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A developer is requesting to change more than 360 acres of residential land to industrial land.

ST. GEORGE, S.C. (WCSC) - Calling one place home all your life until a rezoning request sign pops up on your street. That is what happened to a group of people who live in St. George.

One developer is requesting to change more than 360 acres of residential land to industrial land that would affect large properties off Highway 78 one mile east of St. George.

Although Dorchester County’s plans do not say what exactly will be built in this area, a number of residents who have spent their whole lives here say they want their land to be kept the way they’ve always known it to be.

Richard Myers was born on Sugar Hill Road in St. George and has lived here all his life.

“Everybody seems to know that something big is going to happen in this area except the people that live here,” Myers said.

He owns around 37 acres, which has the possibility of turning into industrial land.

“All of this that we’re standing on now used to be our farm, but as the years changed... the farm got smaller,” Myers said. “But we still got a farm, and we want to keep it that way. We don’t want a factory sitting in the middle of it or a warehouse.”

Another resident in the area, Barbara Felder, is the sixth generation in her family to live here. Her grandparents and aunt’s home is still on the land.

She was asked what her reaction was when she first saw the Dorchester County rezoning sign down the street.

“We were shocked,” Felder said. “There were no letters or no communication about the changes in our area.”

Felder says she worries about how this rezoning could affect pollution, their roads and access to emergency vehicles.

“We shouldn’t let the county nor the developer to come in our community and tell us what to do as taxpayers and for our future,” Felder said.

Myers says he has no intention of selling his land but knows his taxes will rise if he doesn’t.

“If they want your property, they’re going to get it because they’re going to run your taxes sky high until you say, ‘Enough,’” Myers said. “‘I got to sell it because I can’t pay the taxes.’”

Both of them say they want to be involved with the rezoning process.

“We are tired of explaining and they need to change and not think about the almighty dollar that’s coming into Dorchester County area,” Felder said.

Dorchester County did not respond for a comment because Monday was a holiday. This rezoning still has to go through three readings before it can be approved.

To take a closer look at the official rezoning plan from the county, click here.

Copyright 2023 WCSC. All rights reserved.

DORCHESTER COUNTY, S.C. (WCIV) — Over 30 dogs were seized from a house in St. George today, April 20, after living in terrible conditions.

Dorchester County Sheriff's Office (DCSO) deputies said they escorted animal control to the 290 Smoak Rd. residence due to a history of violence at the location.

While on scene, deputies found a subject with a warrant and detained them.

Read More: Dorchester Paws takes in 50 dogs in seven days; has no room for more

Some dogs were extremely sick, dehydrated, and malnourished. Others just looked scared.

Sadly, some of the dogs they do not expect to make it.

Over 30 dogs were seized from a house in St. George today, April 20, after living in terrible conditions. (WCIV)

"It was something that we have not seen in this county in a long time,” Danielle Zulauf with Dorchester Paws said.

Dogs living in their own filth, locked in small crates inside and outside, and dogs tied to trees with heavy chains. This is the scene Dorchester Paws walked into Thursday morning.

Read More: Dorchester Paws runs out of space for more dogs

"Absolute deplorable conditions, all different sizes, all different breeds,” Zulauf said. "They describe the smell to be where even if they had a mask on, they wouldn't be able to breathe. It was so horrid of a smell.”

According to a press release, the shelter was called to assist, after Dorchester County Sheriff’s Office and Animal Control went to a house with a history of violent incidents.

There they found a subject who had a warrant and dogs living in terrible conditions.

"For them to see dogs with blood coming out of their nose, you know, their lungs, not breathing, right? It's horrible,” Zulauf said.

Sadly, Dorchester Paws does not have room for all of the dogs found. They are asking the public to adopt, foster, or donate.

We do not want any animal to be living in a pop up crate," the shelter wrote in a press release Thursday. "If the public can foster, they can come tomorrow 8am-5pm. Fosters needed for as long as they can commit.

Adoption fees are being waived for dogs who have been at the shelter more than 15 days.

"We need to get the animals that are on our floor right now into homes so we can free up panel space for these 30 plus dogs that just came in. If you can't foster forever, can you foster for the weekend? Can you foster for a week?" Zulauf said.

If you can foster, go to the shelter Friday, April 21st in between 8 A.M. and 5 P.M.

Those interested in donating to Dorchester Paws can do so on the shelter's website.

Read More: Mel's Mutts: Meet Richard

Thanks to law enforcement and Dorchester Paws, some of the pups will have a second chance at life.

"We'll scan them for microchips - we're they somebody else's? We will provide them the vaccinations, all the medical assessments, start them on whatever treatments they need, antibiotics and those things, and then they will be fed and they will put into a kennel,” Zulauf said.

Majority of the dogs need serious medical attention. Some have been found to be in end stage heartworm disease.

"We need resources. We will know after all 33 are medically evaluated we'll know how much it's going to cost to treat them, but I'll tell you right now that our funding does not anticipate moments like this, so we need donors whether it's $1 to whatever you can give right now,” Zulauf said.

Questions surrounding how these dogs were put in these conditions still remain.

"We at this moment do not know if charges will be filed, but we will be looking into everything as the days come,” Zulauf said.

The DCSO says this is an ongoing investigation.

To help, click here.

Rosenwald Schools helped educate Black students in segregated South. Could a national park follow?

ST. GEORGE, S.C. (WCSC/AP) - A part of history in St. George that was set to be bulldozed now has a bright future.

The Rosenwald School in St. George was a building many people may never have been aware of, but it was one of thousands across the south that educated black children during segregation. It opened in 1925 and closed in 1954, eventually falling into an extreme state of disrepair with a caving ceiling, deteriorating floors and chipped, peeling walls.

But a group of former students got together and came up with a plan to save their historic upper Dorchester County school. The newly renovated St. George Rosenwald School will officially become a museum and community center.

It was in schools like the Dorchester County site, and nearly 5,000 others built in the American South a century ago, that Black students largely ignored by whites in power gained an educational foundation through the generosity of a Jewish businessman who could soon be memorialized with a national park.

They are now called Rosenwald Schools in honor of Julius Rosenwald, a part-owner and eventual president of Sears, Roebuck and Co., who teamed up with African American educator and leader Booker T. Washington to create the program to share the expenses of schools for Black children with the community.

There was no public transportation for the school’s students so most had to walk to school except for the lucky few, like Ordie Brown, who caught a ride on a donated bus.

“My father was fortunate enough to buy an old school bus and by getting that bus, I was able to drive that bus from the St. Mark community, bringing children from there, here to this school,” Brown said.

Rosenwald School historian Andrew Feiler says every county in the state had at least one Rosenwald School. Some had up to five. With no public transportation, attempts were made to place the schools in central, accessible locations.

Rosenwald gave $1,500 to each school; the remainder of the cost of each school had to be split between the Black community and local governments. For the Black community, cash, land, material or labor could count as their contribution, Feiler said.

“The leaders of this program reached out to the Black communities of the south and they said, ‘If you would contribute to the schools, because we want you to be a full partner in your progress.’” Feiler said.

Ralph James attended first and second grade at the school and now serves as chairman of the group of seven responsible for restoring the school to repair a caved ceiling, decayed floor and chipped, peeling walls.

“It’s a center of hope. It’s a center of encouragement,” James said. “It inspired us in spite of the odds and challenges we faced.”

The 76-year-old retired municipal judge has made it his life’s goal to restore his old school.

“Education has always been the key to success. Julius Rosenwald gave us that key,” James said.

The six-classroom building will now serve as a museum, historic site, field trip venue and community gathering place for years to come. When visitors walk inside, they will see some of the original floors and some of the original student desks.

The building will feature memorabilia from the school including yearbooks, homemade band uniforms, major red uniforms, and pictures of graduating classes.

State Sen. John Mathews secured $65,000 in state funding while the group raised around $4 million for the project on their own.

“This community came together in a great way to make this project work,” U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn said. “This is the kind of thing that brings people together, and I’m so pleased that they are preserving this history.”

The St. George school was one of the larger ones with six classrooms and an auditorium. Most schools only had one or two classrooms. More than a third of America’s Black children in the first half of the 20th century were educated in a Rosenwald school.

Other Rosenwald schools have been converted into senior centers, town halls, special event venues or restaurants. Many remain recognizable by the careful plans Rosenwald approved. Tall windows oriented to the east and west assured an abundance of natural light and ventilation in rural areas where electricity often didn’t reach until after the Great Depression.

In St. George, the vision isn’t just restoring the school, but providing a sense of the thriving African American neighborhood surrounding it during segregation. Businesses including a grocery store, barber shop and pool hall benefitted the Black community.

Inside the restored school, two classrooms look almost as they did 70 years ago. Another classroom is a public meeting room. The auditorium has been turned into a multipurpose space and will have exhibits detailing the school’s history and hands-on science displays, James said.

“You can feel what it was like just like I did,” he said.

A grand opening is planned for September.

Copyright 2023 WCSC. All rights reserved.

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD)- A Lowcountry native hopes to become the nation’s next big superstar after earning a spot on the hit show, ‘The Voice.’

“When you’re walking up on that stage and those lights go dim, it gets eerie because you don’t hear anything but your own footsteps,” Jamar Langley said.

Langley, 37, took the stage during Monday night’s blind auditions episode and wowed the judges with his rendition of “Try Me” by James Brown.

“It came down to what can I do that’s absolutely different than everyone else to make my voice stand out in this moment and I was like ‘listen I can’t go wrong with “Try Me” by James Brown,” he said. “To be able to actually sing that song and put the arrangement together from beginning to end and then go on stage and really execute that, it was amazing.”

Langley’s soulful audition earned him a two-chair turn from the judges, a feat he said he was determined to achieve.

“I was so hyped, I had to calm down to even talk to them,” he laughed. “It felt so great to have that solidified thing like someone turn around because they love your voice, especially Blake and Chance.”

He ultimately picked rookie coach Chance the Rapper over veteran Blake Shelton.

“I would love to work with Chance because he’s a rapper and it would give a different perspective to what I’m doing,” he said about his decision. “I figured it would be a good fusion of music creative ideas…that’s who I wanted to turn.”

A native of Andrews, S.C. who now lives in Atlanta, Ga., Langley said he grew up around music and started singing in his church choir at age 3. But, he shared that his passion for performing really developed during his teenage years.

“By the time, I was about fourteen or fifteen, I was singing with my brothers…and that’s when I got my footing as far as being an artist and singing in front of people,” he shared. “From that age until now, I’ve never stopped.”

Since appearing on the show, Langley said the response from family and his community has been “overwhelming.”

“To have that type of support is an absolute blessing and I couldn’t ask for better,” he said. “Everyone is so invested and they’ve always been invested in me as an artist but like it’s like on another level now.”

Langley advanced to the battle rounds and said he is ready and excited to represent South Carolina on the national stage.

“It feels so good to be from South Carolina in this moment because no one else is and it just feels good to stand out,” he said. “We deserve to have a superstar in the state.”

Watch his full blind audition:

Season 23 of ‘The Voice’ airs on News 2 from 8-10 p.m. Mondays and 8-9 p.m. Tuesday nights.

ST. GEORGE — Fenced off and covered in tarps while demolition work can be heard taking place from inside, the former homes of The Inn at St. George and the Bicycle Collective are set to be torn down by the city soon.

Over five years after buying the property with an intent to one day see it redeveloped, Marc Mortensen, St. George assistant city manager, told St. George News on Thursday that the city is now moving on that goal.

With demolition set around the end of February, crews are currently going through the old hotel to remove lead asbestos found inside it, as well as the former Bicycle Collective building.

The city will also be back-filling the hotel’s pool and the basement of the other building and covering them over with road base to help keep the dust down, Mortensen said.

Once this is done, the city will be reaching out to developers to see who is interested in developing the property that sits on St. George Boulevard next door to Ancestor Square.

“It’s obviously a prime piece of property in the heart of our downtown area and a great piece of property for development,” Mortensen said.

A mix of retail and a restaurant, or perhaps even a new hotel or some sort of housing could be built there, he said, and also mentioned the possibility for another mixed use development like Joule Plaza or City View, the latter of which is across the street..

The City of St. George bought The Inn at St. George in late 2016 for $1.6 million. Though the city owned the property, it was privately operated for about a year afterward.

Later, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the hotel was converted by the Switchpoint Community Resource Center into a quarantine shelter for homeless individuals who had contracted the coronavirus.

The hotel was originally called the TraveLodge Inn and opened sometime between 1961 and 1972, according to the Washington County Historical Society. It was also known as the Ancestor Inn and St. George Best Inn.

Around the time the city bought the hotel, it was also in the process of buying the neighbor building that once housed the St. George Bicycle Collective. The Collective has since relocated to 39 Bluff St. in St. George.

Before then, it served as the home of an Intermountain Healthcare thrift store that eventually transitioned into the Switchpoint Thrift Store in 2016 and changed locations. Long before that, the building was the site of the Trafalga restaurant which was also served as a Greyhound bus stop for a time.

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