Building Business w/ the Mount Pleasant Chamber of Commerce
The Building Business podcast provides compelling stories of the Mount Pleasant Chamber of Commerce's journey, its steadfast commitment to the local community, and its forward-thinking approach to addressing the needs of businesses in an ever-changing landscape. It stands as an invitation to listeners to become part of a movement that values growth, connection, and the collective progress of the Mount Pleasant, South Carolina community.
Be prepared to be inspired, informed, and motivated, as we provide a rich tapestry of stories that celebrate the dynamic interplay of business and personal growth right here, in our own backyard.
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Building Business w/ the Mount Pleasant Chamber of Commerce
Inside Mount Pleasant’s Tech-and-Community Strategy: Incubators, Adaptive Reuse, and Jobs That Stick
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A growing city doesn’t happen by accident—it’s built decision by decision, space by space, and win by win. We sit down with Mount Pleasant’s economic development lead to unpack a playbook that’s surprisingly simple and very effective: attract the right kinds of companies, give them plug-and-play space, and clear the small policy hurdles that block adaptive reuse. Along the way, we spotlight new arrivals—Tikva and Alita Health—whose smaller headcounts come with bigger paychecks and a better fit for the community’s talent and lifestyle.
We take you inside the Harbor Entrepreneur Center’s rapid expansion, where more than 100 companies—from solo founders to growing teams—find a soft landing, shared resources, and the kind of peer collisions that accelerate progress. If you’ve ever wondered what makes a business “stick” to a place, this is it: mentors down the hall, turnkey offices, and a city that feels good to live in. Then we head to 450 Wando Park Boulevard, a 154,000 square foot, fully conditioned, divisible asset a stone’s throw from the port. With overhead cranes, multiple bay doors, and high-quality office, it’s a chameleon—equally suited to life sciences, device manufacturing, distribution, or a headquarters that needs room to scale.
We also tackle the policy question shaping tomorrow’s corridors: how should parking minimums evolve when reimagining aging strip centers along Johnny Dodds and Coleman? We walk through the tradeoffs of zero minimums, case-by-case approvals, and strict code compliance—and why people choose districts for what’s there, not for the size of the lot.
Want to see the momentum up close? Join the October candidate forum and the mayoral breakfast at the Harbor, and follow Mount Pleasant Made for fresh business features. If this conversation resonates, subscribe, share with a builder in your life, and leave a quick review—what would you change to make growth smarter where you live?
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Presenting Sponsor: Mount Pleasant Chamber of Commerce
Studio Sponsor: Charleston Media Solutions
Episode Sponsor: Viking Mergers & Acquisitions
Expo Podcast Sponsor: Pollen Social
Production Sponsor: RMBO.co
Design Sponsor: DK Design
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Committee:
Kathleen Herrmann | Host | MPCC Past President | Mount Pleasant Towne Centre
Mike Compton | Co-host | Podcast Committee | RMBO.co
Rebecca Imholz | Co-host | MPCC Executive Director
Amanda Bunting Comen | Co-host | MPCC Marketing & Communications
Benjamin Nesvold | Co-host | MPCC President | Edward Jones
Setting the Scene: Community & Networking
Speaker 1Speaker
What are we doing? Who are we? What's going on? Where am I today? Somebody asked me yesterday, I went to a One Million Cups networking yesterday. And uh you know, networking, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And and I haven't been in a while. I but like COVID, right? Since COVID, and then I'm starting to come back. And One Million Cups is coming pretty strong now. Have you been lately? I've been, yeah. We had like 80 some folks in in Frothy Beard.
Speaker 2Yeah, there's a lot of people that show up.
SpeakerUh-huh. But that place is like a giant hug when you walk in. The people there are so nice.
Speaker 2Well, they're all trying. They're all everybody's grinding, and they're in a room full of other tryers and grinders and business owners and you know, upward mobility seekers.
SpeakerAnd I feel like they've taken like the entrepreneur route as far as the technology route. Like they've kind of embraced that over the past few years, right?
Speaker 2Yeah. I think it's uh changing and uh they're doing a good job with it. A lot of attendance, a lot of cool ideas that get tossed around, and you know, not a bad spot right over the river in West Ashley.
Meet Mount Pleasant’s Economic Lead
SpeakerYeah, no, I think it's a lot of fun. Mike Compton here, President of RMBO.co. Uh we're at the Building Business Podcast, powered by the Mount Pleasant Chamber of Commerce. Today we're here with the Economic Development Officer, Mr. Matthew Brady. Say hello, Mr. Matthew Brady. Hey everybody. Good to be here. Good to have you. Good to have you. I love these monthly updates, by the way. I love them too. He's a cool guy, so I like to chat with him. So this is kind of like selfishly a way to kind of like, hey Matt, hang out with me for a half hour, will you?
Speaker 2I'm here to hang out.
SpeakerAll right, let's do it. So literally going through and and this is kind of another way I want you to get the word out and communicate to our audience, right? Yeah. I literally went to your LinkedIn page because you are every day posting something cool. So let me first off start there. What is your handle at LinkedIn so that listeners can go there?
Speaker 2Uh, I think it's Matthew D. Brady. I'm not sure. But if you look for Matt Brady on there um and you're in Charleston, I'll probably be one of the first people to pop up.
SpeakerThe Town of Mount Pleasant's economic development officer. That's right. Matthew Dennis Brady? Durant. Crickets. Good to know. This is a family name. Yeah. Not like Durant Durant. Oh, that's a bad joke. I don't know if I even know that. Durant Durant, the old business. I know Durant Durant. Okay, got it. Following now. All right, we're gonna edit that one out. So LinkedIn is where you can find out all this information as well. Um, and if you're big into, you know, the new business development and where we're headed in Mount Pleasant, follow Matt Brady. Matt,
New Wins: Tikva and Alita Health
SpeakerI want to talk today about um, you know, the the town's initiative uh and focus on tech and innovation and what that looks like in our economy. Um first up, I saw Tikva was was was something you were promoting. What what what's going on there? What happened?
Speaker 2Yeah, so Tikva is a um sort of a insurance slash wellness slash innovation platform, and um, we've been working with them for a while, and they just had an official sort of Department of Commerce announcement to say they're locating officially in uh Mount Pleasant. They're in the Harbor Entrepreneur Center, which is really overperforming, actually. And so um they're locating now and they're looking to grow their head count to like 13 over the next few years. So that's a good announcement. And um while we're on that, uh we also had a company called Alita Health that uh was a Department of Commerce slash Mount Pleasant slash county announcement um as well um that uh the week prior to TIGVA announced that they would be headquartering in Mount Pleasant too. And so um that's another 17-person headcount uh business. They they don't have that many now, but they will over time. And so um whereas a lot of these economic development announcements will say, you know, XYZ companies investing a whole bunch in CapEx, which is going to be their building and equipment and stuff, um, and a zillion jobs, these jobs are it's a smaller head count, but they're all extremely well paying and sort of fit our community profile in terms of what we're trying to attract. And the all companies in the innovation economy, um, tech, life science, um, sometimes logistics, um, sometimes creatives. But um, so those are two nice announcements that we've got under our belt so far this year, and um glad to see them here. I think they're gonna scale and
Harbor Entrepreneur Center’s Expansion
Speaker 2do well.
SpeakerAmazing. But the it it keeps going um on the growth side of things. Isn't the harbor opening up a new corridor?
Speaker 2So the harbor is uh entering into a lease to where they will control the entire building. So the entire building is sixty-four thousand square feet, and they've sort of taken it down in thirds, roughly, uh 22 or so to start with. And they've got most of it now, and then there is a company that has uh vacated one whole wing of the building, and so they're gonna uh take over that, and that will be more space to uh put companies, and so uh as many of our listeners may know, we work closely with the harbor to well on everything they do. We support them financially, we also support them from an economic development standpoint, and so that'll be a place for a lot of other good companies from either the incubation stage, or let's say we have a company that's looking to locate to the region and needs 10,000 square feet of office, and um it's ready to go. It's turnkey. All you gotta do is bring your laptop and uh start working. And so uh in in that sense, it can serve as sort of a soft landing pad for a company that might want to be in town, test out the region and the market, and so it's a it's a great thing.
SpeakerIt's lovely. I love it. It's all part of the plan, isn't it? The master plan.
Speaker 2Uh it is part of our strategic goals were to was to find a physical space in town to incubate, to host entrepreneurs, to kind of create this sort of collision that the harbor is good at, and they um are overperforming, in my opinion, uh uh exceeding our wildest expectations. And so the last time I checked, there were 109 companies in there. And that's everything from a guy to do us to a company taking down a whole wing. That's everything from sort of startup-ish to um maturing, growing companies that are likely going to scale. And once they're in town, um their their company becomes sticky, their capital becomes sticky, and they want to stay here and grow here. And um, that's our job to help them grow.
SpeakerI love it. And it's the Mount Pleasant's so easy to start to love, too, right? So once they come here, they're like, oh, okay, lifestyle. Here we go. It's a good community.
Speaker 2Um you know, uh quality of life is great, great schools, uh the amenities are are awesome, and Charleston Broadly is a great place to live, so we're doing okay.
SpeakerUm speaking of well, actually not speaking of, but we're talking about growth. Um the 450 Wando Park, that is really cool. Can you talk to that?
Speaker 2Yeah, so um uh 450 Wando Park Boulevard is a roughly 154,000 square foot industrial building that um is on the market right now. The company that uh started in there has since moved on consolidated operations in Chattanooga. And so we have this opportunity uh ahead of us. And so I'm working with the broker who is um Bob Barano's group at CBRE. I don't think he'd mind giving him a shout out to to amplify what they're doing to market this. And so it's a big building, but it's also
Why Sticky Companies Matter
Speaker 2dividable into smaller spaces all the way down to eleven or thirteen thousand square feet. So the whole thing's conditioned. Um HVAC works great, it's a hundred yards from the port uh of South Carolina, and um it's right there off the interstate. So it really can serve in a lot of capacities. Um, so it can be life science, um, it could be distribution. There is also a really nice office space that could be just office for someone who needs it. And so um anybody who happens to be listening to this, we'd love to take you around. There's a lot of sort of internal infrastructure like um overhead cranes and um a lot of bay doors um and the the property owner. It's for sale or for lease. Uh, I believe the the preference is lease, but everything you know is on the table. But I I know that um they'd like to get at least up to great strong tenants, and so there's probably opportunities for tenant upfits and incentives from us and the county and the states. Give me a shout. Let's see what we can do to to get you into this awesome building.
SpeakerSounds like a lot of growth factor, right? Sounds like an on our entrepreneurs that are listening. We've got the Harbor Center, Entrepreneur Center, and we've got this 450 Wando, Wando Park. Um, you guys are you guys are actually you guys are working.
Speaker 2You're working. We are working. Um the the 450 Wando Park Boulevard is a it's a great asset, and it will be somebody great. I know is gonna go in there. Um it's tons of potential. And um, so yeah, our job is to sort of beat the bushes, and um,
450 Wando Park: A Flexible Asset
Speaker 2but also I think it's a great opportunity for a more homegrown company that maybe started in a they go from garage to a 3,000 square foot warehouse to maybe now it's time for something a little more mature as your company grows and scales, and that could be manufacturing or uh device manufacturing, value added, distribution. The possibilities are truly endless because the the building's sort of agnostic is what it wants to be. So um maybe you started down on the neck and it's time to be closer to home as an entrepreneur, which it's very often Mount Pleasant or Daniel Island, and this kind of fits that bill. So down at the neck. Yeah.
SpeakerWhat where's the neck? I know where the neck is.
Speaker 2The neck is uh, I guess it's that sort of you call it between where part circle ends and downtown begins, maybe. Uh like the upper meeting, upper king area of town. And so if you've driven down there, you've seen there's a lot of industrial, there's some warehouses, and I just happen to know there's some companies that have started down there and maybe they're starting to outgrow that. And so it's time to move to the the next phase of uh company physical location, and so this could be a good spot for them.
SpeakerI love that, man. Good job. Um, so kind of moving on a little bit um down your LinkedIn page, literally, I found a survey that you put out there.
Speaker 2Yeah, so I um this is kind of shifting gears here. So, listener, go ahead and let your brain be empty for a moment so we moment so we can shift gears. But yeah, you know, Mount Mount Pleasant has a ton of aging strip retail commercial, right? So think about Johnny Dodds Boulevard, think about Coleman Boulevard, think about well, those those two main quarters start there, right? You think about what's out there from a grocery stores or small strip retail. Um, and the most sustainable thing for a community is is not to scrape something and start from scratch, right? Like the most sustainable thing would be to reuse the property that is there or redevelop it. Adaptive reuse is something that's a phrase out there in the development community that takes means you take a building and you breathe new life into it. It happens all the time. One of the best examples of that in Charleston is part circle, the entire East Montague strip is adaptive reuse. Um, so as these buildings and properties start to change hands and people want to reimagine them, what we found is the the parking is not always where it needs to be per our regulation. So or and it and that can be like any community's regulations, and we're getting into the wonky part about land use policy and stuff. But basically the idea is you buy something, you want to invest, you know what you need as a as a business owner, but you don't have enough parking spaces. So my little survey was just um when adaptive reuse occurs or redevelopment, like should there be, you know, some communities have gone to no parking minimums. Um so what that means is that you you build what you want to build and you park it how you want to park it. That is not there's no community in South Carolina that's kind of gotten there yet. Um, so the question was, do we go to zero parking minimums? Is it a case by case basis, or do we make them uh kind of just fit the mold, you know, investment be damned. And so the the results were uh somewhere in the middle, right? Like most people said, maybe it's a case-by-case basis. So sure. Um I I don't know what that might mean for us moving forward. I know you know my job is to advocate
Who Should Land at 450 Wando
Speaker 2for what is good for economic development. So that so economic development doesn't necessarily mean what's good for the business owner, it means what's good for the community with the business owner in mind. And so I hope that we can kind of consider you know that is as redevelopment and adaptive reuse occurs. Um what does parking look like? Um, like we don't need every strip center to be parked like Black Friday at the mall, right? So you want although Black Friday at the mall probably is not nearly the same at the same time, zero parking sounds so it's scary, right?
SpeakerI was gonna use that word too.
Speaker 2It's scary. It so this is getting into as a disclaimer, I am not an elected official, and public policy is up to the purview of those under a representative democracy that got elected. So but if you want to think about like the uh some of the communities that have done this, like Austin or maybe Portland, Oregon, or some other smaller communities, like if you can't park it, like is that the community's problem or is it the business owner's problem? So the where it gets to be the community's problem is if people feel like folks are parking in their yards or whatever, uh-huh and it's creating community issues. So I'll use what? Yeah, so that's something to consider. Um, but also I'm I'm sort of a believer that people don't visit your downtown because you have a lot of parking. People don't visit anything because you get a lot of parking. People go because there's something cool there, and if they want to find a way to park, they will. Just look at soccer matches at Patriots, right? Yeah, that or even like when there's a parade or there's a festival or whatever, like people are going to that thing, yeah. They'll figure out parking when they get there. And so there are solutions to that. Um, but that's just sort of in the most of my followers on LinkedIn are sort of wonky government nerd types, and that's who responded to that kind of stuff.
SpeakerUh well, let's have our listeners respond. What were the choices uh on that? And they can make a comment or whatever.
Speaker 2Yeah, you'll have to comment, I think, at like close or whatever.
SpeakerNo, no, make a comment on any social media that we're on right now. Yeah, uh at the Yeah.
Speaker 2Um, so the
Rethinking Parking for Adaptive Reuse
Speaker 2the the question was like in adaptive reuse or redevelopment situation, should you one do zero parking rules? You know, the developer builds parking however they want, should it be a case-by-case basis, or should you just have to comply with like the town's zoning code as it stands, which could be problematic and prohibitive for redevelopment. So those are the those are the choices and um I imagine most people kind of land somewhere in the middle.
SpeakerWell, you would think. Yeah. You would think. Yeah. Going to a soccer match and seeing the cars the when they were the way he's parked is interesting.
Speaker 2I mean, and getting way into the weeds. Um sorry, and talking about this a little bit more. There is uh there's a lot to be said for the American over-reliance on the automobile and its effect on community broadly. Um that is getting into planning and zoning stuff. Um, but I mean, if you you go to Europe or wherever these cities are sort of dense, walkable, you have everything within, you know, a safe walking distance, then you know, everybody loves that stuff. And if you get dropped off anywhere that like that in the world, you know, you're in a good place. Um but as we've developed and um the automobiles become more ubiquitous, so like the last hundred years, right? Like that's why suburbs exist because of the automobile. That's why downtowns sort of have suffered is because of the automobile. But people kind of realize downtowns are cool, right? That's why downtown Charleston flourishes, that's why part circle rocks, that's why even like a place like Avondale, was once you get there, it becomes an a you know a downtown location spot. Yeah. Um, and those are just three local ones here in Charleston to kind of think about. You're gonna be in trouble with somebody, I feel like I hope so.
SpeakerThat's why we're here, Matt. This is great. This is great. And we could edit out anything you want to um, but this is a really interesting conversation, Matt. Thank you. Yeah. Uh I don't want to take up any more of your time. Do you have any other things that you want to discuss? Um, a couple of things just to put it out there.
Speaker 2Um, you know, there are elections coming up, and the uh Mount Pleasant Chamber has a forum coming up in October. October, I don't know, look at the website. Yeah, and there's also a mayoral breakfast October 28th at the Harbor Entrepreneur Center. And it will be eighth. That's right. October 28th at the Harbor Entrepreneur Center. And it will be it's a panel discussion with Mayor Haney, Mayor Cogswell, and Mayor Burgess. So the big three in our region are gonna be there, have a little panel discussion. It will be hosted by none other than Grady Johnson, the guy who used to host all of them when the South Carolina uh, the business journals, Charleston Regional Business Journal used to host those I didn't know that, those big uh like breakfasts for some of the business expos and stuff. And so Grady's coming back, he's gonna be the MC. We'll ask some good questions, be a lot of good fellowship. And if you haven't checked out the Harbor Entrepreneur Center, this will be an opportunity for you to do that.
SpeakerIt's a really cool space now.
Speaker 2It's a cool space, and it should be uh perfect weather in October. So even if the HVAC is acting up, it won't be hot.
SpeakerSo that's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a bit of an issue there, but no, it's exactly it's gonna be in the fall. It's gonna be a beautiful fall day for good networking and to uh see what the economy is gonna be looking like for all three counties, right? Cities. All three cities. All three cities, that's what I meant. Yeah, all three cities. It's awesome. Matt, thanks for your time. Both Matt's thanks for your time. Engineer Matt and Economic Development Officer Matt, town of Mount Pleasant. Uh thank you to the Mount Pleasant Chamber. Thank you to Charleston Media Solutions, uh, Darius Kelly Design. What's up? Uh go to Mount PleasantChamber.com. Is it dot com or dot org? Oh man, marketing chair doesn't know if it's dot com. I think it's dot com. Mountpleasantchamber.com for more information and to find out about those events. Yeah, those events should be uh populated soon, I think, on there. Also follow made in Mount Pleasant on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2Yeah, on LinkedIn, uh made uh Mount Pleasant Made on LinkedIn, MountpleasantMade.com. And we have an Instagram that is kind of getting fired up. So follow it and look for some good like business features of the next
Cars, Walkability, and Vibrant Downtowns
Speaker 2six weeks. Love it.
SpeakerThanks, guys. We'll see you soon, uh, listeners. Thanks, man.
