Charleston officials on Monday afternoon considered conceptual design plans for a sprawling new development at 350 Grand Oaks Boulevard that would bring 348 apartments and 33 townhomes to a corner of West Ashley already wrestling with growth. Neighbors raised familiar worries: more cars on their streets and fewer trees in their green space.
The City of Charleston Design Review Board was slated to discuss the proposal and complete its conceptual review Monday, according to Live 5 News. Nearby residents told the outlet they are concerned about increased traffic and tree loss in the area's green space, a refrain that has followed West Ashley's housing boom for years. Dana Pettis said she has lived in the area for 12 years and has watched substantial development reshape it, while Holli Pettis said development is eroding Charleston's charm by destroying nature.
City Says Developer Already Scaled Back Tree Removal
City officials said the developer had already scaled back tree removal after earlier community pushback, the station's report notes. That shift tracks with an earlier account from ABC News 4, which reported in June 2026 that a revised plan for the more-than-400-home project would call for removing 32 trees rather than the more than 60 trees proposed initially.
City of Charleston officials said the proposal aligns with the city's comprehensive plan to add high-density, mixed housing in West Ashley, addressing what the city has identified as a need for housing. Planning Director Robert Summerfield said the land itself has not been up-zoned for the project. He also drew a line between the Design Review Board's role and other city boards, saying different boards have different responsibilities and different missions — with this board focused narrowly on height, scale, mass and design flow rather than traffic or zoning questions.
Access Points Could Shift Away From Neighborhood Streets
Planners are weighing a redesign that would move access points toward West Ashley Circle and a planned Savannah Highway extension, intended to keep traffic off neighborhood streets, per the same account. The development's internal layout is also meant to transition traffic from Grand Oaks Boulevard into the site and then toward the on-site apartments, rather than funneling cars through existing residential blocks.
Before the project can break ground, it must still clear preliminary, technical and final design reviews, Live 5 News reported. Summerfield said it could take six to 12 months before ground is broken, depending on how those reviews and permitting play out — and that the timeline could stretch longer still. The Design Review Board itself cannot grant final approval; per the city's own description of the board, it reviews new construction, exterior alterations and signage for commercial projects along with residential projects of eight units or more in designated areas, according to the City of Charleston.
A Familiar Fight Just Down the Road
The Grand Oaks proposal echoes a nearly identical fight that played out a few miles away this year. In July 2026, The Post and Courier reported that Middleburg Communities' proposal for 348 apartments and 33 townhomes behind the Harris Teeter-anchored shopping center on Bees Ferry Road hit the same Design Review Board, which deferred approval and asked for more architectural rigor. That board had denied an earlier version of the Bees Ferry plan about six months before, and it only cleared the city's Board of Zoning Appeals after proposed tree removals fell to roughly 20 and the unit count was trimmed slightly. The board also recommended the developer restudy the mail kiosk location, improve the Grand Oaks Boulevard entry and add pedestrian paths around retention ponds — feedback that could preview the kind of scrutiny the 350 Grand Oaks Boulevard project still faces.
The tree-loss concerns raised by West Ashley neighbors fit into a longer regional pattern. Charleston County lost roughly 10,800 acres of tree cover since 1992, with areas off Bees Ferry Road and Glenn McConnell Parkway among the tree-loss hot spots, according to The Post and Courier. Norman Levine told the paper that the loss means more water runs off the surface that used to soak into the ground and get absorbed by trees, a dynamic tied to worsening local flooding.
Traffic concerns around West Ashley are not new either. A public meeting on nearby Savannah Highway improvements drew 356 individual comments between August and September 2022, with right-of-way impacts, effects on businesses, bike and pedestrian facilities, and traffic ranking among the most common topics raised, per the Savannah Highway project website. Planned intersection improvements at Dupont Road and Stinson Drive are projected to maintain acceptable service levels through design year 2042, the same summary states.
