In Charleston, Historic Black Park Space Is Losing to Luxury Homes

All that the developers known as The Gathering at Morris Square LLC have been trying to do is build some nice homes near downtown Charleston. They’ve already started planting three- and four-bedroom houses near Dereef Park, a somewhat troubled green space nested near the mostly African-American neighborhoods of Cannonborough and Radcliffeborough. That park is a prime cut of real estate on the downtown Charleston peninsula, where property values have risen steadily over the past decades because people want to live near the water.

But the developers can’t seem to shake a group of residents called Friends of Dereef Park, who want it to remain a park, and who want to preserve the civil rights history and heritage of the land. The resident group filed a lawsuit in 2013 challenging the validity of the housing-development contracts.