health insurance agent in Nexton

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A new office and commercial condominium development is coming to Summerville.

Atelier Downtown Nexton is planned by an affiliate of New Jersey-based Sharbell Development on 7.5 acres on Brighton Park Boulevard off of U.S. Highway 17A.

Located in the developing mixed-use Nexton community, the project″s campus-like setting will include multiple two-story buildings up to 18,000 square feet. Office, service and commercial space will be for sale or lease.

“The design for Atelier Downtown Nexton was inspired by a modern think-tank environment with common green spaces and connectivity to the surrounding community,” said Thomas Troy, president of Sharbell Nexton LLC.

He called the finished product a place “where work happens, creativity thrives and people want to be.”

The project is expected to break ground later this year, with the first phase completed in 2024.

Bridge Commercial will provide leasing and sale services for Atelier Downtown Nexton.

Downtown Nexton is a nearly 100-acre development between Sigma Drive and Brighton Park Boulevard. When completed, it will provide retail, dining, hospitality, residential, service, office and commercial options within walking distance of many of Nexton’s neighborhoods.

Previously announced plans include The Ames multifamily community, The Lofts mixed-use development and Daybreak Market and Fuel.

A six-story building with 134 studio-only apartments is planned on Spring Street in downtonw Charleston.

11: Number of new gates proposed in the 20-year expansion plan for Charleston International Airport.

19: Number of Chick-fil-A restaurants now serving the Charleston area after the recent opening of a new restaurant in Berkeley County.

26: Number of years women’s clothing store Ellington??????? has operated in Charleston before recently moving off the peninsula.

+ Rezoning rejected: Developers’ plans to build a 150-unit apartment project on Charleston’s upper peninsula, where a restaurant and bar operate, hit a roadblock Oct. 19 when the Planning Commission unanimously opposed the change in land use.

+ Eyes have it: A national eyewear company recently opened its second Charleston-area location and 10th in South Carolina.

Patriots Annex is a 31-acre development at Patriots Point and will include a mix of hotels, offices, shops, conference center, amphitheater, parking decks, park and a boardwalk. The Grand Patriot Hotel, in background, will serve as the centerpiece of the new multiyear project.

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State Rep. Jordan Pace says he, like so many others, felt the frustration when his internet and cable went out nearly two weeks ago. (WCIV)

BERKELEY COUNTY, S.C. (WCIV) — There is a question of should there be some sort of oversight on internet providers if and when there's an extended outage.

State Rep. Jordan Pace says he, like so many others, felt the frustration when his internet and cable went out nearly two weeks ago.

Read more: Several Home Telecom customers still experiencing internet issues 6 days later

"About 5 or 6, I think once the load on the network started expanding and people started coming home from work, started experiencing outages and inconsistencies," he said. "That kind of thing for several days in a row."

Pace knows for many of his neighbors, Home Telecom is their only option because big name companies don't offer services.

"In the bulk of my statehouse district Nexton, Carnes Crossroads and Cane Bay - those other options haven't expanded out that way yet," he said.

Pace says free broadband initiatives presented by President Joe Biden's administration and by politicians like Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina help out people living in rural areas, but they don't guarantee people in his district more options. He says the issue is too much involvement from the government.

State Rep. Jordan Pace says he, like so many others, felt the frustration when his internet and cable went out nearly two weeks ago. (WCIV)

"It makes it very inherently expensive for competitors to come in and operate because of the overregulation," Pace said.

Pace says South Carolina has a lot of expensive hurdles for smaller companies that may want to come in and create internet access.

"If they're out of state, they're going to pay 13.5% on all the equipment they own, all of the assets they have that isn't real property every year forever, unless they're big enough to have lobbyists to get them special deals," he said.

Read more: Home Telecom responds to recent internet outage

Pace says he's filed a bill to eliminate the state income tax to make it easier for businesses to move into the area.

"What we can do on the state level is make it as business friendly as possible," Pace said. "Lower that corporate income tax, personal business property tax. Lower the state income tax."

"Allowing entrepreneurs to bring about different alternatives (is) the solution," he continued. "Not more involvement or more scrutiny from the government."

Other internet providers were asked if they have any plans to expand services to portions of Berkeley and Dorchester counties. Xfinity says its working to do that now with its 10G network and finished an expansion to Moncks Corner.

Mount Pleasant condominium owner Jay Smith recently saw his monthly regime fee rise 10 percent to nearly $400 a month.

The price hike came after the company that provides hazard insurance for the eight-building, 64-unit complex off Shem Creek where the retiree lives hiked its premium by $27,000 this year, or 52 percent, to renew the policy.

Other condo owners along the South Carolina coast soon could see similar spikes for the monthly fee they pay in association dues to cover expenses such as landscaping, roof repairs, painting, amenities and insurance when their policies come up for renewal.

Insurance brokers who help condo associations try to find competitive rates from carriers blame the surging costs on the rash of natural disasters such as hurricanes, wildfires and other calamities across the U.S. during the past few years. Recent storms, to name a few, include Harvey in 2017, Michael in 2018, Dorian in 2019, Laura in 2020, Ida in 2021 and Ian in 2022.

Last year was the eighth consecutive year when 10 or more billion-dollar weather and climate disaster events affected the U.S., according to the National Centers for Environmental Information, an arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. During the previous three decades, the government logged five similar years.

That’s led to fewer companies serving the coastal condo market because they can no longer afford to cover all of the potential losses from structural damage.

“We are down to four or five providers that can be competitive when three years ago we had 12 or so,” said Isaac Matthews, a broker with Brown & Brown Insurance in North Charleston which helps condominium management companies try to find the best rates when it’s time for their association clients to renew coverage each year.

“The past five years in a row of catastrophic losses have affected their underwriting profits, so they are going to pull away from that sector of business or move out of the territory altogether,” he said.

Paying a premium

Matthews and other brokers are sounding the alarm that some condo owners could be in for sticker shock when their policies come up for renewal this year. To offset the higher premiums, governing boards have few alternatives other than cutting services, raising dues or imposing special assessments.

“The best-case scenario is a 30-35 percent increase in premiums,” Matthews said. “We are facing one of the most challenging years in the last decade.”

He pointed to a 36-unit condo complex on Daniel Island as a recent example. The annual premium for hazard insurance to cover damage from fire, wind, hail, earthquakes and hurricanes more than tripled to $223,000 from $71,000.

“The previous provider is no longer writing (hazard coverage) that close to the coast,” Matthews said.

He cited another example, saying rates for a 153-unit complex in North Charleston more than doubled to $181,000 a year.

The rising insurance rates are not confined to the Lowcountry.

“It’s a problem along the entire coast,” Matthews said.

In the Myrtle Beach area, some condo associations could see rates balloon by 300 percent, said Mike Almond, a broker with Acentria Insurance on Pawleys Island.

Some of the main carriers for areas within three to five miles of the coast have exited the market because of the hurricanes, wildfires and other disasters affecting the U.S. last year.

“Hurricane Matthew (in 2016) and Hurricane Michael (in 2018) started the strain on carriers, and Hurricane Ian (in 2022) put the nail in the coffin,” Almond said.

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Underwriters are now being picky.

“They want to insure a building that can withstand a Category 4 or Cat 5 hurricane,” he said.

He noted that “most of the construction on the coast” dates back to mid-1980s, “and a lot of the carriers don’t want to touch it.”

‘No end in sight’

Matthews of Brown & Brown said some of the factors pushing rates higher include the increased demand for coverage, the rising costs of rebuilding homes and higher appraised values of older structures. That’s in addition to other standard considerations, such as the distance to the shoreline, the year a property was built and claims history.

“The few insurance companies that are still willing to place coverage are being very selective on risk quality,” Matthews said.

Like Matthews, Almond called the current premium increases the largest he’s seen in quite a few years.

“If our hurricane season this year is bad, you will definitely feel (the financial impact) even more at the end of the year,” Almond said.

Another pricing wrinkle for the industry is the so-called reinsurance market, which provides policies that carriers buy to cover some of their risks. It’s tapped out.

Matthews said the reinsurance money supply is down $50 billion while demand last year was up about $30 billion.

“This means there is currently an $80 billion gap between insurance companies’ capacity and insurable property values,” he said.

Owners of single-family homes along the coast aren’t feeling as much of a price sting because that market isn’t short on carriers, making it easier to obtain coverage.

“There are only so many companies willing to insure a 200-unit property valued at $50 million, for instance, rather than a house for $500,000,” Matthews said.

He also pointed out hazard insurance does not include flood protection, which is another policy altogether. It also does not cover problems with structural integrity, which is a maintenance issue.

Jason Besse, a broker with Correll Insurance Group of Summerville, said the market for hazard insurance is cyclical, with rates typically rising after major disasters. He doesn’t see costs coming down anytime soon.

“There is no end in sight this go round,” Besse said. “It’s a bad deal. We don’t have the capacity to fill the risk, and there are fewer players in the carrier and reinsurance markets.”

For condo owners such as Smith in Mount Pleasant, who retired and moved to the Lowcountry from West Virginia several years ago, the trend is troublesome.

“If the rates keep going up, it’s going to become unaffordable for some people,” he said.

The company that’s building out a master-planned community in Berkeley County that’s as large as the Charleston peninsula is set to come under new ownership.

California-based Brookfield Residential announced this week that it is acquiring Newland, the developer of the 5,000-acre mixed-use Nexton neighborhood between Interstate 26 and U.S. Highway 176 near Summerville.

The sale of San Diego-based Newland, which is involved in 20 large master-planned projects around the country, is expected to be finalized June 1.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

A Nexton spokeswoman declined to comment on the pending sale.

“No major, significant operational changes are expected,” said Brookfield spokeswoman Krista Ellingson.

She said the company’s specialty is supplying homes and lots in constrained real estate markets such as Charleston, where a scarcity of homes on the market has dropped to less than a one-month supply, triggering bidding wars and pushing up prices.

“We just aren’t a homebuilder, we invest in land to build homes and sell to homebuilders,” Ellingson said. “We want to show our partners that we are in it with them.”

Bob McLeod, Newland’s executive chairman, said the Brookfield deal “will provide more opportunities for the continued development of additional mixed-use masterplans well into the future as well as give us significant additional vertical development opportunities.”

As of this week, Nexton has 1,266 occupied single-family homes in four subdivisions — Brighton Park, Del Webb, Midtown and North Creek. About 200 more are under development within the neighborhoods.

Nexton also has about 900 finished apartments in three complexes, with another 600 rental units on the way.

When build-out is completed in about 10 years, Nexton will have about 7,000 residences with about 17,500 residents. That will make it roughly equal to the current populations of Moncks Corner and Georgetown combined.

Brookfield Residential currently has no real estate operations in the Palmetto State. The Newland acquisition will expand its footprint to eight new markets, including Charleston, Raleigh-Durham and Wilmington in the Carolinas, and five other areas where both companies have projects in the works.

Last year, Brookfield’s revenue from home and land sales was $1.74 billion, about $200 million less than in 2019, mainly because of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the company’s annual report.

During the first three months of 2021, total revenue topped $444 million, about 30 percent more than the first quarter last year, when the coronavirus began to spread throughout the overall economy.

Costa Mesa, Calif.-based Brookfield Residential is part of Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management, which oversees investment totaling $600 billion and is headquartered in Toronto.

Newland oversees the development of the Nexton tract for North America Sekisui House LLC. NASH, a subsidiary of Japan’s largest homebuilder, bought the property in 2017 from paper maker WestRock Co.’s former real estate division for $90 million.

The Page family (Tony, Ashleigh, Courtney, and Chase) took the slow and steady route to culinary greatness, launching their restaurant in a smallish space on Mount Pleasant's Coleman Boulevard in 2006 and moving to a larger building down the street five years later. Now, long after Page's Okra Grill was established as one of the most popular eateries in the Lowcountry, its owners are about to take their recipe for success into other parts of the tri-county area and other aspects of the dining industry.

Although Page's already operates food trucks in Nexton and Moncks Corner; the restaurant will soon add catering to its repertoire, and, before long, another Page's Okra Grill will open its doors in Nexton.

"We always wanted to get into catering, but we wanted to wait for the right time so we could do it right - up to Okra Grill's standards," says Chase Page, the founders' brother and currently the operations manager for the two mobile units. "Great food, great value and great service. We feel like we can take everything we have learned over the years and provide great catering for our community - weddings, corporate events, sit-down catering, buffets, office lunches, private food truck events, and family dinners. We are excited to meet new folks and provide great food for them but also to serve our same loyal regulars, just in a different way."

The new 10,000-square-foot restaurant, to be built where the Nexton food truck currently does business at 142 Brighton Park Blvd, will include a large catering kitchen and private dining areas. It is expected to start serving customers sometime in the 2023 calendar year. Until then, the catering business will operate out of the Mount Pleasant location, with a menu offering many of the same dishes that have propelled Page's to the top of many of the area's "Best Of" lists, including Ashleigh's iconic Shrimp & Grits.

Chase says catering customers can expect "some surprising items" as well.

The Nexton version of Page's Okra Grill and the catering business will mirror the traditions that have been a hallmark of the restaurant for nearly 17 years.

"One of the most important things in the business is culture - the way you treat your staff and customers. It's totally separates from your processes. We kind of captured lightning in a bottle at Coleman," Chase points out. "Part of that is the quirky personalities of everybody involved. When our family started Okra Grill, it grew like wildfire, and we had to learn the hard way how to run a restaurant. It's all about the little things we like to do to make staff and guests feel like family."

Chase says he hopes the new restaurant will take some of the pressure off the Coleman Boulevard location. Page's Okra Grill in Mount Pleasant has become so popular, there are times when customers must wait for an extended period of time to be seated. Next year, Lowcountry residents will have the option to enjoy Page's Okra Grill's food and hospitality at either of the two locations.

With both the catering business and the new restaurant, Page's Okra Grill follow the same business model that has been proven so successful since 2006.

"We'll do it the way we've always done it," Chase explains. "Slow and steady. We don't want to lose any of the magic we've built up over the years."

To learn more about one of the Lowcountry's most popular restaurants, visit www.pagesokragrill.com.