Charleston Offers $1M to Settle 20-Year Longborough Park Dispute

The City of Charleston is offering $1 million to the Longborough Owner’s Association to settle a near 20-year battle over a piece of riverfront land. The deal, detailed during an Oct. 26 Committee on Real Estate meeting, would see the city acquire roughly 70 to 80 percent of Longborough Park, including its crabbing dock, to ensure the area is open to the general public. This move marks the latest attempt to resolve a dispute that has shifted from the courtroom to the park gates and back again since 2006.

For the residents of the Wagner Terrace neighborhood and the broader Charleston peninsula, this is about a dispute over who has access to the park on the Ashley River. If this agreement holds, it ends a cycle of lawsuits, failed promises, and “No Trespassing” signs that have defined the Longborough shoreline.

A Million Dollar Split of the Shoreline

The proposed arrangement is a strategic carve-out. According to Malena Dinwoodie, the city’s real estate management director, the Longborough Owner’s Association would be responsible for subdividing the property. The city would take the area to the right of a proposed boundary line—while the association would retain the remaining portion to the left.

To get the ball rolling, the city is putting up $25,000 in earnest money. Dinwoodie noted that these funds would be used in part for the survey work necessary to redraw the property lines. However, the city has built in a safety valve: if the deal falls through, that $25,000 returns to the municipal coffers.

The stakes for the homeowners are equally specific. The association intends to use the redrawn line to build a private dock on their retained portion of the land. This creates a clear “win-win” on paper—the public gets the park and the crabbing dock, and the residents get their own exclusive water access. But the deal is fragile. The city will walk away if the association fails to get a subdivision plat approved within six months or cannot secure the necessary permits for that private dock.

Charleston Offers $1M to Settle 20-Year Longborough Park Dispute — Photo: yahoo.com

Two Decades of Legal Deadlocks

To understand why the city is now writing a seven-figure check, you have to look at the wreckage of previous attempts to solve this. The conflict began in earnest in 2006 when the homeowners association sued the property’s developer, The Beach Company. At the time, the public was already using the park, but the association claimed the developer had told them the land was private and pointed to the fact that they were paying property taxes on the site.

The city tried the “nuclear option” in 2015. Under then-Joe Riley, Charleston voted to acquire the property through eminent domain. Riley argued that an oral agreement made with The Beach Company in 2001 had designated the land and crabbing dock for public use. That strategy failed. A circuit judge ruled in 2015 that the park was, in fact, owned by the homeowners association.

The aftermath was swift and exclusionary. By 2017, the association had placed “No Trespassing” signs at the entrance, effectively locking out the public from a space they had frequented for years. A 2019 attempt to compromise—a $500,000 plan to build two separate docks, one public and one private—simply never materialized.

The Tension Between Private Equity and Public Good

From the association’s perspective, they were paying taxes on land they believed was theirs; from the city’s perspective, a riverfront asset was being hoarded by a few.

By paying $1 million, the city is essentially buying back a public right that it believed it already had via a handshake deal.

“The property and the crabbing dock would be used as a public park that would be accessible to everybody,” Dinwoodie said.

The Final Hurdle

The path forward now depends on a surveyor’s map and a permit office. The Committee on Real Estate has approved the proposal to submit the offer, but the clock is ticking on that six-month window for the subdivision plat.

If the paperwork clears, the “No Trespassing” signs will finally come down. If it doesn’t, Charleston will have added another failed attempt to a near twenty-year ledger of disappointment, leaving the Ashley River shoreline divided by a red line that no one can agree on.

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