kitchen countertopsNear Summers Corner, SC

SUMMERVILLE, S.C. (WCIV) — A Summerville family says their $535,000 dream house has turned into a nightmare.

“This is what we wanted. We fell in love with the outside, the exterior, everything,” said Michael O’Hea, who moved into the house in the Summers Corner neighborhood in June of 2017. He says immediately after moving in, he and his wife noticed defects cropping up throughout the house.

“You see the cracks in the wall you see the cabinets coming off the wall,” Brandy O’Hea told ABC News 4.

Floors are also uneven in several parts of the home, and two cracks have formed on the both sides of the home’s exterior.

The O’Heas also described mold issues with the home and drainage problems that required the installation of a French drain.

Dan Ryan Builders constructed the home, which the O’Hea’s say is a "Keenleand II" plan.

ABC News 4 called and emailed Dan Ryan builders requesting an interview and asking if the home was being examined for structural issues. Dan Ryan’s regional president emailed the following:

“We are aware of the O’Hea’s concerns with respect to their house. We are in the process of scheduling an engineer to inspect the house and will take appropriate action thereafter.”

The O’Hea’s say Dan Ryan Building sent two structural engineers in the spring who performed a visual inspection of the home, but those engineers were no-shows at the next scheduled appointment.

“We’ve had no shows. Contractors showing up with no materials, no paint,” Michael O’Hea said. “We had seven different personnel but it’s past that now.”

The O’Heas said several of their neighbors are experiencing similar issues with the Keeneland II model. Representatives from Dan Ryan have not yet commented on that.

As it stands, the O’Heas simply want their little slice of suburbia back in one piece.

“I want my home,” Brandy O’Hea said. “I want the home we paid for. We put everything in this home.”

The Better Business Bureau’s website shows 57 complaints filed against Dan Ryan Builders in the last three years, but it also rates the company an A+.

The BBB’s website lists some of the criteria for that score as pertaining to how quickly and appropriately the company has handled complaints.

Dan Ryan told us the building company scheduled its structural engineer to inspect their home less than two days after we contacted them for this story, but that engineer is scheduled for October.

The O’Heas say they’re considering a class action lawsuit.

SUMMERVILLE — Some of the youngest birders here have joined forces to monitor and populate bluebirds, a species that faced concerns of extinction nearly five decades ago.

They all live in the Summers Corner neighborhood off S.C. Highway 61, a fairly new community where bluebirds were the first inhabitants.

Nine years ago, when the community was under construction, a bluebird box was installed on the front street. The wooden boxes function much like the cavities the species creates in dead trees. Entrance holes allow them to move inside for shelter and nesting.

When the first box was put up in Summers Corner, only a building and four home structures were on the property. Three days after the box was installed, the birds moved in, said Tracy Erwin, the community’s marketing specialist.

More than 41 neighborhood children who make up the Bluebird Brigade will monitor that box and more than 20 others starting next week.

They’ll venture out into the area to take inventory of the species and clean out the wooden boxes the bluebirds call home.

Rhonda Plummer leads the Bluebird Brigade, which was started by the Summers Corner Garden Club in March 2021. The group started with 15 children and nearly tripled in three years. Birders range from 3 to 13 years old.

Plummer said the group was started to help populate the birds and provide an opportunity for children to experience the hands-on process.

The children convened at the front of the neighborhood on Feb. 25 to learn basic facts about bluebirds, how to clean and prepare the boxes and make feeders for the birds using coffee filters and cereal.

Jim Sproull, a board member for the S.C. Bluebird Society, spoke to the birders about the importance of recording data about the species and answered a multitude of questions, including those about egg colors, how to get the birds to leave the boxes and what to do when the eggs don’t hatch.

This task will be a new one for several members of the 2023 Bluebird Brigade cohort. Six-year-old Greyson Rose-Meadows is one of the newbies.

He said he has bluebirds already in his yard. But his favorite species is the blue heron.

“I love all animals except for the guys in the midnight zone,” Rose-Meadows said, alluding to vampire squid, tripod fish, anglerfish and other species found in a part of the ocean that receives no sunlight. “They’re terrifying.”

But he is excited to track bluebirds this spring.

Bluebird Brigade members will split up into groups to take weekly inventory and monitor the boxes from March to July. All data will be reported to the S.C. Bluebird Society and then to Cornell University.

Data on the species is important because it can help scientists understand its status.

Sproull of the Bluebird Society said he is unsure just how many bluebirds there are in the state, but there is a good population. Three species are found in North America. The Eastern bluebird lives here and in other states East of the Mississippi River.

“We are making progress,” Sproull said. “There are good people like this group that want to do something (about the species).”

He said the Bluebird Brigade is a good example of positive steps to help the birds.

About 10 percent of North America’s population was lost last year due to extreme cold and heat-related weather events.

But even with such a large loss, the species is more stable now than it was between 1920 and 1970, when Sproull said the North American population declined by 90 percent.

SUMMERVILLE — When eighth grade history teacher Charity Carpenter first walked into her classroom in the new East Edisto Middle School on Aug. 8, she had to leave again and walk around the building to work off her excitement.

It was the Monday before school was set to start, and the hallways still smelled of new paint. Other teachers wheeled carts and trolleys full of equipment and school supplies into classrooms. Friends greeted each other, asking about each other’s summers or commenting on the new school.

Around the corner from her classroom, Carpenter bumped into fellow teacher Amy Baldwin, who was directing students from her Gateway to Technology class how to unload her computers and robotics equipment. The students had been in Baldwin’s class in previous years at Oakbrook Middle School and had volunteered to help her unpack her new classroom.

“How’s your room looking?” Baldwin asked Carpenter.

“I just walked in and I just had to leave my stuff there and take a walk,” Carpenter said. “I was just overwhelmed.”

East Edisto is the biggest school she’s ever been in, Carpenter told The Post and Courier. And the numbers back her up. The 120,000-square-foot school cost $31 million and took 16 months to complete. It’s located off S.C. Highway 61 behind Beech Hill Elementary. At full capacity, it can hold 1,000 students.

When school officially begins on Aug. 15, it will welcome 850.

“We’re pretty close to what we can hold,” Principal Brion Rutherford said, adding that it’s located in the Oakbrook area, one of the fastest-growing parts of Dorchester County.

“There are a number of new neighborhoods going in,” he said. “We’ll be at our capacity pretty quickly.”

He and Shane Robbins, the new superintendent of Dorchester School District 2, said the new school is a factor of growth not only throughout the district but also in the Oakbrook area near the Ashley River.

A superintendent for 15 years at various districts, Robbins is no stranger to new school construction.

“There is so much excitement for students, families, teachers and staff members to move into a brand-new structure and make it their own and their home,” Robbins said.

‘Exploding’ with growth

Nestled in the Oakbrook area, the school is surrounded by large and growing housing developments like Legend Oaks Plantations and Summers Corner, which are adding thousands of homes in the coming years.

Cheyenne and Brennan Ledyard live in Drayton Oaks, a small subdivision about a three-minute drive from East Edisto Middle. Like many residents in the area, they’re still fairly new, having moved in when the neighborhood went up about two years ago.

They say the Oakbrook area, particularly the neighborhoods on either side of Highway 61, is “exploding.”

“We’re having tremendous growth on this side,” Cheyenne said.

Last year, their son Hudson attended Gregg Middle School, on the other side of Dorchester Road and the Ashley River. Now he’s starting seventh grade at East Edisto.

“He is very excited because this bus arrives about 20 minutes later than what he had to ride last year,” Brennan said with a laugh.

She and Cheyenne said they feel the middle school is warranted, especially since there are already two elementary schools in the area, Beech Hill and Sand Hill. Their only concern is that traffic on Highway 61 might be worse in the mornings now.

Down Highway 61 in Summers Corner, Michelle Cheslek was riding her bike with her 6-year-old daughter Olivia on a recent afternoon. And even though Olivia still has several years before she goes to middle school, Cheslek said she’s already relieved there’s one that close.

“Otherwise I think she would have been going to Gregg, which is a little farther away,” Cheslek said.

Like the Ledyards, Cheslek said the area is growing. Her family just closed on their house in May, and behind them, construction is underway on more houses.

Growth in the school district isn’t anything new. DD2′s student population has grown from around 16,000 students in the 2000-01 school year to more than 25,000 last year.

Managing growth

Despite population growth in Summerville, the district’s student population saw a slight dip during the pandemic, according to DD2. During the 2019-20 school year, there were 26,194 students at the school. This past year, there were 25,404.

“If you look at our numbers from the end of last school year, they replicate our numbers from the 2014-15 school year,” Robbins said, referencing a year with 25,175 students.

Robbins said that’s a factor of the pandemic.

“That’s a symptom of students that stayed in a virtual environment not associated with the school or possibly went the home-school route, and ... that wasn’t a Dorchester 2 issue or trend,” he said. “That’s something we saw across the state and honestly across the country.”

While those numbers have started to come back, Robbins said the bigger change is where the students are.

“What I think you’re seeing is a shift where geographically people are living in the county and where the population shifts have occurred,” he said. “For us, there is going to be growth that we’re going to rebound from post-COVID, so we need to have a long-term facilities study completed or updated.”

Robbins said East Edisto is about the average size of a middle school, and he doesn’t want it to get much larger than 1,000 students. He does believe the district will see more growth in the coming years and should have a plan to deal with that.

But he would rather utilize space in schools throughout the district before building any more schools.

“When you see numbers shift like that ... you look at the occupancy of each facility and, in lieu of building a new structure because one structure is at capacity, you look at, ‘OK, how can I adjust the attendance lines to make sure all my structures are at capacity before I have to go to the taxpayers and ask for money to build for more structures?’ ”

In other words, the district will look at occupancy levels at each school and send students to schools with more room.

That can be “emotional” for the community, he said, which is why the district should have a formalized plan in place. That would be an involved process that looks at everything from county population projections to roads, bridges and “potential obstacles” along bus routes.

“There’s a lot that goes into play when you look at making a decision on what’s going to work best, but the overall goal is to try to fully maximize all of our facilities so that we don’t have to consistently add on and build new structures because there’s growth in one particular geographical area,” Robbins said.

Earlier this year, district officials reported East Edisto was on track to be over-capacity within a few years of its opening. Robbins said that should only be a problem if the district doesn’t put those plans in place.

“There is a lot of growth in that area,” he said. “If we stayed status quo and we didn’t look at those things, absolutely it would end up being overcrowded.”

New opportunities for students

Baldwin is well aware of the growth. Not only will this be her 23rd year teaching in the district, but she attended DD2 schools from kindergarten to high school. That growth brings more opportunities for students, she said.

Take her subject, Gateway to Technology, which covers STEM subjects like robotics, design and engineering.

“That was such a small class back (when I first started teaching), and now it’s bloomed and blossomed and we have all these engineering avenues,” she said. “I have a sixth grader entering school, and the number of choices of classes, things like piano, that didn’t exist when I was a student ... So just the opportunities our district has brought as it’s grown has been really wonderful.”

Rutherford said he had some input on the classrooms and other features while construction was underway, such as what kind of designs and furniture would best promote collaboration in STEM classrooms and where best to put electives so that they’re located close to the sixth grade hallway.

One important aspect of the design was safety features, he said. Those include cameras, alarm systems that will alert people when exterior doors are left open and a crosswalk across Highway 61 that will be manned during school drop-off and dismissal. There will also be a dedicated office for the school’s social worker to help address students’ mental health needs.

Rutherford echoed Baldwin’s excitement for the array of opportunities — and praised Gateway to Technology in particular. He said Baldwin and the program she set up at Oakbrook have won multiple awards throughout the state. The same goes for chorus teacher Maurice Burgess, he said, who will run East Edisto’s fine arts programs.

“I might be partial to this, but I think we have the best teachers in the school district, if not the Lowcountry,” Rutherford said.

SUMMERVILLE — Some Dorchester County residents spent the first two weeks of September without receiving any mail, and they’re still uncertain if the problem has been resolved.

On the outskirts of Summerville, homeowners in the new Azalea Ridge portion of the Summers Corner neighborhood have been experiencing ongoing issues with mail delivery, emergency assistance and school registration.

Residents were told the problem comes from a mistake made when the ZIP codes were being realigned. The mistake has resulted in mail delays and packages being sent to wrong addresses across town.

One of those residents, Livia Perez, said her family recently had issues with registering their kids for school and getting help from the Dorchester County Fire Rescue after their carbon monoxide detector went off.

“It took 25 minutes for the fire department to get to our house,” she said.

The Perez family had to contact the department to let them know about the Ridgeville and Summerville address mix-up.

They bought the home with the original understanding that it would have a Summerville address. When they went to close on the home the day after Memorial Day, that’s when they were informed the ZIP code was now a Ridgeville one.

The deed to their home lists the address as Ridgeville. The change also led to a $500 annual increase in their home insurance costs.

Jason Byham, the local division president for Lennar, the developers over Summers Corner, said in 2015 the U.S. Postal Service approved all of the development to be in the 29485 Summerville ZIP code.

The Ridgeville ZIP code change was done without Lennar being notified in advance. Lennar changed the deeds to Ridgeville to allow residents to close on their homes and move in.

Byham said they were informed that the change was a mistake around USPS overlooking the 2015 agreement.

“It unfortunately caused major disruption in homeowners’ lives,” he said.

Lennar was able to reaffirm with USPS the Summerville address. Lennar is also taking on the costs of changing residents’ deeds back to Summerville.

Rick Badie, a USPS spokesman in South Carolina, said some of the address data provided to USPS representatives was incorrect and that’s what ultimately led to the mishap.

Badie didn’t confirm who sent the incorrect data.

“The issue is being resolved and we regret any inconvenience to our customers,” he said.

Some residents are still apprehensive as to whether the situation has been handled. Perez said it’s because they’ve been hearing that since May.

Their biggest concern is with the election coming up.

Some of the postal workers are aware of the situation so they have been able to successfully complete some deliveries.

Other times, some of the mail is sent to the Oakbrook Post Office and some is sent to the Ridgeville one. Residents have also received delivery notifications from Amazon with photos of packages delivered across town.

“We’re definitely not getting all of our mail,” Perez said.

Celebrate the small town feel of Summerville, and the easy, friendly cadence of life in the Lowcountry. Summers Corner weaves together beautiful homes, artful parks, open spaces, and proximity to the things people want – like schools only a short bike ride away and local retail offerings – to form a close-knit, vibrant community. Currently, Summers Corner is home to more than 100 families – and new neighbors and friends are always on the way.

Homes at Summers Corner beautifully bring the Lowcountry’s unique character to life – through wide front porches, expansive windows, a mix of architectural styles, and a variety of street scenes. No resident is more than a 5-minute walk from their home to a park or public garden. The result is a community that feels connected to both the land and the people who call it home.

What’s more, Summers Corner gives buyers the freedom to choose homes designed by four different builders, each with their own style: Saussy Burbank, Sabal Homes, Stanley Martin Homes and Dan Ryan Builders. Homes start in the $200s, and range in size from 1,580 to 3,619 square feet.

Home To A 95-Acre Lake, Nature Trails, Community Parks, Open Spaces & Much More

Connectedness is a recurring theme at Summers Corner, especially when it comes to the natural world. Buffalo Lake, 95 acres of fresh water, gives residents the opportunity to explore local water and engage with area wildlife. From the Lake’s fishing dock, residents can launch canoes and kayaks and fish for largemouth bass, crappie, blue gill and catfish. The open-air lakeside pavilion offers opportunities to relax and take in the beauty of other nearby residents, like ibis, eagles, and osprey.

Those who walk, hike, and bike can take advantage of Summers Corner’s extensive nature trail system that includes everything from quarter-mile strolls to 3.8-mile loops, while still having access to free wi-fi. Along the way, residents venture through community parks like Archer Park, Summers Park and Helix Park.

Lowcountry summers demand access to cool waters, and the Community Pool House at Summers Corner, exclusively for residents, features a resort-style swimming pool with a large deck, a shallow children’s area and splash pad, changing rooms and restrooms, plus shady areas for barbecues and picnics.

If there’s a heart to Summers Corner, you’ll likely find it at The Commons, home to the Corner House Café + Information Center. Visitors can learn more about the community, and everyone can find master gardeners toiling away in our demonstration gardens. At the café, enjoy roasted coffee, homemade pastries, delicious seasonal fare, and craft beer and wine. And, everyone’s invited to a mix of events – from food truck rodeos and live music to the farmers’ market and art classes.

Top-Rated Schools & A New Performing Arts Center

Summers Corner is within walking distance of Sand Hill Elementary, which serves students from kindergarten through fifth grade, and is celebrating its third year, and the acclaimed Rollings Middle School of the Arts, which welcomed 695 students on its first day in August. Both schools are part of the top-rated Dorchester District Two school system. The centerpiece of the school, a 1,100-seat Performing Arts Center with orchestra and balcony seating, “black box” creative space, and intimate side porch, is scheduled to open in 2019.

If you’re ready to experience Summers Corner for yourself, stop in for a cup of coffee at Corner House Café + Information Center, located at 1609 Beech Hill Road in Summerville, SC 29485. Four decorated models are open daily Mon–Sat 10am–6pm; Sun 12–6pm. For more details, visit SummersCorner.com or call 843-377-8844.