For years, anyone who drove Old Towne Road past Charles Towne Landing noticed the same thing: an avenue of old live oaks, a dirt track curving back into the trees, and a gate that was closed more often than not. A handful of curious visitors managed to get in for the occasional Wine Down Wednesday, wandering the vast lawns with a plastic cup of wine and wondering what the rest of the property looked like. One Yelp reviewer summed up the neighborhood's collective patience a few years back, noting the park was not yet open to the public and that they were very interested in the prospect of seeing more of it someday.
That someday has arrived, and it arrived three separate times, from three separate organizations, each with its own idea of what "open" means.
One Family's Farm, Split Three Ways
The land behind that gate has a name most West Ashley residents have never heard: Ashem Farm. For decades it belonged to Ashby Farrow and Emily Ravenel Farrow, who ran "Miss Em's" St. Andrews Riding Academy on the property after generations of it serving the truck farming trade that once fed Charleston from the peninsula's western edge. In 2005, Mrs. Farrow placed the land under a conservation easement with Historic Charleston Foundation, making sure it could never be sold off for development. When she died in 2011, she left the property to Lowcountry Land Trust with a specific wish attached: that part of it become the land trust's permanent home, and that the rest stay protected as public land in perpetuity.
It took until this year for both halves of that wish to be fully realized, and the two organizations that inherited the property built two very different things on it.
What Opened June 30: A 67-Acre County Park With Its Own Rulebook
Old Towne Creek County Park held its grand opening on June 30, 2026, and it is now open daily, a fact worth stating plainly because for most of the last decade it wasn't. The 67-acre park sits at 1400 Old Towne Road, directly beside Charles Towne Landing, and includes accessible trails and boardwalks, a dock over the marsh, a nature-inspired playground, an arboretum full of ornamentals that Mrs. Farrow and her mother Emily Simmons Ravenel planted over the decades, and interpretive signage that walks visitors through the site's history as farmland, riding academy, and now conservation legacy.
The practical details matter if you're planning an actual visit rather than just admiring it from the road:
- Hours run 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. through August, shifting to 8 a.m. to sunset from September through April
- Admission is $2 per person, free for Gold Pass members and children 2 and under
- No swimming, wading, fishing, crabbing, or personal kayaks, and bikes are allowed on trails but must be walked across boardwalks and docks
- Wine Down Wednesday, the event that gave locals their only glimpse of the property for years, returns September 1 and 15, with live music, food trucks, leashed dogs welcome, and wine tickets running $20 in advance or $25 at the gate
The path itself has an overlook onto Charles Towne Landing and Old Towne Creek, crosses a bridge near the dock, and passes the caretaker's cottage and old stables along the way. The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places this year for the Main House and Caretaker's House architecture, which is part of why the trail routes visitors past those buildings rather than around them.
The Award-Winning Building Next Door
If you walk the park's trail far enough, you'll see a low, deliberately unassuming building tucked among the oaks. That's the Lowcountry Land Trust's Center for Conservation, built on four acres of that same Ashem Farm tract. It opened in August 2025 and quietly picked up one of the region's more meaningful architectural honors this year.
On February 27, 2026, the Preservation Society of Charleston handed out its 72nd annual Carolopolis Awards, and the Center for Conservation was the only West Ashley recipient in the New Construction category that year. The building was built by local firms Reggie Gibson Architects and Willis Hagood Construction using reclaimed brick pulled from a former structure on King Street and pine siding salvaged from a 1918 schoolhouse in Augusta, Georgia, with cypress paneling running through the interior. The design intentionally runs parallel to a historic bridle trail Mrs. Farrow once used, which has been preserved as an open path rather than paved over.
Worth knowing before you plan a visit: this isn't a drop-in visitor center. It functions as a working headquarters and meeting space for Lowcountry Land Trust and partner organizations like Charleston County Parks and Recreation, the Coastal Conservation League, and the state Department of Natural Resources. You'll pass it, and you'll likely notice the reclaimed brick entry column, but the building itself operates on its own schedule separate from the park next door. Two organizations, one former farm, two completely different definitions of public access.
A Different Kind of Opening, Across Town
Old Towne Road isn't the only place in West Ashley where a long-planned green space finally became real this year. On May 16, 2026, the Charleston Parks Conservancy held a ribbon cutting for the Ashleyville-Maryville Food Forest, a project with roots that go back even further than Ashem Farm's conservation story.
The Ashleyville-Maryville neighborhood has agricultural ties dating to the 1800s, and the specific lot chosen for the food forest, located off the West Ashley Bikeway on 5th Avenue, spent years as farmland and later as a neighborhood-run community garden before sitting vacant. The idea to bring it back came from Tyler Corsello, a resident who moved to West Ashley in February 2024 and discovered the Conservancy's first food forest at Mulberry Park while exploring the area, then wondered why his own neighborhood didn't have one. The project was originally supposed to wrap with a ribbon cutting in November 2025 after a fall installation; it didn't actually happen until May 16, 2026.
What's actually growing there now: fig, peach, lemon, and grapefruit trees, blackberry and strawberry plantings, shiitake mushroom logs, herbs, and pollinator plants, all free for residents to harvest. A structure called the Harvest Hub sits on site with tools and information for anyone who wants to learn to grow, pick, or preserve what's there. Conservancy executive director Jason Kronsberg framed the project simply at the ribbon cutting, saying parks can become places that feed people and bring communities together, not just places people walk through.
The Bigger Pattern Underneath This
None of these three projects were coordinated with each other in any formal sense. A county parks commission, a land conservation nonprofit, and a parks conservancy each moved on their own timeline, funded by their own donors, answering to their own boards. What they share is a location: West Ashley, which Mayor William Cogswell's office noted last year is now home to roughly half of Charleston's entire city population, a figure that lines up with the city's decision this summer to open a new services office on Ingram Road, cutting down on residents having to drive downtown for basic permits and paperwork.
That's the actual story here. It isn't that West Ashley got a new park, though it did. It's that three different institutions, working independently, all opened something new within the same twelve-month stretch, each choosing a different way to deliver on the idea that this part of the city deserved dedicated public investment. One built a park you pay two dollars to enter. One built a headquarters you'll only see from the trail. One turned a vacant lot into something you can literally eat from for free. If you've lived here long enough to remember when the gate on Old Towne Road was just closed, that's worth noticing.
If You're Making a Day of It
Old Towne Road sits close enough to the Savannah Highway corridor that a park visit pairs easily with a stop for food. The Lick opened in March 2026 in the South Windermere Center under chef Chris Johnson, aiming for an upscale but unpretentious dinner and Sunday brunch experience. Closer to Highway 61, Nirlep, the longtime Indian restaurant on Savannah Highway, spent nearly two years rebuilding after closing for a complete remodel, well past the seven-month timeline owner Balvinder Banga originally expected, and was aiming for an early 2026 reopening with a new logo out front. If you want something faster after the trail, Super Chix landed at 1137 Savannah Hwy with its frozen custard and chicken sandwich format.
West Ashley has spent the last year proving that new isn't always about what's for sale. Sometimes it's a gate that finally opens, a building that finally gets built, or a vacant lot that finally grows something worth picking. If you're curious about what else is changing in the neighborhoods around you, or what any of this means for your own property down the road, Charleston Hot Properties keeps a close eye on West Ashley for exactly this reason. Reach out anytime you want a local read on what's actually happening here.
