Poplar Grove Car Neighborhoodolina Charleston, South Carolina
A DOZEN MILES WEST OF downtown Charleston, not far from Highway 17, deer, wild turkeys, doves, ducks and other deni-
BY BRIAN SHERMAN
zens of the fertile forests and teeming marshland that ring Rantowles Creek thrive in much the same environment they enjoyed centuries ago, when Poplar Grove Plantation was producing rice, cotton and indigo. Tey have been joined in recent years
by a smattering of homeowners more interested in a peaceful canoe trip than in a frenetic sprint in a speeding motorboat; more attuned to a walk in the woods than to a mind-numbing session in front of a television set; more likely to interact with their neighbors than to spend their evenings and weekends shuttered behind locked doors and drawn blinds. More homeowners
eventually will arrive – but not many more – and the birds and ani- mals that live in Poplar Grove now share their pristine paradise with the horses inhabiting the recently-completed equestrian center. If all
goes according to plan, someday soon the center will attract world-class hunter/ jumper competition. However, Vic Mills is not in a big rush to finish developing Poplar Grove, a philosophy that melds nicely with his reasoning behind buying the land in the first place. When Blanchard and Calhoun Com-
mercial Corp. purchased the 6,000-acre site that was to become Poplar Grove in 2002, it was zoned for 7,000 homes. Un- der the terms of an easement negotiated with conservation groups, that number has been whittled down to only 120 lots in the gated community of Poplar Grove Preserve. Other options are planned for future development. Te equestrian section will offer lots of five to 15 acres, plantation lots will cover up to 100 acres
Vic Mills is in no
hurry to complete the development of Poplar Grove.
The Poplar Grove equestrian barn.
and town homes and cottages also are on the drawing board. “We’ll be building for 50 years or so,”
Mills, chief executive officer of Blanchard and Calhoun, commented. “We’re not in any hurry.” Mills explained that Poplar Grove’s neighbors, Millbrook Plantation and Middleton Place Plantation among them, also negotiated conservation easements, creating the Ashley River Plantation Dis- trict and severely limiting development on 12,000 acres of land. “Te conservation community was all about limiting rooftops, and we worked with them,” Mills said. “We went to great lengths to preserve the integrity of the land. Te first thing we did was lo- cate all the live oaks, and, as we designed improvements, we were always mind- ful of the impact on those trees.” To make life a little easier for Poplar Grove’s indig- enous wildlife, the developer removed trees that don’t bear fruit, such as sweet gums, to give trees that provide food
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