The City of Charleston has purchased 899 Morrison Drive, a 2.44-acre site on the upper peninsula, and will develop it into approximately 190 mixed-use, mixed-income homes as part of Project 3500. The City closed on the property on Monday, Aug. 31, 2026, for $18 million, taking direct ownership of land it will use to deliver housing that working Charlestonians can afford.
The purchase is a concrete step toward Project 3500, the City’s plan to add a net 3,500 affordable and attainable homes across Charleston by 2032. It also puts a new approach to work. Using the recently adopted Mixed-Use/Workforce Housing district (MU-3/WH) and a process that front-loads design and entitlement, the City is making sites like this one faster and less expensive to build, and more attractive to the developers who will ultimately deliver the homes. By carrying the earliest and riskiest work itself, the City aims to lower the cost of what gets built and speed it to residents.
Plans for the site call for a mixed-use, mixed-income community designed to reflect Charleston’s historic character, where the homes built for lower-income residents are indistinguishable in quality and design from market-rate homes. The City’s approach follows a clear finding from its housing analysis: what makes affordable housing expensive is not quality, it is time and process. By carrying design and entitlement work itself, the City aims to strip out the delay and risk that drive housing costs up.
The site was not chosen at random. It emerged from the City’s evaluation of land for housing, where staff measured sites against the factors that determine whether new homes will last and serve the people who live in them. 899 Morrison Drive ranked among the strongest: it sits on high ground, largely outside the most severe flood exposure, it is close to major job centers, and it is served directly by public transit. In other words, it is buildable, resilient and connected, which is exactly what the City set out to find.
The acquisition is funded through tax increment financing (TIF) proceeds that are required to be reinvested in this neighborhood, where the two greatest concerns are affordability and flooding. The City is making proactive investments in both.
899 Morrison Drive sits within a stretch of the peninsula seeing major public and private investment, including the Lowline, the Lowcountry Rapid Transit corridor and significant drainage and stormwater improvements. The City intends for the new housing to connect into that broader work rather than stand apart from it, so that each investment strengthens the others.
“This is a real step forward towards homes that Charleston families can afford that will be designed to a standard this city can be proud of,” Mayor William Cogswell said. “We now own the land, we have the zoning in place, and we have a process set up to partner with the private sector to deliver high-quality housing at a reasonable price. I want to thank our City staff, whose careful work identified this site and built the framework that made this possible. This is the kind of effort that turns an ambitious goal into a reality.”
The City has issued requests for proposals for design, civil engineering and landscape architecture services for its Project 3500 sites and expects to award design contracts later this year. Public design review and direct engagement with residents and neighborhood organizations will continue as plans for 899 Morrison Drive take shape.
“Beautiful, lasting, affordable neighborhoods are within reach here, and this is where we start proving it,” Cogswell said. “That is the whole point of Project 3500.”