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NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - A relatively new nonprofit is working to provide affordable housing to Lowcountry and Palmetto State adults with nowhere else to turn.

The organization Berry Manor Boarding Home specializes in both memory care and supportive housing. They provide affordable, long-term, nonmedical residential care to elderly, disabled and memory-impaired adults—including U.S. Veterans and people suffering from conditions like Alzheimer’s and dementia.

Founder Deanna Miller-Berry says what they’re doing is a completely new approach to addressing the needs of people who are falling through the gaps of the health care system. Veterans without support from Veterans Affairs and seniors with pending disability claims are at the top of her client list.

“The whole premise of our program is making sure when these families trust their loved ones to us, they know that they’re going to be loved,” Miller-Berry says. “They know they’re going to be cared for and we’re going to make sure they get the health care that they need. Between good, old-fashioned science with basic, holistic foundations of community and love, this is what we are building.”

This week, Miller-Berry and her team are opening up their eighth home, this one in North Charleston. At least six people will live in the home.

Every day, a small, but dedicated, staff will spend hours at each home, cooking meals, reminding residents to take their medications and helping them set up home health care.

Miller-Berry says communal living is the key to making this system work. Many of the seniors are on fixed incomes that are too low to afford housing, health care and necessities.

She says they provide those things, like food and beds, in a home-style setting that helps clients with memory issues connect with their environment. While they leave the actual medical care to outside nurses and doctors, Miller-Berry says having a community can work wonders on health.

“We pride ourselves on making sure that we provide an atmosphere that’s conducive for healing. We use a very holistic approach, which is old-school traditional love. Literally,” Miller-Berry says. We take the time to be able to pour into them in a way that makes them feel like they’re still a part of society and they’re still contributing to building what we call all our new community of folks.

The nonprofit is rapidly expanding with new homes popping up throughout the state all the time. Berry-Miller says she expects to go from the current eight homes to 17 homes by the end of the year.

Copyright 2025 WCSC. All rights reserved.

The S.C. State Ports Authority is pushing back the opening of its new $400 million rail yard on the former Navy base until next year, partly because of global trade uncertainties.

The agency had planned to start moving containers from its Leatherman Terminal in North Charleston in July.

The projected date has been moved up to early 2026, SC Ports CEO Barbara Melvin said at a June 11 meeting of the Maritime Association of South Carolina.

"This is a business decision by us," she said afterward.

Melvin stressed that the SPA could meet its long-stated goal of unveiling the Navy Base Intermodal Facility next month, even though three of the six cranes and one of the two rail loops aren't ready.

She estimated the development is 80 percent completed.

"But as we approached the end of the project some things happened," Melvin said Wednesday.

The most pressing issue is the economic uncertainty stemming from President Donald Trump's ongoing trade war, which has put the global shipping industry on edge.

That includes the SPA. Melvin said the ports authority, like numerous private companies, has struggled to forecast its business outlook for its July 1 fiscal year.

"Uncertainty is not good for business," she said.

Against that backdrop, the SPA decided the time isn't right to open its $400 million investment.

"We don't want to do that right now because there are already cost-structure questions about tariffs and other things that supply-chain people are dealing with," Melvin said. "So there are good times in business to make moves like this and bad times. I think there's enough strain on ... the supply chain to say, 'Let's figure out what's going on before we introduce a new product.'"

Palmetto Railways, part of the S.C. Commerce Department, began planning for the 118-acre project more than 15 years ago. The SPA took it over in 2021.

Melvin said the state-backed investment will fill a huge competitive void for the maritime agency, which runs the only major East Coast port that doesn't offer cargo shippers rail service near its docks.

Two other issues factored into the delay.

They include the SPA's decision last year to allow union workers to operate the cranes at all of its terminals for the first time in its history after losing a high-profile labor dispute. That's created contractual wrinkles about the use of remote technology at the rail site. A committee is working to iron them out, Melvin said.

"It's not a hardship. It's just an added step we didn't really anticipate when this facility was planned long ago," she said.

Also, the SPA needs more time to train the crane operators to learn to handle equipment that's brand new to the port.

The rail yard will be served by two major railroads, CSX Corp. and Norfolk Southern. They did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

Melvin said the two rail companies and state lawmakers are aware of the delay. She plans to discuss the decision at the SPA's board meeting next week.

"I think in times like this, doing it right, with a lot more reliability and certainty, is more important than ... forcing the opening on a date when we now have all these additional factors we didn't know were going to exist," she said.

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - Roper St. Francis is beginning construction on a more than 1 billion project bringing a brand-new hospital to North Charleston by 2029 to replace its current downtown Charleston campus.

The hospital will be located off of Mall Drive behind the North Charleston City Hall. The campus is 27 acres and will feature a full-service 24-hour emergency department, operating rooms, inpatient units, a medical office building housing outpatient and specialty services and a vegetated green belt connecting facilities across the campus.

“To be able to continue the 170-year-old legacy that is Roper Hospital is an incredible thing,” Regional President for Roper St. Francis, Troy Powell, said.

The build is set to be completed in early 2029 and will create 3,600 construction jobs during the work.

“We’re here to celebrate more than steel and concrete, although there is a lot of it. We’re here because Roper St. Francis Healthcare is expanding our footprint to the center of our metropolitan area, bringing care, compassion and cutting-edge medicine even closer to the people we serve,” Roper St. Francis President & CEO Joseph DeLeon says.

DeLeon expects staff to transition into the building in early 2029 and run simulations to get used to the facility layout. He says it should be a smooth transition since they were instrumental in helping design the interiors through hundreds of workshops to hear from staff what layouts benefit them and patients best.

Medical staff got a chance to get a first look at the future medical campus back in December 2024.

Mid-2025 marks the start of construction on what the Roper St. Francis team says will be a major healthcare facility upgrade and leave a long legacy.

The move to North Charleston is a step in the Roper St. Francis Healthcare 2030 Strategic Plan to broaden access to quality care by expanding the health system’s footprint in the Lowcountry.

“We’re creating history today. Roper St. Francis has been around for a very long time, it’s taken care of so many people in the community. I know when we put this building in, it’s going to be the same for years and years, well past when I’m around,” DeLeon says.

Copyright 2025 WCSC. All rights reserved.

Top Chef contestant Shuai Wang does not think of himself as a competitive person. "I'm one of those people who thinks everyone deserves a trophy for participating," he says.

And yet, the Charleston chef did really well on the television cooking show - making it all the way to the finale.

"Prior to going on Top Chef, I felt very stuck," Wang says. He thought he'd peaked. But being in competition mode, learning from other chefs, he says, "it kind of just rejuvenated my creativity." In one episode, he cooked with ants that he'd foraged and gently toasted. They tasted like lemons, he said, "such a wonderful, zingy flavor."

When he's not off filming a reality show, Shuai Wang is usually in North Charleston, South Carolina, with his wife and business partner, Corrie Wang. The couple met working at a restaurant in New York City. They moved south 10 years ago and had a food truck before opening their first restaurant, Jackrabbit Filly, named after their zodiac signs, and then a second restaurant, King BBQ.

Catie Dull/NPR

Catie Dull/NPR

It opened a year and half ago in a building that was, at various times, an ad agency, a church and a lunch counter, says Shuai. It's a beautiful space, with lots of personal touches. A pair of lions standing guard out front and the tile ceiling were custom made and shipped from Beijing, where Shuai was born. Framed portraits of the couple's dogs line the hallway. Red Chinese tassels hang from the ceiling and the walls are painted jade green - for good fortune.

The Wangs call their menu "Chinatown BBQ made with southern smoke." It, too, is full of personal touches. Krab rangoon with buttermilk hush puppies and hot honey. Chinese BBQ egg rolls with habanero duck sauce. "I cook from nostalgia," Chef Wang says.

Catie Dull/NPR

Catie Dull/NPR

The first dish Shuai cooks for NPR rings that bell - crispy, smoked duck on top of noodles with bok choy.

"That's just my fondest memory of growing up in New York," he says, "my parents taking me to Flushing on the weekends, or late nights after work, going down to Chinatown."

Catie Dull/NPR

Catie Dull/NPR

Shuai Wang remembers that when he was a young boy in Beijing, Communist China was still handing out food rations. So his grandma, who helped raise him, had to stretch her portion of rice and allotment of lard to feed the family.

He likens it to how enslaved families in the South improvised using the scraps they were left with to make a meal.

"That's why I feel so connected with Southern food, right?" he says. "That's where collard greens came from. The field peas, the butter beans."

Wang immigrated to the United States when he was nine, where his mom took over the cooking. He calls her the "OG Top Chef." But he didn't find his own love of cooking until high school. "I had to take a culinary class in my last two years to make up credits for all the classes that I 'accidentally missed,'" he laughs.

Catie Dull/NPR

The next plate he makes - chili tofu, a take on mapo tofu - is an homage to Shuai and Corrie's relationship. "That's the first dish that Corrie and I shared on our first date," Shuai explains. "I immediately scooped it up and put it in my mouth, not thinking that it would be a million degrees. And I spat it right out onto my plate, and everywhere."

Corrie didn't leave, and that's how they knew it was meant to be. "We're both like, crying… everything's so spicy and hot," adds Corrie. "It was a great time."

Catie Dull/NPR

This version of chili tofu is done in a fancy, Hamburger Helper, Asian-Italian style, with soft tofu, a sweet, spicy, tangy chili sauce and local ground pork on a bed of pasta, topped with mozzarella cheese. Tofu and mozzarella sound a little funky? Somehow, it really works.

"I get crazy ideas," Shuai Wang says. "I have a million and one crazy ideas. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, you know?"

Catie Dull/NPR

Corrie Wang says she's seen a natural progression as they've developed the restaurants where Shuai is "just creating legit Chinese food" rather than making gimmicky dishes.

"I just realized I really just want to embrace myself and my culture and cook Chinese food," he says.

After his Top Chef stint, Shuai is taking all his crazy ideas, his heritage and a renewed spirit of adventure and creativity into the future. "I realized oh, I didn't peak," he says. "Chinese food has 500 years of history. I've explored very little of it."

CHARLESTON COUNTY, S.C. (WCIV) — The fifth annual Lowcountry Juneteenth Week Festival is set to kick off, celebrating the spirit of the holiday with music, history, culture, family fun and community empowerment.

Running from June 16 through June 23, with the earliest event on Saturday, June 7, J19 Week looks to commemorate the historic day marking the end of slavery in the United States while uplifting Black culture and contributions, event officials detailed in a news release.

"This year’s 5th anniversary is more than a milestone—it’s a movement," said Latisha Manigault, the co-founder of J19 Week. "We’re proud to see this celebration grow each year as more people connect with the history of Juneteenth and the beauty of the Gullah Geechee culture. J19 Week is about unity, empowerment, and honoring the journey."

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J19 Week events span throughout the Lowcountry and are designed to welcome people of all backgrounds. To view the full schedule and purchase tickets, visit www.j19week.com.

"This isn’t just a festival—it’s a family. Whether you’re a longtime supporter or a first-time attendee, J19 Week is where everyone can feel seen, celebrated, and inspired," said Sean Smith, the vice president. "We invite the entire community to come out and be part of this incredible experience."

The 2025 festival lineup includes: