Commercial Electrician in Nexton, SC

A new homebuilder and land developer has been added to builder program at the Nexton community in Summerville.

With plans to develop a new collection of townhomes in Nexton, this addition marks Brookfield Residential’s first project in South Carolina, according to a news release.

Brookfield Residential is an internationally backed organization with more than 65 years of homebuilding experience, the release stated. Operations extend across the United States with major developments in more than 15 markets and over 65 active housing communities.

The homebuilder is an affiliate of Brookfield Properties, which currently has a sizable footprint in the Carolinas including 3,500 active employees and $4.8 billion assets under management, the release stated. Assets include logistics, hospitality and retail operations, notably Columbiana Centre, a high-quality retail mall.

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“We are delighted to join the Nexton community and add to the diverse array of housing options” said Gregg Hughes, senior vice president, Housing and Operations for Brookfield Residential, in the release. “Nexton has a vibrant, charming personality and we’re hoping these new townhomes reflect the community and serve the needs of today’s homebuyer.”

Located in Nexton’s Midtown neighborhood, Brookfield Residential’s entry-level townhome collection will feature 1,600 square feet on two finished levels of living space with prices starting in the mid-$300,000s, the release stated. The townhomes will offer three-bedroom layouts with an option for two primary suites. Interiors will include open floor plans and designer kitchens with stainless steel appliances and granite countertops.

Pre-sales will begin mid-summer with a model residence opening later this year.

Midtown also includes the Midtown Club, featuring a resort-style pool, fitness center and indoor and outdoor flex spaces available to members of the Nexton Residential Association, the release stated. The neighborhood also will feature food trucks, movie nights and social events.

Nexton, which got its start in 2013, is a lifestyle-driven destination that blends live, work and play by offering conveniences such as state-of-the-art schools, modern infrastructure, 20 miles of trails and 2,000 acres of green space, the release stated. Nexton has currently sold over 2,600 homes.

With the addition of Brookfield Residential, Nexton’s builder program now features 10 builders that also includes Ashton Woods, Centex, David Weekley, Del Webb, Homes by Dickerson, New Leaf, Pulte Homes, Saussy Burbank and True Homes, according to the release.

Sharbell Nexton LLC says the first two retail tenants have committed to the ground-floor retail space in Downtown Nexton. A nail salon called iNails, with nearly 30 years of beauty service expertise and 10 Lowcountry locations, and Revive Health Studio, a health and wellness spa offering sauna, lymphatic massage, tune and red-light therapeutic treatments as well as therapeutic products for purchase, are the first tenants in phase one.

“We are excited to begin the leasing process in Downtown Nexton and welcome iNails and Revive as our first tenants,” Sharbell President Thomas Troy said in a news release. “Service-oriented providers, like iNails and Revive Health Studio, and a potential barbershop with which we are currently negotiating are the types of tenants we envisioned filling portions of the retail spaces in Downtown Nexton as they serve important community and regional needs. In addition to these service-based tenants, we are currently working with a high-end spirits store with onsite consumption and a Mediterranean bar and restaurant concept.”

Downtown Nexton retail is located on the ground floor of the Lofts Downtown Nexton, a collection of luxury rental apartments. INails will occupy 1,700 square feet while Revive Health Studio will occupy 1,775 square feet in the Lofts’ first completed building, with an anticipated opening in the first quarter of 2024. Upon completion of future phases in late 2024, the Lofts Downtown Nexton will include residential amenities such as a clubhouse, resort-style pool with tanning shelves, firepit with seating areas, private cabanas, outdoor café tables and bar area and a dog park.

Situated on nearly 100 acres between Sigma Drive and Brighton Park Boulevard, Downtown Nexton will provide retail, dining, hospitality, residential, service, office and commercial options within walking distance of many of Nexton’s neighborhoods. In addition to the Lofts, previously announced plans include The Ames multifamily community, AC Hotel by Marriott, Atelier office campus and Daybreak Market and Fuel.

Bridge Commercial provides exclusive leasing and sale services at the Lofts Downtown Nexton.

Other recent commercial real estate transactions include:

Trey Lucy, Blair Belk and Tim Metzler of Belk Lucy represented the landlord in the lease of 1,721 square feet of retail space in Suite A at 145 King St. in Charleston to E. Blackhurst. Lindsey Halter of Carolina Retail Experts represented the tenant.

Trey Lucy, Tim Metzler and Blair Belk of Belk Lucy represented the landlord in the lease of 1,454 square feet of retail space in Suite B at 145 King St. in Charleston to Yves Delorme. Edward Robinson of The Beach Co. represented the tenant.

Mark Erickson and Jarred Watts of Colliers represented M2 Land LLC in the sale of a 15,000-square-foot industrial building at 3240 Industry Drive in North Charleston to Sunny Enterprises LLC for $3,200,000.

Markus Kastenholz, Remington Beatty and Alia Bostaji of Colliers represented Pearce Development in the sale of a 10,000-square-foot building at 36 N. Market St. in Charleston and 0.5 acres of land at 235 E. Bay St. in Charleston to Marriott Ownership Resorts for $16,450,000.

Hot Properties highlights recently sold or leased commercial properties in the Charleston region. Send in your transactions using our online form.

The New Covenant Church of God has experienced quite a few changes since its inception in 1993 that saw a group of eight “passionate” worshipers expand and grow throughout The Lowcountry, says church administrative assistant Sheila Black.

After relocating from Hanahan, the Pentecostal house of worship moved to Ashley Phosphate Road in 2007, while maintaining a steady presence in Mount Pleasant as well.

But Pastor Marc Campbell and company recently sold the North Charleston property in October 2021, with designs on building a state-of-the-art facility at 1667 Rose Drive in the Nexton mixed-use community in Downtown Summerville.

With shovels hitting the dirt this past Sunday, the projected completion date for construction is about 18 months away in the summer of 2024.

New Covenant’s congregation is presently meeting for 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. services at the old Summerville Church of God at 304 Pine Street during the Nexton construction phase. Additionally, the church also has several sub groups that meet separately on Wednesday night, including a a woman’s group, along with boys and girls clusters.

Food distribution services are also part of the mix, as New Covenant collaborates with a North Charleston ministry to donate food to the needy every Thursday.

“Our church will be constructed with future plans to include an outdoor amphitheater and athletic fields,” detailed Black. “Our main goal in the next few months is to have our church ready for worship and facilities for our children’s ministries.”

Campbell, a Hazard, Kentucky native, and his wife, Mary, served abroad as evangelists and pastors in the United Kingdom prior to starting New Covenant out of their living room.

When asked if Pastor Campbell’s sermon style is strictly by-the-book, Black described him as a preacher who will incorporate or relate to the daily lives of his congregants, but also bring his discussion back to the Bible. In short, she depicted him as a “man with a vision.”

It was also noted that Campbell is a member of the Charleston Ecclesiastic Council and heavily involved in training in parts of Europe and Asia.

Unlike lots of new churches featuring gospel bands and singing at their services, however, New Covenant goes down the more traditional music-free route.

“We are a multi-cultural, multi-generational place to worship,” concluded Black, who expounded on the collective enthusiasm provided by church members on a weekly basis.

“On any given Sunday at New Covenant, you will find smiling faces, willing hands and open hearts. There is room here for those who have felt unwanted and neglected. There is room here for those who have never walked through the doors of a church. There is room here for families that are struggling ... for the imperfect. As a matter of fact, this is what New Covenant is made of — come as you are. You’ll see suits and ties right next to shorts and flip flops. It would make our day to see you walk through the doors.”

In a normal-looking Summerville subdivision at a normal-looking house, there is a not-so-normal garage. What’s inside that garage and the things that come out of it are even more abnormal.

Whether it is the skeleton bride-and-groom draped from the water heater, a one-eyed zombie staring from atop a storage container or the fake human skin with protruding faces fashioned into a lampshade, they are all the creations of Robert Kelly, founder and owner of DarkSeed Creations, small company specializing in horror culture and special effects.

“Right now, I’m primarily working on Halloween masks for people who are ordering stuff at the last minute,” Kelly said on a sunny October day in his driveway. “All the masks that we do are all sculpted; I sculpt them out in clay ahead of time and then they are casted. Everything we do is in house.”

It is almost always Halloween for Kelly, who said he usually starts working on orders for masks in mid-July.

“We don’t sell box-store masks,” he said. “You’re paying for something that you can only get from the individual artists who created it because we do everything from the floor up.”

Kelly sells most of his masks and other horror-themed items through his website, darkseedcreations.com, and he and his wife, Tara, also own an oddities and curiosities auction house. He often travels around the country attending oddities shows.

“I am, by trade, a special effects artist,” he said. “But we also deal in oddities and curiosities. Independent artists do a lot with the haunt industry and individual haunted attractions and stuff like that. We did a lot of work for the one in North Charleston and Carolina Screams. We did a ridiculous amount of work for them this year. I mean, it’s always Halloween for us. In the oddities community, we deal a lot with collectors and people who are a little bit more on the macabre side of things.”

Kelly said while oddities and curiosities is itself a sub-genre, within it there are individual niches.

“There are people who only collect antique sideshow items or old circus stuff,” he said. “There’s people who only collect old medical supplies or osteology or human bones and things of that nature. We travel the country and do the world oddities and curiosities expos. We do several large horror conventions and oddities conventions. We go and set up and sell our stuff and teach some classes and things like that.”

DarkSeed Creations is unique in the oddities community, Kelly said, because where most people search for the items they want, he creates them.

“We were able to kind of, for lack of a better term, offer our own flavor,” he said. “People get things from us they don’t and can’t get anywhere else.”

DarkSeed was a side business that grew into Kelly’s full-time job. He worked for DAK Americas for almost 14 years in its laboratories and wastewater treatment facilities.

“I started doing this on the side,” he said. “It reached the point where I was making more money and spending more time here than I was at work. When DAK started closing, they offered a round of layoffs and I took it. That was almost three years ago.”

Kelly said he and Tara do a lot with local charities, such as Scares that Care, and they are the co-founders of the SC Horror Show in Columbia.

“It is the first and only horror convention in South Carolina,” he said. “It’s right over by the university. We had a little over 6,000 people there last time. It’ll be running again next year.”

BERKELEY COUNTY, S.C. – Lowes Foods, a North Carolina-based supermarket, has plans to add a fifth Lowcountry location, Brookfield Properties recently announced. The supermarket chain will open its second Berkeley County store in Nexton’s North Creek Marketplace in Summerville.

An anticipated opening date has yet to be announced. Currently, the only Lowes Foods in Berkeley County is in Hanahan. Other nearby locations include West Ashley (Charleston County), Mount Pleasant (Charleston County) and Summerville (Dorchester County).

The Nexton grocery store will anchor a new retail center that will also include Domino’s Pizza and Cava, a fast-casual Mediterranean concept. Fifth and Third Bank and a Roper Urgent Care facility will also call North Creek Market home.

SEE ALSO:

Founded in 1954, Lowes Foods employs nearly 9,000 people and operates more than 80 full-servicesupermarkets in the Carolinas.

Locally owned and operated, Lowes Foods prides itself as a “homegrown company” committed to bringing community back to the table, by providing customers with the freshest and most innovative local products from local suppliers.

To learn more, visit lowesfoods.com.

BERKELEY COUNTY, S.C. – A national provider of upscale co-working and flexible office spaces recently celebrated the grand opening of its newest location in Berkeley County. Serendipity Labs with the help of the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce cut the ribbon Friday to its new Summerville facility in Nexton Square.

“Come by for a tour to check out this newly constructed 2-level workspace, which features retail, dining, hotels and a variety of fitness options at your doorstep. Conveniently located only 25 minutes from Charleston, and only 5 minutes from Downtown Summerville,” Serendipity Labs recently posted to its official Facebook page.

The standalone Nexton location offers 28,000 square feet of thoughtfully designed workspaces, including private offices, team rooms, co-working spaces and dedicated rooms for business meetings and events, according to a news release.

It also features outdoor patio space and a Lab Café, offering unlimited coffee, tea and fruit-infused water as well as ergonomic desks, chairs, sofas and fast-speed, encrypted internet.

This is Serendipity Labs’ second commercial location in the Charleston area.

Headquartered in Rye, NY and established in 2011, Serendipity Labs Inc., is an American flexible office space company that opens, manages and markets its upscale coworking brand as a service to office asset owners.

Sep 2020

Initially, it was difficult for many people to envision. After all, the map showed only thousands of acres of timber tracts surrounding Summerville, but Dexter Rumsey saw it coming. He knew the tract which would ultimately become Cane Bay Plantation on Hwy 176 was under contract, he understood proximity to Interstate 26 offered access and visibility, and he realized there would be demand for land to develop in the years to come.

Now, everyone can see the success of the Nexton community, located between I-26 and Hwy 176. Thousands of homes, dozens of businesses, schools and medical facilities — Nexton has indeed become the “next town” its name signifies, with room for future growth. And commercial real estate leader NAI Charleston has been part of it from the beginning, active in the sale of land for neighborhoods, banks, restaurants and other amenities that serve those who live there.

“At first, people didn’t understand it. It was a timber tract with very poor access,” says Rumsey, partner at NAI Charleston, who found the land when searching for large development sites. “There were only service roads accessing the Sheep Island tract, but I knew what the Cane Bay developer was planning and thought, ‘Well if that project is in the works on Hwy 176, then this tract with interstate frontage is a no-brainer.’ The rest is history.”

The result was a $21 million deal with Crescent Resources, who worked with Berkeley County to record a Development Agreement with entitlements for “The Parks of Berkeley” on the Sheep Island tract. MeadWestvaco was the original seller but ultimately purchased the property back from Crescent and commenced with an aggressive campaign of building roads and installing utilities for what would become the Nexton community.

NAI Charleston’s land brokerage continued beyond the original sale to Crescent, later representing WestRock (formerly MeadWestvaco) in parcel sales totaling over $47 million in closed deals at Nexton, with more still in the works. “The land was originally affordable, and you had the infrastructure in place,” says Thomas Boulware, Partner and Broker-in-Charge at NAI Charleston. “Being right off I-26, with 17-A and highways 176 and 78, you had a lot of access. The foresight of Berkeley County to adopt a Development Agreement allowing the necessary infrastructure and zoning expedited the entire process. We were able to create a place and a community for people looking to move into our market.” NAI Charleston facilitated the land sale for Nexton Square on 17-A and for the future Nexton Town Center between Brighton Park Blvd. and Sigma Drive. Today, the Nexton development continues to grow under the ownership of Newland Communities with plans for years to come.

Residential and retail

With the Atlantic Ocean to the east and protected lands to the north and south, such as the Francis Marion National Forest and ACE Basin, the growth of the Charleston area has always been limited. With Mount Pleasant approaching capacity and outer West Ashley’s drainage issues, growth has been funneled in one direction — up the I-26 corridor, toward Summerville and beyond.

“It’s the most logical direction for growth,” continues Rumsey. “In a pure development model, you follow the transportation route, and we only have a semicircle. We have developers asking us all about land for homes and industrial uses from Ridgeville to St. George and I-95, including areas I never thought would have received that attention.”

That growth, fueled by industrial linchpins like Volvo in Ridgeville and DHL in St. George, has helped make Nexton more centralized. With new residents comes a demand for more supporting businesses — like Carolina Ale House, Rainbow Child Care, CPM Federal Credit Union, Cambria Hotel, a self-storage facility, and other businesses that NAI Charleston has helped introduce to the community.

“As residential starts filling in, retail is going to follow,” says Will Sherrod, a veteran broker at NAI Charleston. “You've got large developers that are looking at parcels close to the interstate — not only the Harris Teeter site that has been public knowledge, but there's also another proposed grocery group looking in the same area. There are multiple convenience store groups that are interested in parcels along Nexton Parkway on both sides of the interstate.” NAI Charleston currently represents the owner of approximately ±100-acres planned for mixed-use development along Nexton Parkway/North Maple, south of I-26.

Although much of Nexton’s commercial development has clustered around U.S. 17, Nexton Parkway offers the potential for further expansion. “It's probably going to be smarter and not as congested as North Main Street,” Sherrod says. “I think it will be a welcome shift. You'll see some of these larger retailers potentially explore the Nexton Parkway side. Post-COVID-19, we’ll have to see what big boxes are looking at in terms of expansion, but I think you’ll see continued growth of retail along that side of the interstate.”

Access is key. The Nexton interchange on I-26, which opened in 2018, was in Crescent’s plans from the start. “They worked hand-in-hand with Berkeley County to adopt a development plan that laid out a long-term set of guidelines for commercial, multifamily, and medical hubs within those 4,500 acres,” Rumsey says. The Nexton Parkway interchange on I-26 was on the master plan back in 2006. Ultimately, it came to fruition 12 years later, reducing congestion on Hwy 17-A and providing direct access to entitled land with utilities.

Accessibility and affordability

The owners of Carolina Ale House saw the potential as well. When they decided to expand to Nexton, they wanted a site with parking that could accommodate 150 cars. “They said, ‘This is going to be the hottest restaurant we have in our portfolio of restaurants throughout the Carolinas,’” Rumsey recalls. NAI Charleston brokered the land for $2.1 million and later sold the Starbucks next door and an adjacent ±1-acre parcel to the same owner. This parcel is currently offered for ground lease as a future bank site.

It was a similar situation for First Citizens Bank, which had searched for two years to find the right spot in the area. When they found Nexton, they bought not just the land for their branch, but an entire 12-acre parcel which sits across the street from a proposed Harris Teeter. “We've had a tremendous amount of interest in it,” says David Grubbs, partner at NAI Charleston. “They've been very methodical about the development of the rest of the 12 acres because they want complementary and compatible uses.”

Jim Rozier, late former Berkeley County supervisor, had a vision to create a commercial base to reduce taxes on homeowners, and he was deeply involved in multiple development agreements for the area. The collaboration of the county, the accessibility of the land, and the opportunities yielded from potential land entitlements allowed Nexton to become a reality. The development has come a long way from that initial $21 million land deal, resulting in a vibrant mixed-use community at the center of the Lowcountry.

Contact NAI Charleston at (843) 720-4944 about any of their available properties at Nexton, or visit their website at NAICharleston.com for further information.