The Coleman and Ben Sawyer Boulevards Revitalization Master Plan released by the Town of Mt. Pleasant in February, 2008 is a remarkable document of a town struggling with the realization its survival as a community depends on accounting for needs and changes many of its elected leaders were openly hostile to five years ago.

The plan is available on the Town’s website as a 59 page, full color PDF document.  This column can’t adequately cover what it proposes.  Every citizen concerned about the future of the community should download and review it.  Civic groups should distribute and discuss it.

While it’s not perfect, it’s hard to read its pages without concluding someone, perhaps a lot of people, have admitted a trip over a wide road to Super Wal-Mart isn’t going to be the highlight of anyone’s Saturday in 2020.  Zoloft and a built in CD player aren’t going to make it so.  We like that touchy/feely stuff that happens on the sidewalk.  We need to know each other.

Page 13 of the plan contains statements one simply wouldn’t have found in a town report before now.  The honest realization that Mt. Pleasant is actually a city, density in the urban core is a goal and sustainable, mixed use development promotes a higher quality of life would have been a radical declaration a decade ago.  A thousand unsold houses, hundreds of businesses who can’t hire staff, gridlocked traffic despite desperate road construction, town government driven to deficit spending and four dollar fuel don’t appear to be the only motivators.

Like any town planning document, this plan is full of illustrations and diagrams.  Most emphasize the importance of creating a rewarding pedestrian realm.  Shade, sidewalks, facades open to civic interaction and places to sit get a lot of attention.  High speed, uninterrupted traffic isn’t given its usual priority.  Crosswalks, places for outdoor activity, socially connected dining and architecture which welcome a human presence are emphasized.

A number of locations of pocket parks along Coleman Blvd. have been identified.  A greener, quieter and cooler place could be there in the future.  We want decent, social places to walk, to rest and to watch and learn about one another within walkable and cycling distance of home.

There is a proposal to create a two lane round-a-bout to unsnarl the traffic between Royall Hardware and Sea Island Shopping center.  The plan admits a round-a-bout may not perfectly handle all the traffic a generation from now, but the maze of traffic signals and turn lanes that is the alternative won’t either.  It will just be uglier and more expensive.

A generation ago, a town would have simply condemned as much of the parking lots of the adjoining business as it needed.  After that, it would have rolled out the asphalt in every direction until the traffic got fast enough to persuade everyone they were getting somewhere.  The businesses would have gone broke.  The buildings would be repurposed to less economically productive uses.  Tax base would have stagnated or declined.  We would have all happily driven out to the mall.  It would have been years until we understood what we lost.  America did this nearly everywhere.

Fortunately John Royall was on the committee.  He’s not interested in going out of the hardware business.  He wants to be there to sell us an envelope of sandpaper five years from now.  He wants to be able to sell or pass on his business to someone who will do the same.  Many prominent local community business people and civic leaders are listed in the report.

There are some problems with the plan.  Transit and bicycles haven’t been fully integrated.  People know they’re going to be important, but we’re still soldiering through the automobile traffic planning because no one’s sure if or when the overwhelming significance of the private automobile will fade.  CARTA gets a mere paragraph.  Bicycles go somewhere else.  Prosperity and happiness are still bound up with a car trip in many American imaginations.

Americans still believe what we want is somewhere else.  From our migration across the ocean centuries ago and the covered wagons west which followed them, We struggle with the failure to solve our problems by moving on.  Pilgrims, cowboys and 49er’s, we’ve adjusted to centuries of living on streets where the trees are small and young, leaving before we have true shade.

In the frightening, uncertain time that is now, we want to move again.  However, the solution is fixing our “here.”  The national issues are so vast, our Town stands little chance of changing them.  Our hopes are local, where neighbors and leverage can be found.  A chat on the sidewalks makes us feel better than a session with CNN.  It’s more effective too.  A nation of such communities can be empowered to save itself.  This plan conveys that hope.  It’s unsteady here and there, but changing direction always leaves us with a wobble.

Unfortunately, funds are short.  The time plans such as this need to be implemented are long.  By the time the trees imagined in these illustrations are shading the as yet unconstructed sidewalks shown, dismounting a little electric bus to get an envelope of sandpaper will be perfectly normal in Mt. Pleasant.   The on street parking spaces may have shrunk to the size of the tiny, efficient vehicles then on the road.   There will be bicycles and strollers safely sharing walkway and street.  Owning your own shopping cart may be normal.  Our town may have moved away from an economic dependence on consuming raw land for sprawling residential development to a social construct which creates wealth by bringing talent together.

The towns which can do that will survive.  Those which do it well will prosper.  This plan is an imperfect and incomplete step in the right direction.  The many familiar names on the committee which produced this plan deserve credit for their long hours of work.

The work ahead, actually creating a streetscape like the one proposed, or an even better one, is the act of civic will which must follow their act of shared imagination.

William Hamilton (www.wjhamilton.com) is an attorney who lives in I’On Village. Read more stories at www.moultrienews.com.

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