Renaissance is the prime consultant leading Phase II of the Lowcountry Rapid Transit (LCRT) TOD project in Charleston, North Carolina for the Berkely-Charleston-Dorchester Council of Governments (BCDCOG). Over the course of a year and a half, Renaissance is working together with subconsultants SB Friedman Development Advisors, YBE Kinard public engagement specialists, Toole Design, and Stantec to analyze trends, catalyze actions, and provide a robust future plan of action for successful TOD to support LCRT in the Charleston area. As part of this work, Renaissance has convened a group of 30 diverse stakeholders to come together as a TOD Advisory Committee to help inform the project work, and to carry it forward as implementors and advocates. The team has held focus group meetings with a variety of stakeholders to discuss the potential and understand specific challenges and is preparing for a robust round of community engagement to better understand the localized issues and opportunities. Renaissance is in the process of creating a tool to track the success of equitable TOD goals in the region and is working with key stakeholders to understand the most meaningful measures of success to track. The team is also working with North Charleston and Charleston to understand the current code and policy environment, and to provide a model code and policy toolkit the cities can use as a roadmap going forward. See BCDCOG’s explanatory “What is TOD?” video created and produced by Renaissance here.

In Phase I, Renaissance led the TOD visioning, strategic plan, and design of 18 station areas to ensure long-term development inspired by community development and ridership goals with a robust public outreach process. This phase of the project also involved an analytical and design process element utilizing CityEngine software and multimodal accessibility analyses to identify TOD place types in different corridor-based scenarios for evaluation against ridership and community development goals. From the corridor-level analysis, the team created station area design plans and a TOD implementation toolkit inclusive of recommended policies, regulations, public-private partnerships, multimodal infrastructure, and urban design guidelines that the local government partners and the private sector can use to build TOD over the next several decades.