it’s going to be familiar to them, but when they start looking closer, they’re going to see these improvements.”

He added that the project is part of a larger town effort to keep public properties functional, sustainable and aligned with current standards.

“We need to do these types of projects every now and again to keep up with how we’re evolving, how we’re trying to be more efficient and lower the cost of maintenance, which helps out everyone in the long run.”

While Alhambra Hall is still primarily used for private events, members of the public are welcome to visit after the ribbon cutting at 10 a.m. Tuesday. The town plans to set official public visitation hours in the future, but for now, visitors are welcome at any time. Leashed pets are also allowed on the property.

Mount Pleasant Town Council members likely comforted themselves last week with the belief that they complied with the state's Freedom of Information Act, when, after meeting privately with town lawyers and transportation staff for almost 45 minutes, they took a public vote to urge their attorney to "proceed as discussed in executive session."

And council might well have complied with the law — but only on a technicality. And it certainly violated the public's trust.

State law allows public bodies to meet in executive session to receive legal advice under certain circumstances that are far too easy to exploit — and this might have been one of those well-exploited circumstances. State law also prohibits public bodies from taking votes in executive session; any action must be taken in open session, along with an explanation of the action. Unspecified action "as discussed in executive session" hardly meets the requirement. The technicality that makes the vote possibly legal is that depending on what the attorney was directed to do, it's not clear any vote was needed. In other words, the whole thing could have been for show, to assure voters that the council was doing something.

Although there's something offensive about a council going through such a charade, the bigger problem is that South Carolina's anemic Freedom of Information Act even allows such discussions to be held behind closed doors.

It's one thing for a government to get legal advice in private when its attorney is trying to negotiate the best deal with a property owner whose land it wants to purchase. It's quite another matter when the attorney is advising the council on how to handle what might become a legal dispute with another government over a matter of public policy.

There is nothing about public policy debates that should be held in secret. And here it's notable that while the open meetings law doesn't prohibit secret legal briefings on matters of public policy, the body that wrote that law — the Legislature — does not receive secret legal briefings on the constitutionality of legislation it's considering; it holds those briefings in public. It should require the same of other governing bodies.

What was being discussed in this case — whether to try to sabotage a long-agreed-to plan by Charleston County to widen S.C. Highway 41 at the northern end of town — is the epitome of a public policy decision the public needs to know about.

After years of difficult discussions and compromises, Charleston County has settled on a plan to widen S.C. Highway 41 from two lanes to four — but only to three lanes through the historic Phillips Community, an African American settlement area created shortly after the Civil War. To make this compromise work, the county plans to run a spur from Highway 41 through the edge of Laurel Hill County Park to link up with Park West Boulevard.

During the past month, however, Town Council has voiced concerns about the spur, to the point that it is discussing pulling the town's consent. Such a move could unravel the $245 million expansion project, sending it back to the drawing board and undermining the public's confidence in the county's ability to deliver on major road projects just as the county prepares to ask voters next year to extend a transportation sales tax for such work.

The public should know which Town Council members support this scenario and which do not — and their reasons.

The fact that a government may legally discuss something in executive session doesn't mean it must — or even that it should.

One reason to go behind closed doors is for council members to hide their positions from those who elect them. The other is to hide their legal strategy from another branch of government. The latter suggests they have no idea what the purpose of governments — and especially neighboring governments — is. Hint: It's about serving the public, which in the case of these two governments involves a huge overlap.

Mount Pleasant Mayor Will Haynie has said the town's actions are not an attempt to widen 41 to four lanes through the Phillips Community but instead are meant to encourage the county to review its traffic modeling, and perhaps determine that this new road through Laurel Hill isn't needed. But the county says without the spur, the project won't work. County Councilman Herb Sass (whose district covers part of Mount Pleasant) summed it up correctly: “The best alternative we have right now is the plan, the compromise plan. No better plan has been presented."

CHARLESTON — Belk is clapping back about changes being proposed for Mount Pleasant Towne Centre as the oldest and largest anchor tenant — and the department store operator isn’t mincing words.

The Charlotte-based retail icon's name and financial status have come up repeatedly as Continental Realty Corp. seeks to shore up future plans for the property it's owned since 2020.

The Baltimore firm and a Charleston-based investment partner are seeking approval that would allow them to include housing, office space and other diverse real estate uses, if, by chance, Belk or the nearby Palmetto Grande theater move out unexpectedly.

The hitch is that the changes require town officials to amend the original development agreement that was approved in the late 1990s.

When the plans went back before the Mount Pleasant Planning Committee on Aug. 4, representatives of Belk's management showed up in force.

And they insisted the company isn’t going anywhere.

Sarah Eck, the manager of the Mount Pleasant store, expressed frustration that the company wasn’t looped in earlier in the process. She said she was "shocked" and “equally disappointed” that plans and applications were introduced publicly without Belk’s input.

Eck also reminded officials that the retailer has operated for 27 years as a legacy tenant in East Cooper's largest retail destination and has paid “millions" in taxes and other financial contributions "to the Mount Pleasant community.”

Belk also holds long-term leases for both its main department store and its smaller nearby men's outlet, with options that allows them to remain at Towne Centre until 2043 and 2053, said Janet Smith, senior vice president of strategic initiatives.

She also sought to correct public misconceptions and online rumors that Belk is in receivership, a likely reference to the company’s quickly resolved 2021 bankruptcy and a subsequent debt restructuring last year.

“We've met all our obligations at Towne Centre,” Smith said. “We're financially strong, and we are not in bankruptcy.”

She further noted that the owners of the 510,000-square-foot shopping center don’t have the legal right to move forward with most of the new uses they've submitted to the town.

“First, in our lease, new construction is only allowed in the existing building areas or other specified permitted building areas. Building in most of the parking lots, sidewalks, drive lanes or green space is not permitted,” Smith said.

She added that the real estate agreement "limits almost all building heights to 35 feet,” while the new plans call for taller structures of about 55 feet.

Smith said the lease restrictions “were carefully negotiated” years ago to support Belk’s original decision to open a full-service store at Towne Centre. At the time, the terms were aligned with the Mount Pleasant's retail-focused zoning goals, she added.

“Belk respectfully asks that any approved plans be realistic and feasible, and the current one is not,” Smith said. “It does more harm by publicly outlining a speculative contingency that may never occur than it would if the owner simply returned to the town when redevelopment is actually needed.”

Rob Nickel, Belk's regional vice president for the South Carolina coastal region and a Mount Pleasant resident, said that adding housing to the shopping center would alter the character of the retail property.

He also dismissed oft-cited concerns about a large space that's been empty at Towne Center since Bed Bath & Beyond closed more than a year ago. The overall vacancy rate remains low and within national averages, Nickel said.

No pushing

Continental Realty attorney Jay Claypoole and the chief executive officer of The Beach Co., which disclosed that it's an investor in the property, each countered Belk’s pushback.

Claypoole said his client isn’t looking to push any tenants out. Rather, it's acting as a “responsible property owner” by planning ahead for contingencies to protect its $147 million investment.

He added that it was “sort of striking" for Belk to claim it was surprised to learn about Continental Realty's plan, "which has been working its way" through town channels for several years while generating "plenty of press along the way.”

The Beach Co. CEO John Darby said the shopping center ownership group needs to update its long-term strategy as times change, just as Mount Pleasant's government does.

“Do you want Towne Centre to thrive or do you want to turn your back on it and let it fail?” he asked.

Darby also stressed that his family-owned Charleston-based real estate firm considers the property a legacy investment. The lifelong Mount Pleasant resident added he regularly shops at Belk and was probably wearing a pair of pants he bought from the retailer.

"We welcome (Belk) to continue to do business at Towne Centre as long as they follow their lease,” Darby said. “And we intend to follow the lease as well."

He also addressed speculation that Belk is in financial distress.

"We can't control, shockingly, what goes on social media or even the public's opinion," Darby said.

Next step?

The planning committee did not make any recommendations because there weren't enough voting members present at the meeting.

The town has until December to make a decision, according to planning director Michele Reed. Otherwise, the proposals will need to be refiled, and the process will start over from scratch.

Councilman Howard Chapman said near the end of the meeting that the town "may have erred" previously by not "getting the information from Belk on where they were coming from."

He added the "best thing for all of us" would be for the retailer, the landlord and the town work together.

After the meeting, Continental Realty said in a statement from chief executive officer JM Shapiro that it never intended to single Belk out, and that the property owners "continue to monitor the operating status of each ... tenant,” with an emphasis on the large spaces that can be more challenging to backfill.

“It is in the best interests of ownership, the current tenant mix and the local community for Belk to succeed at the Towne Centre, and we will continue to uphold landlord's obligations under the lease,” Shapiro said. “Our plan is designed to attract more residents, office tenants and visitors to Towne Centre to maintain its position as a thriving and walkable destination.”