Home Care In Mount Pleasant, SC

There’s no denying the power of movement. Research shows that consistent physical activity improves our health, our mood and even our longevity. But what’s the best exercise for you? The one you’ll stick with, of course. Finding a fitness program that fits your schedule, budget and interests can be a game-changer for how you move your body, so let’s explore some options (both indoors and out) in East Cooper to help you find what works for you.

Indoor Workouts

For people who are self-motivated and have exercise knowledge, choosing a fitness center or full-service gym may be the way to go. These facilities offer traditional exercise equipment accessible via membership as well as personal training opportunities and flexible workout times. Gold’s Gym, Crunch Fitness and Planet Fitness all offer convenient locations and various membership levels, making them an affordable option while still providing amenities such as childcare (select locations), group classes and personal training.

If you feed off the energy of a group or are looking for modern amenities and curated experiences, finding a boutique studio or high-intensity program may prove worthwhile for your lifestyle. HYLO Fitness is consistently voted one of the best fitness studios in Mount Pleasant, and it’s due to the community they’ve created inside their walls. Members rave about their contrasting high-intensity and low-intensity workouts but always mention it’s the environment that keeps them coming back. HOTWORX is open 24/7 and offers guests cutting-edge technology with infrared rooms for your barre, Pilates and yoga workouts, allowing you to burn more calories in a shorter time. If team, circuit-based training is what you’re seeking, F45 and KOR4 both offer strength training in a group format.

For people looking for a low-impact, whole-body approach, yoga may spark your interest. Freedom Studio is a female-founded space that blends yoga, sculpt and even dance into an array of class options designed for everybody. The encouragement and community focus make this a space that’s easy to walk into no matter what your skill level. For a detoxifying experience, hot yoga classes offered at both CorePower Yoga and Powerglow Yoga will have you sweating in the best way. If you’d rather have your toes in the sand and perhaps a private class, Serenity Tree Yoga offers beach yoga and the opportunity to book for your bachelorette party, birthday celebration and more.

To our growing senior adult community, we haven’t forgotten about you either. In fact, there are numerous options for senior adults to get involved and keep their bodies young. Both recreation centers at Daniel Island and Isle of Palms have specific classes for this age group, ensuring their bodies stay active and safe. The Mount Pleasant Senior Center caters to anyone over the age of 50, promoting health and wellness in their facility through classes, the weight room, the aerobics room and even a therapeutic healing garden. The Senior Center provides opportunities to connect with others in a similar season while enjoying the benefits of exercise. If you aren’t ready to attend a senior-only facility, there are gyms throughout the area that offer exclusive senior classes such as the ones at Gold’s Gym and Crunch Fitness.

Outdoor Workouts

Let’s not forget that we can focus on our cardiovascular health without stepping into a studio. The Lowcountry is filled with trails to walk, courts to play on and even creeks to paddle up. When the weather is nice, we can enjoy the beauty of our great town while still reaping the benefits of movement. Grab a friend and go for a beach walk or rent a kayak or paddleboard to explore the waterways. The trick is intentionality. Add ‘walk the Ravenel’ to your calendar and invite a friend.

As summer winds down and our fall routines begin, now’s the time to find an exercise plan that interests you and fits your lifestyle. Various locations offer a free first class or an introductory rate, making this intentional commitment to movement more accessible. Find a place that you want to keep coming back to and make the call today.

By Katie Finch

A photo of Coakley Chapel from the roadside in Mount Pleasant. Aug. 7, 2025. (WCIV)

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (WCIV) — The Coakley Chapel, a cherished community meeting and prayer spot in Mount Pleasant's Hamlin Beach, has been saved from potential development, marking a significant victory for preservationists and local residents.

Myra Snipe-Richardson highlighted the chapel's historical significance, saying, "Mr. Sam Coakley-- he started it off actually in the early 1900s as a school house, a prayer house, just a center for the community to gather."

Since its inception, the building has served as the spiritual and secular heart of the Hamlin Beach community.

MORE ON REDEVELOPMENT | "Mt. P. Towne Centre redevelopment: Owners concerned for future of Belk and Theater spaces."

Sam Seawell of the Lowcountry Land Trust explained the efforts to preserve the chapel, stating, "We had the opportunity to protect that and work with the community to preserve that space for them."

The Lowcountry Land Trust, with the support of Hamlin Beach residents, purchased the property from previous landowners. Funding was provided by Charleston County's Greenbelt Program, the South Carolina Conservation Bank, and private donors. Ownership will soon be transferred to the community.

Snipe-Richardson expressed gratitude for the preservation efforts, saying, "They gave us the opportunity to bring it back to the community and protect it and preserve it."

The chapel and its surrounding land have been the "heart" of the neighborhood for over a century. Recently, a fall festival and community clean-up were held on the property, underscoring its continued importance.

Reflecting on the chapel's resilience, Snipe-Richardson noted, "And just tell the story of how we survive even Hurricane Hugo. This building was a pivotal point for Hurricane Hugo relief."

Looking to the future, Seawell shared plans for the site, saying, "Beyond the building you know--- it's going to be a publicly accessible park. It's going to have trails. It's going to have a recreational fishing pond."

However, revitalizing the building and its surroundings will require community support.

"We will definitely need donations. We will need volunteer work. We will need help to get the community center up and running as soon as possible," said Snipe-Richardson.

The community aims to have the building restored in time for next year's celebration of its 145th anniversary.

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. —

An Asian longhorned beetle has been detected at a shopping center in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, according to the Clemson University Department of Plant Industry (DPI).

The infestation was detected on Aug. 24 by two off-duty DPI inspectors who saw suspicious insect damage on maple trees consistent with ALB and followed up.

Clemson DPI and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Plant and Animal Inspection Service are collaborating to determine the extent of the infestation. They will announce an official quarantine area in the coming weeks.

The department is now asking residents, arborists, construction site contractors and debris management companies in this area to refrain from moving certain hardwood tree debris, including maple, from Mount Pleasant.Officials are asking home and business owners to cooperate by giving the DPI and USDA inspectors property access as they conduct surveys to determine the extent of the infestation.

Private contractors working within Mount Pleasant should coordinate with the South Carolina Asian Longhorned Beetle Cooperative Eradication Program to determine how hardwoods can be properly deregulated and disposed of to ensure infested material doesn’t spread and eradication efforts remain effective.

The Mount Pleasant detection comes amid a five-year, multifront battle against the insect in Hollywood, S.C.

“It’s difficult to know how the insects ended up in Mt. Pleasant,” said Steven Long, assistant director of Clemson Regulatory Services, who oversees DPI. “It’s frustrating that invasive insects can move in several ways, including on humans, vehicles, equipment, firewood, woody debris or on packing material from international goods.”

The Asian longhorned beetle, Anoplophora glabripennis, is a wood-boring beetle that threatens various hardwood trees, including maple, elm, willow, sycamore, poplar and birch. It is not a pest of the oak or pine species that are more abundant in South Carolina.

As the beetle bores into the tree, it interrupts the flow of life-giving sap and weakens it, ultimately killing it. Infested trees can also become safety hazards, since branches can drop and trees can fall over, especially during storms.

South Carolina was the sixth state to detect an Asian longhorned beetle infestation. The pest has been eradicated from New Jersey and Illinois; eradication efforts are ongoing in New York, Massachusetts and Ohio with guidance from the APHIS Asian Longhorned Beetle Eradication Program.

In addition to allowing state and federal inspectors access to property to survey for the pest, residents in the town of Mount Pleasant and in surrounding Charleston County communities are encouraged to also help by looking for the beetle and examining the trees on their property for damage that the beetles may cause.

“The number one thing we need is access to property in the inspection area,” Long said. “Survey crews will be operating in the area as we determine the extent of the infestation. Landowners’ cooperation ensures this pest doesn’t establish a foothold.

“The second thing we need is for people to help us look,” he said. “Our inspectors are experienced in examining the tree for signs of the beetles’ presence, but the more eyes we have looking for the insect and the more obvious damage it causes, the more likely we are to find it.”

The Asian longhorned beetle is shiny black with small, white spots on its body and abnormally long antennae. Adult beetles can grow an inch and a half long.

The beetle’s larvae feed by tunneling under the tree bark, where they live through the winter, forming feeding galleries in the trunk and branches. They chew their way out when mature, creating round holes about 3/8 inch in diameter.

Signs of infestation could include:

South Carolinians who believe they have found infested trees may report it online at https://clemson.edu/alb, by email at [email protected] by calling DPI at 843-973-8329.

Mount Pleasant Town Council members likely comforted themselves last week with the belief that they complied with the state's Freedom of Information Act, when, after meeting privately with town lawyers and transportation staff for almost 45 minutes, they took a public vote to urge their attorney to "proceed as discussed in executive session."

And council might well have complied with the law — but only on a technicality. And it certainly violated the public's trust.

State law allows public bodies to meet in executive session to receive legal advice under certain circumstances that are far too easy to exploit — and this might have been one of those well-exploited circumstances. State law also prohibits public bodies from taking votes in executive session; any action must be taken in open session, along with an explanation of the action. Unspecified action "as discussed in executive session" hardly meets the requirement. The technicality that makes the vote possibly legal is that depending on what the attorney was directed to do, it's not clear any vote was needed. In other words, the whole thing could have been for show, to assure voters that the council was doing something.

Although there's something offensive about a council going through such a charade, the bigger problem is that South Carolina's anemic Freedom of Information Act even allows such discussions to be held behind closed doors.

It's one thing for a government to get legal advice in private when its attorney is trying to negotiate the best deal with a property owner whose land it wants to purchase. It's quite another matter when the attorney is advising the council on how to handle what might become a legal dispute with another government over a matter of public policy.

There is nothing about public policy debates that should be held in secret. And here it's notable that while the open meetings law doesn't prohibit secret legal briefings on matters of public policy, the body that wrote that law — the Legislature — does not receive secret legal briefings on the constitutionality of legislation it's considering; it holds those briefings in public. It should require the same of other governing bodies.

What was being discussed in this case — whether to try to sabotage a long-agreed-to plan by Charleston County to widen S.C. Highway 41 at the northern end of town — is the epitome of a public policy decision the public needs to know about.

After years of difficult discussions and compromises, Charleston County has settled on a plan to widen S.C. Highway 41 from two lanes to four — but only to three lanes through the historic Phillips Community, an African American settlement area created shortly after the Civil War. To make this compromise work, the county plans to run a spur from Highway 41 through the edge of Laurel Hill County Park to link up with Park West Boulevard.

During the past month, however, Town Council has voiced concerns about the spur, to the point that it is discussing pulling the town's consent. Such a move could unravel the $245 million expansion project, sending it back to the drawing board and undermining the public's confidence in the county's ability to deliver on major road projects just as the county prepares to ask voters next year to extend a transportation sales tax for such work.

The public should know which Town Council members support this scenario and which do not — and their reasons.

The fact that a government may legally discuss something in executive session doesn't mean it must — or even that it should.

One reason to go behind closed doors is for council members to hide their positions from those who elect them. The other is to hide their legal strategy from another branch of government. The latter suggests they have no idea what the purpose of governments — and especially neighboring governments — is. Hint: It's about serving the public, which in the case of these two governments involves a huge overlap.

Mount Pleasant Mayor Will Haynie has said the town's actions are not an attempt to widen 41 to four lanes through the Phillips Community but instead are meant to encourage the county to review its traffic modeling, and perhaps determine that this new road through Laurel Hill isn't needed. But the county says without the spur, the project won't work. County Councilman Herb Sass (whose district covers part of Mount Pleasant) summed it up correctly: “The best alternative we have right now is the plan, the compromise plan. No better plan has been presented."

CHARLESTON — Belk is clapping back about changes being proposed for Mount Pleasant Towne Centre as the oldest and largest anchor tenant — and the department store operator isn’t mincing words.

The Charlotte-based retail icon's name and financial status have come up repeatedly as Continental Realty Corp. seeks to shore up future plans for the property it's owned since 2020.

The Baltimore firm and a Charleston-based investment partner are seeking approval that would allow them to include housing, office space and other diverse real estate uses, if, by chance, Belk or the nearby Palmetto Grande theater move out unexpectedly.

The hitch is that the changes require town officials to amend the original development agreement that was approved in the late 1990s.

When the plans went back before the Mount Pleasant Planning Committee on Aug. 4, representatives of Belk's management showed up in force.

And they insisted the company isn’t going anywhere.

Sarah Eck, the manager of the Mount Pleasant store, expressed frustration that the company wasn’t looped in earlier in the process. She said she was "shocked" and “equally disappointed” that plans and applications were introduced publicly without Belk’s input.

Eck also reminded officials that the retailer has operated for 27 years as a legacy tenant in East Cooper's largest retail destination and has paid “millions" in taxes and other financial contributions "to the Mount Pleasant community.”

Belk also holds long-term leases for both its main department store and its smaller nearby men's outlet, with options that allows them to remain at Towne Centre until 2043 and 2053, said Janet Smith, senior vice president of strategic initiatives.

She also sought to correct public misconceptions and online rumors that Belk is in receivership, a likely reference to the company’s quickly resolved 2021 bankruptcy and a subsequent debt restructuring last year.

“We've met all our obligations at Towne Centre,” Smith said. “We're financially strong, and we are not in bankruptcy.”

She further noted that the owners of the 510,000-square-foot shopping center don’t have the legal right to move forward with most of the new uses they've submitted to the town.

“First, in our lease, new construction is only allowed in the existing building areas or other specified permitted building areas. Building in most of the parking lots, sidewalks, drive lanes or green space is not permitted,” Smith said.

She added that the real estate agreement "limits almost all building heights to 35 feet,” while the new plans call for taller structures of about 55 feet.

Smith said the lease restrictions “were carefully negotiated” years ago to support Belk’s original decision to open a full-service store at Towne Centre. At the time, the terms were aligned with the Mount Pleasant's retail-focused zoning goals, she added.

“Belk respectfully asks that any approved plans be realistic and feasible, and the current one is not,” Smith said. “It does more harm by publicly outlining a speculative contingency that may never occur than it would if the owner simply returned to the town when redevelopment is actually needed.”

Rob Nickel, Belk's regional vice president for the South Carolina coastal region and a Mount Pleasant resident, said that adding housing to the shopping center would alter the character of the retail property.

He also dismissed oft-cited concerns about a large space that's been empty at Towne Center since Bed Bath & Beyond closed more than a year ago. The overall vacancy rate remains low and within national averages, Nickel said.

No pushing

Continental Realty attorney Jay Claypoole and the chief executive officer of The Beach Co., which disclosed that it's an investor in the property, each countered Belk’s pushback.

Claypoole said his client isn’t looking to push any tenants out. Rather, it's acting as a “responsible property owner” by planning ahead for contingencies to protect its $147 million investment.

He added that it was “sort of striking" for Belk to claim it was surprised to learn about Continental Realty's plan, "which has been working its way" through town channels for several years while generating "plenty of press along the way.”

The Beach Co. CEO John Darby said the shopping center ownership group needs to update its long-term strategy as times change, just as Mount Pleasant's government does.

“Do you want Towne Centre to thrive or do you want to turn your back on it and let it fail?” he asked.

Darby also stressed that his family-owned Charleston-based real estate firm considers the property a legacy investment. The lifelong Mount Pleasant resident added he regularly shops at Belk and was probably wearing a pair of pants he bought from the retailer.

"We welcome (Belk) to continue to do business at Towne Centre as long as they follow their lease,” Darby said. “And we intend to follow the lease as well."

He also addressed speculation that Belk is in financial distress.

"We can't control, shockingly, what goes on social media or even the public's opinion," Darby said.

Next step?

The planning committee did not make any recommendations because there weren't enough voting members present at the meeting.

The town has until December to make a decision, according to planning director Michele Reed. Otherwise, the proposals will need to be refiled, and the process will start over from scratch.

Councilman Howard Chapman said near the end of the meeting that the town "may have erred" previously by not "getting the information from Belk on where they were coming from."

He added the "best thing for all of us" would be for the retailer, the landlord and the town work together.

After the meeting, Continental Realty said in a statement from chief executive officer JM Shapiro that it never intended to single Belk out, and that the property owners "continue to monitor the operating status of each ... tenant,” with an emphasis on the large spaces that can be more challenging to backfill.

“It is in the best interests of ownership, the current tenant mix and the local community for Belk to succeed at the Towne Centre, and we will continue to uphold landlord's obligations under the lease,” Shapiro said. “Our plan is designed to attract more residents, office tenants and visitors to Towne Centre to maintain its position as a thriving and walkable destination.”