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The Gulf Coast: Road To Renewal -- Charleston

Friday, April 14, 2006

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A Tale Of Two Other Cities

In this segment of NBR's special "The Gulf Coast: Road To Renewal," NBR Executive Editor Linda O'Bryon speaks with Mayor Joseph P. Riley of the City of Charleston, with Dr. Frank Hefner, Associate Professor of Economics, College of Charleston, and with Leigh Handal, Director of Marketing and Public Programs, Historic Charleston Foundation, about their perspectives on rebuilding a city after a devastating hurricane.

Interview with Mayor Joseph P. Riley, The City of Charleston

LINDA O’BRYON:
Mayor Riley, you have been widely credited with being the voice of calm during Hurricane Hugo. What are your recollections of the storm and its aftermath, especially in terms of rebuilding this city?

MAYOR JOSEPH P. RILEY, City of Charleston:
What I knew, what I told the wonderful people at my work, was that it was an opportunity--one that we would never want. A terrible opportunity, but we should see it as an opportunity for service, for great service. We in city government, we tend to people’s needs and we have to do a lot of things. We send out tax bills and give parking tickets or give permits or whatever and run parks and playgrounds and make the city safe, but seldom do you have the opportunity to help people when their lives are at stake, and when the world has been turned upside down. So we should see it as an opportunity that we never wanted, but an opportunity for great public service in the time of need. And my challenge to our people was that when it was over, we felt that we had done it better than anyone had ever done it in preparing for the hurricane as well as helping the people rebuild.

O’BRYON:
There were thousands of historic buildings damaged during Hurricane Hugo.
Some would say it might have been easier just to come in and level some of those buildings … may have been less costly, but you didn’t see it that way?

RILEY:
With a natural disaster, you never want the disaster to win. So if we had let buildings be demolished, that could have been a saving, but then the disaster would have won. Where all those buildings got lost in Hugo and there was nothing you can do about it… you never want that to happen. You want to bring things back to normal as much as possible,
as fast as possible. So not only from a historic preservation standpoint that we did not want to lose one element of the city’s texture and history and scale, but also we wanted the city to win. We wanted the city to say when it was all over, you know, we took that blow and we came back. And so you don’t do that. We didn’t let buildings come down that could be saved in any way whatsoever, and now they are beautifully restored and the city is more handsome I think and any time in its history.

O’BRYON:
What about the islands? Sullivan’s Island, Isle of Palms… those areas had heavy devastation. Some people feel that the complexion of the neighborhoods
actually changed after the storm and some of the people who live there could no longer afford to live there because there has been such a building boom… Was that a part where maybe the community didn’t win… in a sense?

RILEY:
Well, the barrier islands, I guess are different. Sullivan’s Island is much older… Isle of Palms is much newer and market force were in play. One thing that a natural disaster does is accelerates trends that are already in place. So that the overall trend of increased value on beachfront property and bigger homes being built was something that was already in place, but I think that it is something for any community to guard against. And I think certainly when you do rebuild--particularly when there’s been substantial devastation and maybe there is a bit of a clean slate there-- that you are very careful about what you do… that you don’t lose the character of the area, even if the buildings were completely gone. You want the sense of place that it was to be there -- different buildings, but the scale, the personality, you want to try and protect that as much as possible. Again, so that the disaster isn’t a victor—and the community wins…notwithstanding the difficult task of rebuilding.

O’BRYON:
Were you in charge of the whole… of all those communities as well or the city here in Charleston?

RILEY:
I was just in charge of the city. We did--I knew I had a responsibility to work with the rest of the communities, and because Charleston was the media focal point and we sought resources, and so we in the city in part directed a supply effort.
That one time we were serving... helping 26 counties from South Carolina, because we were their voice and we made sure we responded.

O’BRYON:
With the difficulties that you went through?
And now that you have seen the outcome, what lessons learned would you have for the people in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast?

RILEY:
In terms of rebuilding?

O’BRYON:
In terms of rebuilding and renewing.

RILEY:
The … the lessons learned include the fact that you can do it. We did it.
Things looked awfully bleak for us the morning after the hurricane -- how the world are we going to do what… how are we ever going to get back and our economy not be destroyed? You can do it … the human spirit doesn’t give up… Cities and communities, over time -- whether it’s an earthquake, or volcanic eruptions, or hurricanes or wars, communities over time -- have had these challenges and they rebuild. So the first thing is that if you can do it, and we live in a great country and there are resources available,
you must have high standards. Don’t let the disaster make an excuse for you to do something less committed to excellence than you would have before. And in time it comes back together and in time you can make the community better than it was before. And that should be your goal -- not that we got hit hard and oh my gosh -- but we are going to use this as an opportunity to rebuild and be stronger than we ever were before.

O’BRYON:
But what about those people who say that maybe people are living too close to the coast, maybe too close to flood lines; should there be changes after these natural disasters?

RILEY:
Well I think… in some instances perhaps, though every community and every geographic feature is different. One thing we did here though is -- we didn’t say you couldn’t build back, but we had codes and requirements, so what was built back was built back pursuant to the new codes. The flood elevation requirements require buildings to be built up higher than they were before people knew or worried about those kinds of things. And you know, the desire to be near the coast is a very powerful one, and I don’t think we are going to keep people from wanting to come to the coast, and I certainly hope not.
There might be a place where there is a riverbed or there might be a beach situation that it isn’t prudent anymore, but for the most part you can rebuild and rebuild near the coast.
You will build strong so the next hurricane -- and there will be another one some year, hopefully never. And we do have the knowledge now, engineering knowledge and construction techniques, to make buildings much more capable of withstanding severe hurricanes than before.

O’BRYON:
And finally, why is it so important to preserve the history of a city and the beauty as you have talked about for everyone of the city?

RILEY:
It’s important to preserve the history and beauty of a city, because human beings need that. Buildings are memories. They are part of our reach back to the past, which helps us look forward to the future and the real message of Charleston and not only Hugo, but a historic preservation is we’ve shown the country and I think the world the value of preserving the physical past to a built environment (so)that you can touch it... you feel it… you see… you have an understanding of what’s here before you, you have a sense of place, you have a sense of heritage. America is a relatively young country and we want to keep every element of our past that we possibly can. We don’t want to always be a 70 year old place… a hundred years from now we want to be a hundred years older than we are now. It’s very important; it’s a basic human need. It makes you understand that you are part of a continuing human race and you see what people did before you and it inspires you to do something worthwhile for those who come after you.

O’BRYON:
Thank you very much, Mayor Riley.

Interview with Dr. Frank Hefner, Associate Professor of Economics, College of Charleston

O’BRYON:
What happened to the economy of Charleston after Hurricane Hugo?

HEFNER:
Well, given the doom and gloom scenarios because of the hurricane you would have to say that it was a pretty good rebound--and part of that was what we might call an advertising effect. The news media focusing on the hurricane constantly referred to
“beautiful downtown historic Charleston.”
People across the country never thought of Charleston in those particular terms, “beautiful, historic, downtown Charleston.” (They) had that constantly drummed into their heads from the nightly media reports and that put up a lot of interest in the area.
For fear that there would be a calamitous tourism season I think everyone involved in tourism probably went overboard, but not necessarily so, looking at the results in advertising and promoting tourism. And so we did a very good comeback and moved
(forward) from that so maybe (it had) a spring-board effect.

O’BRYON:
And yet it could have gone the other way had the devastation been such that those buildings were not brought back…

HEFNER
Had the actual buildings…actually (been) destroyed rather than damaged,
had the city been completely submerged underwater like New Orleans, it
would have been really bad news for us. That would have been a disaster for the tourism season, definitely.

O’BRYON:
Well… looking at New Orleans what lessons could be taken from this situation. Are there parallels at all?

HEFNER:
Well it gets … well there are a lot of interesting parallels. Some of it is not quite comparable. Our hurricane hit north of us where the main damage was in a rural area and so it destroyed a lot of trees and a rural population so that was not good for them. But it
saved the downtown area. We did have a storm surge that put a lot of mud in the city and a lot of water damage--you will see pictures of boats that were washed up over the road into the city, you will see the bridge that went to Sullivan’s Island was bent upright. So it
was clearly a bad hurricane and caused a lot of damage although we are low land and are not under water so we didn’t have the dike issue. I think some of the lessons that we got out of it was city administration was very quick in responding, the governor was very quick in calling the national guard in… that happened right away. They evacuated the city and it was a good evacuation so human life was not at risk as much as it could have been, they had a no looting policy instantly so we had a lot of good cooperation with the different government agencies at that time. Politically,
of course, we had a city mayor who was a Democrat and we had a Republican governor but I think they pulled together very well and got everyone involved who needed to be involved to get us back on our feet.

O’BRYON:
Knowing what you know about Charleston, how do you think New Orleans will come back as a city and a community?

HEFNER:
Well as always that depends on sort of the inner fortitude of the people involved and of course Charleston has that historical tradition of always coming back. Besides the Civil War or the War for Succession depending which way you want to call it--the earthquake, the fire damages, previous hurricanes, sort of the cultural myth here is that we will always rise… and that’s happened before when the navy base closed. It was sort of the motto-- that we have gone through this before—so there is sort of a we can pull together and pull out of this and get better as a result of that (calamity)--and that kind of cultural mythology is very important to a community. The other thing is…is that we are a very vibrant economy and a very diversified one more so than people realize, so we were worried about tourism but we also had industry, and we had a lot of different things going on in the area and what I’ve noticed when you have calamities, particularly things like earthquakes, hurricanes or base closings, or major shut downs of industry in a small town even a large town… it accentuates the existing trends, so if the economy is pretty strong and on a gross trend it tends to rebound. If it’s not doing very well-- kind of teetering on the edge, too often that pushes an economy on the wrong side of the edge.

O’BRYON:
And how important are those cultural markers, the music in New Orleans case, arts… will that help the economy in a sense?

HEFNER
Well definitely, because that’s all… that’s human capital, that wasn’t destroyed by the hurricane. That’s not a building, that’s people getting back and performing and doing what they have always done so that part of tourism should do alright and I think to some extent they are making a big push from what I can see with Mardi Gras getting back on their feet, but it’s hard to realize that not having been there, just looking at the pictures.
The devastation is much more dramatic to some extent of what we faced here… we didn’t have a population loss and apparently they are, so I think that those are some definite differences in that respect, but it’s not unheard of for a community to come back stronger.

O’BRYON:
So that could happen?

HEFNER
Definitely, and it certainly happened with us.

O’BRYON:
Thank you very much.

HEFNER:
Certainly.

Interview with Mr. Leigh Handal, Director of Marketing and Public Programs, Historic Charleson Foundation

O’BRYON:
Leigh, how did Charleston change after Hurricane Hugo?

LEIGH HANDAL:
Well… a storm of that magnitude certainly does bring a lot of different types of change and frankly change is in of itself, neither good, nor bad—change brings both aspects with it. There are some good things that happened after Hugo; first of all, you had
the damage from the storm, the wind and the waves-- the physical kind of damage. But what comes with that is insurance money and I don’t think anyone had really seen that the way we felt it in Charleston. At that time back in 1989, huge influx of insurance money and federal grants came in and so Charleston had the opportunity to change, there were sections of the city that had been a bit run down that were polished up and this is good change as far as tourism goes. We always had a good tourism economy… when the news coverage generated by the storm… we had fantastic tourism afterward. We also had the historic mansions downtown that were beautifully preserved because now people had the money to preserve them and to restore them where before they were just maintaining and performing maintenance. And so these are all good changes.

O’BRYON:
Were there some not so good changes?

HANDAL:
They come with not-so-good side effects as well. How large a tourism industry could a city of Charleston size sustain? The answer to that question is going to depend on who you ask. Certainly our tourism economy boomed and with that you get issues like how many people are in the city at a given time. Certainly parking becomes a bigger question than it ever has before; you deal with issues of litter and noise and congestion and so these are the good side of a good thing. Another situation has been our housing market since 1989 which has gone through the roof. Our house values downtown have just soared. Again that comes about… people who lived here for awhile got all that insurance money, they were able to restore their property, do some beautiful work to the properties and sell them at a great profit. And now what we call that in Charleston “flipping”-- flipping houses… you come in and do some work on a property and then sell it at a huge profit.

O’BRYON:
But the flip side of that, what has that done to some of the working class people?

HANDAL:
Well its done a couple things, one of the things its done is people who have lived here historically, families that are from Charleston can no longer afford the properties because their values have gone up so high. And so in our case here in Charleston we find things like fewer children live downtown, fewer families live downtown, we have more properties downtown that have absentee owners. It is folks who come up and buy these beautiful properties… again the good is they bring a lot of wealth to restore them beautifully and preserve the properties; the downside is that they don’t live here so that creates some what of a sterile environment. You can get too much of that. We call them drive-by neighbors.

O’BRYON:
And then what happens to the longtime neighbors that can’t
afford it, where do they go?

HANDAL:
They end up moving to the suburbs, you know a lot of times in Mount Pleasant, sort of bedroom communities to the city and then you got to commute to work and so again you are dealing with traffic issues, congestion, parking…

O’BRYON:
You have been to New Orleans, what lessons from Charleston, would you say to the people in New Orleans?

HANDAL:
Well we share a number of lessons with the folks from New Orleans based on our experience here in Charleston and that is the folks in the Gulf Coast and New Orleans had such a horrible loss from the storm. The winds and the water did terrible damage. But they’re at risk of suffering a lot more loss than just what the physical elements did to them and that’s the loss that’s threatened in the redevelopment process. There’s a lot of money to be made and you have issues coming up like the possibility. We’ve got so many small properties owned by so many folks from the New Orleans area and now a few large interests can afford to buy those property owners out for pennies on the dollar.

O’BRYON:
But why would that be necessarily bad?

HANDAL:
Well you can aggregate all that property to the hands of a few and you can end up with such things like with huge condominium projects that again are very expensive that move out the traditional families like we experienced somewhat here in Charleston.
(It’s)Just (that) the cultural heritage and architecture of New Orleans is irreplaceable. It’s like Charleston in that respect you can’t find any other city like ours, and the New Orleans folks have got to make a commitment to preserving what’s left of their culture. It is cheaper, it’s quicker, and it’s easier to tear something down than to restore it. It’s hard to restore things, it takes a lot of money and it takes a lot of time, but here in Charleston after Hugo, both our leadership and the city government and our citizens in this city all made that commitment that we were not going to replace the great architectural heritage we had with cheaper substitutes.

O’BRYON:
From what you saw in New Orleans after the storm do you think that will is there?

HANDAL:
I think it’s frightening… when I was there in October going door to door in the neighborhoods, helping folks understand issues involved with remediation I saw some beautiful interior wood work coming out… mantel pieces, things that didn’t have to come out… I am very sympathetic because even going in to educate these people about remediation. I’d walk into their homes and it was very hard to hide my shock and horror and you know I was just a visitor so I could appreciate so much how they must feel and they want to move on and just get it behind them. But we worked really hard to encourage them to appreciate the value of those interiors… If it’s damaged, restore it, only accept the losses that have been caused by the natural elements, don’t accept the losses that are being caused by money and time demands.