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By Casey L. Taylor, JD

Tucked away near Summerville, SC – the place known as “Flowertown, USA” – is a sanctuary dedicated to gibbons (small apes). It’s a jungle-like wonderland that has lifesaving at the core of its mission.

The International Primate Protection League (IPPL) sanctuary is a secret to many locals. It is situated on over 40 acres of land surrounded by lush woods. Neighbors are lucky enough to hear the songs and great calls of these interesting primates throughout the day and night.

The sanctuary is home to 36 gibbons, the smallest of the apes, who have been rescued or retired from laboratories, deplorable “roadside” attractions, or the pet trade. IPPL provides lifetime care to these incredible endangered species and works to educate the community on the plight of gibbons in the wild.

The gibbon residents at the sanctuary have indoor night houses that are hurricane-grade, expansive outdoor habitats, and aerial walkways that give them the choice to safely move about their designated areas as they wish. It is important to the organization that each sanctuary resident is given as much freedom of choice as possible in a captive environment, while keeping them safe. Despite most residents having a rough start to their lives, they thrive at IPPL. They even have some residents nearing the age of 60!

International Outreach

IPPL is a grassroots nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and preserving the world’s remaining primates, great and small. For the last 45 years, IPPL has made a global impact by securing an export ban on primates from Thailand (saving thousands and thousands of lives) and working with over 20 reputable primate rescue and rehabilitation centers in Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America.

IPPL not only supports their efforts to care for native primates who have been rescued and are in need of rehabilitation or lifetime care, but also to thwart poachers and illegal wildlife traffickers, as well as educate local villages and communities on how they can help be part of the solution in preserving native populations of primates.

Small Team, Big Impact

With a small but mighty team of animal caregivers, maintenance technicians, office staff, and dog nannies, IPPL provides compassionate lifetime care for every resident, which includes nutritious and delicious fresh produce three times a day for the gibbons, as well as veterinary care and enrichment — to stimulate those intelligent minds of theirs!

Forms of enrichment vary from food puzzles that the gibbon must figure out in order to get their healthy treats, to special time with their favorite caregiver. Bubble-blowing is a big hit with some of the gibbons. Tong, who was one of the first four original residents at the sanctuary, loves a good foot rub — what girl doesn’t?

Absolutely nothing beats a life in the wild, but for these residents that is sadly not a reality. The team at IPPL feels that the least they can do is make the rest of these individuals’ lives the happiest and healthiest they can be. From residents used in invasive human vaccination studies and locomotion tests, to those kept in less-than-favorable conditions, IPPL’s sanctuary is a safe and loving place for them to thrive and to live as gibbons should.

Casey L. Taylor, JD is the Executive Director of IPPL.

MORE ABOUT IPPL

The sanctuary is not open to the public as an attraction, but it holds educational events in the community and offers options to visit during special times. Sign up to receive their e-newsletters on their website (www.ippl.org) and be the first to know about opportunities and events.

After 37 years, the last Mr. K’s Piggly Wiggly in the Charleston area closed over the weekend and now has a new owner.

David Smith of Goose Creek, who owns three other Piggly Wiggly supermarkets in the region, took over the 26,000-square-foot supermarket at 404 N. Cedar St. in Summerville from the Kersting family, who founded Mr. K’s in the early 1980s. Terms were not disclosed.

It is scheduled to reopen as Piggly Wiggly at 9 a.m. Wednesday.

Another Mr. K’s at Knightsville Crossing Shopping Center on Central Avenue south of Summerville closed in 2017, citing competition from the newly built Walmart Neighborhood Market across the street as the main reason. Publix also operates a supermarket near the former site.

Former grocery-anchored shopping center near Charleston getting makeover, new tenants

Smith on Tuesday called the latest acquisition for his growing store count of independent Piggly Wiggly supermarkets “the right opportunity.”

All 75 former Mr. K’s employees will stay on, and store hours could be expanded from the current 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. to one hour later “once everything is converted over,” Smith said. The store will be open seven days a week.

The supermarket is opening a little later on Wednesday to make sure everything is in order, he said. A grand opening event may be scheduled later.

Smith owns Piggly Wiggly stores in Hollywood, West Ashley and Holly Hill. He acquired the West Ashley store, a former Bi-Lo, on Skylark Drive last year and the Holly Hill store two months ago.

He wants to own up to six stores eventually and said the latest purchase gets him closer to that goal.

“If the right opportunity comes along, I will consider it,” Smith said of future purchases.

On its Facebook page, the former owner of Mr. K’s thanked the Summerville community for supporting the store for nearly four decades.

“It has been our pleasure to serve you, our customers, for the past 37 years,” the posting reads. “So many thoughtful comments and fond memories have been shared with all of us.”

A decades-old Lowcountry truck terminal was idled this summer by a high-profile business failure, its owner running on fumes.

It’s poised to rev back to life.

The former Yellow Corp. depot between Rivers Avenue and Interstate 26 in North Charleston and two others in South Carolina are among the properties that onetime rivals of the fallen company and other opportunistic buyers snapped up at a U.S. Bankruptcy Court auction in Delaware.

The sales, totaling about $1.9 billion for about 75 percent of the roughly 180 freight yards and service centers that went on the block, were approved last week.

The other Palmetto State sites changing hands are in West Columbia and Piedmont, southwest of Greenville.

Yellow’s remaining real estate holdings are still in play, including a recently shuttered terminal in Florence.

The North Charleston depot had been in business since at least 1967, when it was run by a familiar name in the tractor-trailer business: Roadway Express.

Twenty years ago Nashville-based Yellow eased into the fast lane. It acquired Roadway for $1.05 billion in December 2003 and became the No. 3 player in the U.S. logistic industry’s “less-than-truckload” niche, which specializes in moving smaller loads for multiple customers within a single trailer.

Some two decades on, Yellow was broken down on the side of the road. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in August after years of financial struggles and $1.3 billion in debt, not including its unsecured liabilities.

The collapse marked the biggest-ever failure of a U.S. trucking business. It was more than noteworthy that just three years earlier Yellow had received $700 million in pandemic-era loans from the U.S. government to keep it afloat.

Rather than try to fix the financial wear and tear, the fallen 99-year-old trucking icon known for its cheap rates decided instead to shut down and sell its real estate, rigs and other assets to repay creditors.

A 14-year-old fitness site that changed brands in 2015 is now dark in Mount Pleasant.

Pivotal Fitness shuttered the 41,000-square-foot gym it operates at 627 Johnnie Dodds Blvd. in the Plaza at East Cooper Shopping Center on Friday, and movers were loading up the workout equipment into large moving vans Tuesday.

Discount grocer Aldi anchors a space near the opposite end of the 102,000-square-foot retail center.

Co-owner Michelle Berrard said the gear is being transferred to Pivotal’s recently upgraded Park West location at 3301 Stockdale St. about 8 miles away in northern Mount Pleasant.

All memberships will be honored at the Park West site, she said.

Berrard pointed to the coronavirus as playing a part in the move along with high rent. She said the gym’s lease was coming up for renewal, so the owners decided to consolidate operations elsewhere to save money.

The facility operated as ECO Fitness after opening in 2007. After Pivotal took over six years ago, the gym expanded into a former retail space next door.

Pivotal operates 24-hour locations in downtown Charleston and in Hanahan and Knightsville. Its other gyms are in Summerville and West Ashley.

A new tenant has not been lined up for the now-empty fitness site, but Steve Radekopf of Radekopf & Associates, who handles leasing for the shopping center, said plans are in the works to create small retail spaces across the front with the possibility of a smaller gym operating in part of the site.

All plans are preliminary and subject to change, he added.

A decades-old Lowcountry truck terminal was idled this summer by a high-profile business failure, its owner running on fumes.

It’s poised to rev back to life.

The former Yellow Corp. depot between Rivers Avenue and Interstate 26 in North Charleston and two others in South Carolina are among the properties that onetime rivals of the fallen company and other opportunistic buyers snapped up at a U.S. Bankruptcy Court auction in Delaware.

The sales, totaling about $1.9 billion for about 75 percent of the roughly 180 freight yards and service centers that went on the block, were approved last week.

The other Palmetto State sites changing hands are in West Columbia and Piedmont, southwest of Greenville.

Yellow’s remaining real estate holdings are still in play, including a recently shuttered terminal in Florence.

The North Charleston depot had been in business since at least 1967, when it was run by a familiar name in the tractor-trailer business: Roadway Express.

Twenty years ago Nashville-based Yellow eased into the fast lane. It acquired Roadway for $1.05 billion in December 2003 and became the No. 3 player in the U.S. logistic industry’s “less-than-truckload” niche, which specializes in moving smaller loads for multiple customers within a single trailer.

Some two decades on, Yellow was broken down on the side of the road. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in August after years of financial struggles and $1.3 billion in debt, not including its unsecured liabilities.

The collapse marked the biggest-ever failure of a U.S. trucking business. It was more than noteworthy that just three years earlier Yellow had received $700 million in pandemic-era loans from the U.S. government to keep it afloat.

Rather than try to fix the financial wear and tear, the fallen 99-year-old trucking icon known for its cheap rates decided instead to shut down and sell its real estate, rigs and other assets to repay creditors.

SUMMERVILLE — Tables begin to fill up just past noon at a restaurant 31 miles from downtown Charleston.

Surrounded by chain eateries in a Publix-anchored strip mall, La Cuisine Du Chevalier — or La Chev, as most call it — has the buzz of an energetic lunch crowd ready for some midday human interaction.

A trio of women attempt to corral four children while dunking grilled bread into large white bowls of bouillabaisse, brimming with mussels, shrimp and white fish, all steeping in saffron broth.

Empty black shells are pushed aside at another round mahogany table, where two friends catch up over mussels and glasses of iced tea.

A man sitting solo at a two-top finishes his meal and tells the server he will be back next week.

These are the sights and sounds of a restaurant that’s become a neighborhood lunchtime favorite less than a year after quietly opening in November 2022.

I would have never found La Chev without a tip from a colleague, but I’m glad I came. That satisfaction extends to residents of the Knightsville and Summerville area, who have thanked owner Jason Tucker for bringing his Southern take on French cuisine to them rather than downtown Charleston.

“A lot of people were confused about why I did it here,” said Tucker, a Summerville resident. “I saw the direction of where the homes are going.”

Tucker struck out on his own after cutting his professional teeth at restaurants in Charleston’s French Quarter. Inside the strip center space that previously housed a Ladles sandwich and soup shop, the Johnson & Wales University graduate is teaming up with La Chev’s chef de cuisine, Jonathan DuPriest, who grew up in Knightsville.

Whether it’s crab dip with grilled bread or seared scallops over French onion cheese risotto, DuPriest is consistently coming up with new daily specials that the restaurant posts on its Facebook page, which takes the place of an actual website.

La Chev boasts separate lunch and dinner menus, but there are several crossovers, including the shrimp and grits, crab croquettes and yellowfin tuna — a dish that stood out after two visits to the restaurant.

The lightly-seared tuna, served cold, rests on a steaming hot medley of chopped asparagus, corn, confit tomato and cubed bacon. A speckled cream sauce pulls the vegetables together, adding sweet smokiness to the fresh but mild fish.

“It doesn’t just play with your taste buds, it plays with the temperature sensitivities of your palate, as well,” Tucker said.

With a nice crust and firm pink center, the tuna hits all corners of my mouth, leaving soft, peppery spice behind. Though served as an appetizer, I enjoyed it as my full meal with an order of duck coq au vin dumplings — a fun riff on a French classic — on the side.

During dinner, the white tablecloths are brought out and topped with larger appetizers and mains that allow for some “Lowcountry liberties,” Tucker said.

For instance, crab croquettes are more petite crab cake than filled-and-fried roll, but the flawed descriptor doesn’t take away from each delicate bite. Paired with a light and bright diced cucumber salad, the patties’ crab-to-filler ratio favors the former.

A trio of cheese-adorned meatballs, floating in tomato ragù and served with small wedges of garlic bread, is another appetizer that satisfies without reinventing the wheel.

The same can often be said for the restaurant’s dinner entrees.

Roasted salmon, stuffed with crab and served atop crisp green beans, is one example of an expertly cooked daily special. On the side, Carolina Gold rice is bound with cheese to form a thick patty, bringing substance and salt to the Southern grains.

Steak, which appears to have been marinated and spent some time in the oven, makes up for a lack of crust with a juicy, tender texture — almost reminiscent of the roasted filet of beef my mother serves at Christmas.

Of the six dishes I sampled at La Chev, each one left me without complaints.

There isn’t much in the way of décor, more noticeable during a Monday night dinner service that saw just two occupied tables between 5:45 and 6:45 p.m. This was a far cry from the crowded lunch service I witnessed weeks before, making me ponder if ownership might consider closing their doors on Monday, typically the slowest dining day of the week.

It also made me wonder if this type of restaurant — a place that skirts the line between neighborhood establishment and one worthy of a special night out — can work in this location.

I remain optimistic.

While it’s just four miles from the town’s top restaurants — Laura, Bexley and La Rustica, among others — it’s less crowded and closer to home for many Summerville restaurants.

And as those who have dined at La Chev have likely realized, there isn’t anything like it in Knightsville.

NORTH CHARLESTON — Tony Williams used the pandemic shutdown to sharpen his home-brewing skills. Like other Charleston locals who jumped into home brewing during that time, Williams’ hobby turned into much more when he and Chris Shelley began discussing their dream brewery.

The beer program would offer easy drinking ales, dark stouts and everything in between, while the setting would be family friendly with an arcade section and console games like Sega Genesis and Nintendo 64.

That’s exactly what patrons will find at High Score Brewing Co., which opened at 8120 Windsor Hill Boulevard, Suite 203, in December.

The brewery is 5,000 square feet, 4,000 of which are dedicated to the taproom, where games are free for customers. While parents are sipping on a Praise the Sun cream ale or Super Smash IPA, Williams hopes they can share the nostalgia for their favorite childhood games with their kids.

“We will eventually have anything anyone could desire,” Williams said, discussing the beer program. “We like to make sure that we have a broad spectrum that appeals to most people.”

High Score Brewing Co. will eventually serve food out of a scratch kitchen. While that buildout continues, patrons can order from food trucks like The Wedge and Smash City Burgers that have been popping up at the brewery.

High Score Brewing Co. is open from 4-9 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday; noon-9 p.m. Friday-Saturday; and noon-8 p.m. Sunday. For more information, visit highscorebrewing.com.

DORCHESTER COUNTY, SC (WCSC) - The Dorchester District 2 School Board announced who will take the helm at the three new elementary schools next school year.

Vernisa Bodison will be the principal for the new Alston-Bailey Elementary School. She is currently the principal at Windsor Hill.

Dr. Eugene Sires Elementary School will be led by Laura Blanchard who is currently the principal at William Reeves Elementary.

Dr. Wally Baird will take on the new Sand Hill Elementary School. He is at Knightsville Elementary right now.

The old schools will see some familiar faces as their new principals as some assistant principals will be stepping up in those leadership roles.

A full list of administrative teams can be found below.

Dorchester School District Two has announced the administrative teams of the three new elementary schools opening in the fall of 2016, along with other elementary school administrative changes. The following administrators were named to take the helm at the three new elementary schools beginning with 2016-2017:

Alston-Bailey Elementary School

Vernisa Bodison—Principal, is currently principal at Windsor Hill Arts Infused Elementary

Assistant Principal—to be announced

Dr. Eugene Sires Elementary School

Laura Blanchard—Principal, is currently principal at William M. Reeves, Jr. Elementary

Dan Farmer—Assistant Principal, is currently assistant principal at Fort Dorchester Elementary

Sand Hill Elementary School

Dr. Wally Baird—Principal, is currently principal at Knightsville Elementary

Annette Roper—Assistant Principal, is currently assistant principal at Knightsville Elementary

The following are additional administrative changes for elementary schools beginning with 2016-2017:

Knightsville Elementary School

Claire Sieber—Principal, is currently assistant principal at Knightsville Elementary

Carey Hodge—Assistant Principal (no change)

William M. Reeves, Jr. Elementary School

Natalie Hayes—Principal, is currently assistant principal at William M. Reeves, Jr. Elementary

Michelle Nicholson—Assistant Principal (no change)

Windsor Hill Arts Infused Elementary School

Robert Neuner—Principal, is currently assistant principal at Gregg Middle

Katie Barker—Assistant Principal (no change)

Fort Dorchester Elementary School

Harolyn Hess—Principal (no change)

Gwyn Brock—Assistant Principal (no change)

Rachel Mahaffey—Assistant Principal, is currently assistant principal at Flowertown Elementary

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