(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Community Wins Lawsuit Against SC Developer Who took amenities & killed New Urbanist Civil Life [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-11 I'On Community Stewcook, 2013. This tradition ended like so many others, a years ago. The SC Supreme Court vindicated the right of people who build community to rely on the promises of the men who call themselves developers and to strip them of millions when they cheat and lie last week. Julia and I, helped found the I’On Community when we left the City of Charleston and bought our home there. Over the next ten years, we and many other people (some of exceptional talent) built I’Onissimo! Which for ten years performed Chamber Music and on accession presented the community with it’s own Symphony Orchestra. Over 100 concerts were presented, all free and open to the public. For 13 years we cooked a 40 gallon stone soup style stew over a holiday weekend. All were welcome to eat. We held community markets on the square where the music included Opera and Jimmy Buffett on the same night, by the same singer. The Late Mary Smith, our transit fairy, fighting for the BRT with style We held pond polo matches in our lake, a sort of soccer game played with people in Kayaks. We had a lecture series consisting of our own authors, poets, and creators. We had our own art shows. There were mornings when we watched bicycle races down our street that reached speeds of 30 miles an hour while munching on Orange Walnut Muffins and sipping Champaign Kiers as if we stood on the platforms of the Palatine Hills watching our chariot drivers hurl themselves against each other in the Circus Maximus below. For a moment, here and there, we had heaven in our hands. Its loss cannot be remembered without tears. I received the community’s first Civitas Award for visionary community leadership. Vince Graham helped hand it to me. Paradise was turned into a Parking lot by the developer of our Community Vince Graham and his even viler father, who had the money. When their Mixon development in N. Charleston failed (after destroying the section 8 homes of hundreds of vulnerable families in 2005) they began an ultimately successful effort to sell the Community’s waterfront, boat ramp and community building to on of our neighbors, who with the assistance of other neighbors finally completed the transaction. The Town of Mount Pleasant was deaf to our pleas for help because our HOA board had been compromised. This precious building and it’s unmatched location, with the widest porch in the Lowcountry slipped from our control, the only indoor meeting space in the community. Had we merely been robbed of real estate worth millions of dollars, it would have been of little import. After all we still had our music, our poetry, and our bright mornings cheering the racers with cowbells and mimosas. We could put a Shakespeare play on in the rain and remain seated to see it through to the final scene in the rain wearing ponchos. We were I’Onians. Our dreams, shared by so many visitors, were waterproof. However, the realization that Vince Graham and his father had compromised the leadership of our community wounded us. We believed ourselves worthy and capable of protecting what we loved. Now we knew the man who built our community had cheated us and all he said, which we believe and made real, was in his head, a lie. We knew we had neighbors who would help him cheat us for money. We learned we had an HOA that would not defend our rights and a Town which would turn and look the other way. In a few years all the wonderful things we had taught ourselves to do, this magnificent uphill climb against the disintegration of American community collapsed bit by bit. It broke Julia and I’s heart. All the people who had told us building a real new neighborhood full of art, culture and community was another of our delusional enterprises were right. We, who had for moments stood in the dazzling light of hope for better things were wrong. To my shame, I was too debilitated by grief and shame, to act decisively. Transit Advocacy in Summerville, SC I’On was not without guilt. We were silent when the homes of the poor in N. Charleston were annihilated by a man who used the example of our community which he had developed to justify his action in attempting to gentrify their community. We stood by while their modest possessions were dumped in the streets and their homes bulldozed, We were happy to believe the professionally facilitated lie that they had assistance in finding new places to live. I knew some of them ended up living under the interstate. Most of that land stands empty now, over 15 years later. We were powerful enough to stop Graham from committing what was, by our assent, our original sin and the mother of our own loss. It was his loses at Mixon which motivated him to fraudulently sell the Creek Club and waterfront. Living in post 9-11 America without a regular diet of antidepressants can break the strength of even those who consider themselves brave. I do not believe I would have done better had a taken the pills. Thankfully others within I’On did act. A handful of neighbors filed a homeowner’s derivative suit against the developer and the Homeowner’s Association. They labored through 13 long years of struggle and reversals. There was a mistrial. The Homeowner’s association finally decided to change sides, probably in hopes of hiding some of their embarrassment. There was a weeklong Jury trial. The homeowners won conclusively. A jury of 12 ordinary people, most of whom could not afford a home in I’On, evidently valued our dream as well. My wife Julia, mother of our community’s music, attempted to watch that trial but Vince Graham’s lawyers had her barred from the courtroom She came home. Vince Graham appealed. The Court of appeals affirmed the jury verdict. Graham demanded a rehearing. Inexplicably the SC Court of Appeals reversed itself and the trail court. Julia was already dead. There was no more music to play. I went home to throw up. My neighbors, who to their infinite credit, seem in some important way to be tougher than I, appealed to the SC Supreme Court. Last week the conclusive and in brutal detail, reversed the Court of Appeals, reinstated the Jury’s verdict, and granted judgement against Graham for over a million dollars. Every person who owns a home in the State of South Carolina should read every page of this Supreme Court Opinion. https://www.sccourts.org/opinions/HTMLFiles/SC/28134.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0aia8OqnylVnDi0EQVpXeamIU7Bq2gqAav8GYmB7nwhtyPm7W6KAZUQng In this Opinion, you will find a warning of how you might be cheated and a roadmap of the bleak landscape ahead to reclaim some of what you neighborhood has lost. Our state is full of developers promising community and the theft of property promised for community amenities is common. Since most government entities in South Carolina reserve accountability and punishment for malfunctions of the poor and grant immunity to anyone who owns a tie and suit, your only hope is to spot problems early and act decisively. The I’On Community may never offer another I’Onissimo! Concert or outdoor Shakespeare play. Vince Graham and his father still claim parts of our community I am sure they long to steal. After exhausting the number of lots they were entitled to subdivide, they still have acres of undeveloped land within our neighborhood. They’ve already been trying to make deals to monetize it, making another set of likely to be broken promises as part of the deal while having some of my neighbors working for them on the QT to get their pitch to work. We shall have to fight them for the remainder of our lives to preserve less than what we have lost. Fightng to prevent public transit funding form being misappriated. We have learned much. If you read this opinion, you can learn much to. It is my community’s last gift to our fellow citizens, the final fruit of our misguided hope that some new urbanist new Jerusalem might have been builded in Mount Pleasant. Julia lived that hymn. She kept Blakes words in her heart. I have not given up. I continue to work to see that the Lowcountry’s long promised, voted approved and now taxpayer funded rapid transit system is built instead of having it’s funding misappropriated for sprawl inducing road construction as leader of Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit. I helped win the referendum in 2016 and unlike Vince Graham, the promises I made to others to fight to see that the money was not stolen will be kept. I am working to help build community as part of the Emergence (Local Burning Man) community, which will hold it’s forth festival this April. If you think founding the new Jerusalem in I’On seemed improbable, watch me try to help create community with 600 fire hippies and trance techno music in the woods where people sometimes take their clothes off, even me. I am involved in the efforts to help create community in N. Charleston and defend the little town of Lincolnville. On Valentine’s day, since the woman I love is now a box of ashes in the ground, I will take the warning and reminder of this legal victory to the public comment period at the meeting of Mount Pleasant Town Council at 6 pm. Perhaps next time they will defend a neighborhood when it’s citizens plead for. It. I have spoken too much of myself and how I feel in this, but you may be assured that every bit of music, ever sweet Mimosa and every sparking moment of our joy was achieved with the help and support of many others. I was happy to follow many of them, too numerous to name. At their best, they sometimes presented me with dreams I never saw until they placed them, like one of Steve’s apple martini’s in my hands. I’On’s story has not ended. People are now considering where we should go from here. Much of the talent which set those bright years now long ago on fire have moved on. Cynthia and Dave went to Boulder. Steve left for Miami, capital of the Americas. The Ballisters, who fired up our neighborhood radio station, AM1640 returned to Virginia where community theater means doing plays, not endless fundraising. Others have gone to heaven. Our effort is now so weak and flawed that some of our children choose to kill themselves. We clutch our pill bottles and close our eyes. A rare and also fleeting win, Bus service to the beach in SC We will see it to the end, but from our struggles, worries and discontents, you may learn. Trust no one who can make money by monetizing your dreams and making off with the cash behind your back. Watch the people who show up after the property values begin to skyrocket because of your efforts. They no not worship your Gods. They make nothing that matters and bank all they can. Finally and most of all, should you be one of those lucky souls who has the chance to bask in the rare and momentary blaze of some shared dream of community, burn those memories into your heart. Hold that joy close and hard with the ones you love. Validate their contributions. Celebrate their gifts. Pour out the champaign on those bright mornings without stint. Rattle the cowbells when your champions blaze down your street. When the Mozart String Quartet or Sousa March dissolves into silence, stand, applaud, and cheer. Forgive the missed notes. Honor the love. In post Trump (and hopefully not pre Trump again America) shared dreams struggle to live. Money defines value now. Money kills shared love the way Covid ruins the week after a good dinner party. Fight for the dreams which created community. Treasure them. Be warned that even with the best of efforts, validated by your States highest court and frosted with an award of over a million dollars, that you might find yourself on a rainy Saturday morning in February with memories that bring joy and grief together. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/11/2152416/-Community-Wins-Lawsuit-Against-SC-Developer-Who-took-amenities-killed-New-Urbanist-Civil-Life Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/