NEWS BRIEFS: Charleston remains top designation on magazine list

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Staff reports  |  For the ninth year in a row, Charleston was named the top U.S. destination for Travel + Leisure readers and the only place in the country at the top of the magazine’s worldwide destination list.

Charleston edged out Santa Fe, New Mexico and Savannah for the top U.S. spot. Stuck between Jaipur, India and Tokyo, Japan, Charleston snagged No. 19 in the magazine’s top world city destinations.

Hilton Head was also named among the world’s best islands, according to the magazine. Kiawah Island’s Sanctuary was named the state’s top resort hotel, with the John Rutledge House Inn taking the best hotel spot in Charleston.

Complete Travel + Leisure reader survey results will be published in the magazine’s new issue, out Sept. 17.

In other recent news: 

Estimate for Charleston flood plan drops.  The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Friday cut $650 million from the estimate of the cost of a project to safeguard the Charleston peninsula from rising and increasingly common floodwater.  The cost, which is one of several changes to the flood study, dropped from $1.75 billion to $1.1 billion.

SCETV backs off deal.  S.C. Educational Television (SCETV) has backed off an exploratory leadership proposal to lease space in its Columbia studio to a private broadcaster following pushback by staff, the Charleston City Paper and Statehouse Report reported last week.  The proposal to generate new revenue comes two years after a former board chairman and two others resigned after months of drama to try to get more money from SCETV’s nonprofit endowment that has pumped millions of dollars into the network to ensure South Carolinians get high-quality public programming. 

S.C. one of hardest-hit states as foreclosure moratorium ends. Even prior to the July 31 federal foreclosure and eviction moratorium, South Carolina ranked in as one of the top states for current foreclosure rates and risk of foreclosure. GSA Business Report.

McMaster proposes using COVID aid to widen I-26. Gov. Henry McMaster has proposed widening nearly 70 miles of Interstate 26 between Columbia and Charleston to three lanes each way. The proposal suggests using $360 million in federal pandemic aid to get the project mostly completed by 2029. The Post and Courier.