It appears as though the Charleston skyline is getting an addition, the only kind it could really get. The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist on Broad Street is getting a new steeple. Of course, the plans for the addition breezed through the Board of Architectural Review pretty easily. While construction could begin in the middle of next year, the price tag for the project isn't known yet.

The article has a rendering of how the church would look with the new steeple.

Was it wading through the snow? ;-)

Ephemeral Snow in Chucktown

"While state and port officials quarreled over a new terminal and busied themselves with the needed work of dredging and building a new Cooper River bridge, Georgia and other states were getting busy in acquiring land and building infrastructure."

South Carolina's problems in recruiting distribution centers began in the late 1990s, based on a common misconception.

Distribution centers drive shipping, not the other way around.

But the port of Charleston had focused on courting and retaining shipping firms, rather than working closely with state and local officials to recruit customers - the large retailers who would go on to build or lease huge distribution centers to get their goods to the then-exploding Southeastern market.

While state and port officials quarreled over a new terminal and busied themselves with the needed work of dredging and building a new Cooper River bridge, Georgia and other states were getting busy in acquiring land and building infrastructure.

Meanwhile, with the support of their state and local governments, the port of Savannah and the twin ports of Norfolk and Suffolk, Va., worked with developers to nail down key property along nearby interstate highways, improve interchanges, install infrastructure and lay the foundation to reel in the distribution center expansion to come.

As a result, Savannah landed the lucrative 1.5 million-square-foot Home Depot distribution center. It also boasts Walmart, Target, Sears/Kmart, Lowe's and IKEA.

Ships followed.

Traffic to Charleston dropped, and shipping to Savannah skyrocketed.

The loss of the import race affects exports as well. All those ships coming in fill up before they leave.

From 2004 to 2009, 20-foot containers hauled into and out of Charleston plunged to about 1.2 million a year from nearly 1.9 million, while Savannah's traffic spiked to 2.3 million from 1.7 million.

"We lost our competitive edge," Port of Charleston spokesman Byron Miller said.

Love the botanicals but still think you should have come up here and camped out on Paris Mtn this weekend and gotten some winter shots! :-)

Magnolia Plantation and Gardens
(for Jane)

Botany Bay Plantation (and in color for Jane)