Color Hair Salon near Johns Island, SC

When you load up the car with gas and press play on a new playlist, you're likely on your way to some outdoor excursion or small-town adventure. But here in South Carolina, our restaurants are good enough to warrant a day trip. That's why we're recommending a visit to Lost Isle in Johns Island, even if it means a few hours of driving time.

Just outside of Charleston, Johns Island is 84 square miles of land characterized by rivers, marshes, and abundant wildlife. Lost Isle blends seamlessly into this landscape, offering its visitors a hyperlocal Lowcountry experience.

Lost Isle is among the region's newest restaurants, and it's already made a name for itself after making The Restaurant List in The New York Times. It's tucked away behind a little white house. You'll follow a canopy of flora to a backyard garden, where you'll be seated under a beautiful canvas canopy complete with chandeliers. This outside-only dining space is perfect for a cozy meal under the stars, with the added benefit of seeing your food cooked just a few feet away.

Lost Isle is a "fire-to-table" restaurant, and local, seasonal ingredients are prepared over an open fire. Lead chef Josh Taylor grew up in Northern Georgia and incorporates familiar Lowcountry staples into his menu. And yet, it's the globally-inspired flavors that really make the plates shine.

The menu is divided into small plates, shareable sides, and mains, giving you a chance to share a handful of dishes with your group. Be sure to start off your meal with the whipped ricotta, served with charred tomato, herb oil, chili honey, and focaccia. Other popular orders include the curry braised collards and rire-roasted Georgia clams. The Harissa cauliflower steak is also highly recommended.

No matter what you order, be sure to pair your meal with something from the bar. There's an impressive list of house cocktails as well as beer, wine, and non-alcoholic options.

Have you had the opportunity to visit Lost Isle on Johns Island? What were some of your favorite menu items? We'd love to learn all about your experiences there! For more information, including menus and hours, be sure to check out the Lost Isle Johns Island website. Lost Isle does not currently accept reservations, and they recommend arriving either early or late to secure a table. The restaurant is located at 3338 Maybank Highway, Johns Island, SC 29455.

Need a place to stay while you're exploring the area? Check out these unique vacation rentals in Johns Island, South Carolina.

JOHNS ISLAND, S.C. (WCIV) — Uninsured adults living in the Lowcountry have a new, free option for healthcare.

The Barrier Islands Free Medical Clinic expanded on Monday, Sept. 16, to cover Berkeley, Charleston and Dorchester counties.

The clinic currently has a roster of roughly 900 active patients, but with room for more, the team is opening its doors to more people.

“I think once they can trust us and feel comfortable here, I think they depend on us a lot,” said Linda Paddock, a long-time volunteer.

READ MORE | "Barrier Islands Free Medical Clinic on Johns Island receives nearly $80K grant."

Since 2008, the clinic on Johns Island has seen more than 66,000 patients. It serves as a primary care office, offering free medical visits that would typically cost more than $230 per trip. With the no-cost healthcare, the clinic also has a translator for Spanish speakers in need of treatment.

“Our main priority is providing a medical home for people that have nowhere else to turn,” said Melissa Frank, the executive director. “We are truly the safety net, below the safety net, and the more individuals we can help, the better it is.”

Free medications and vaccines are available to patients, as are multiple specialty treatment areas like dermatology, gynecology and orthopedics.

Barrier Islands Free Medical Clinic is run by a team of 40 providers, 20 nurses, more than 120 volunteers and 60 additional people in administrative roles. Many of these people are retired medical professionals, like Paddock, who want to help patients without other options.

Being without health insurance is a terrible situation, she said.

“If you've lost your job or you're ill and can't work, it's a wonderful thing to be able to come and not have to worry about how you're going to get yourself back on your feet to keep going,” Paddock explained.

READ MORE | "Barrier Islands Free Medical Clinic opens bigger location on Johns Island."

In its biggest expansion yet, the clinic feels more people's needs can be met.

“There is so much need here and there are tens of thousands of individuals just in Charleston County that don't have any type of health insurance,” Frank said. “Until I came here, l had no idea how many options there are for people.”

Nearly 80,000 people living in the Tri-County area were without health insurance in 2020, according to the South Carolina Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office. They now have a medical home on Johns Island.

While expanding, the clinic does not have plans to leave its location off Maybank Highway.

Applications are now open on the clinic’s website for new patients.

Listen to this article

Southwind Station retail and medical village will start construction in Johns Island in October.

The village will be across from where Meeks Farm Road meets Maybank Highway and aims to provide the community with retail space in the front and medical spaces in the back.

Having owned a portion of the land for about 20 years, Mark Goldberg, real estate partner for the village with JI South Station, was finally able to “put the pieces together,” which led the project to begin about five years ago.

David Grubbs, broker and partner with NAI Charleston, said the “timing is great to capitalize on bringing medical services to the island,” considering HCA’s future Trident Health hospital on Johns Island as well.

The medical spaces in Southwind Station will not be associated with HCA but are intended to provide further medical office services through Goldberg’s company and his partners.

“One thing we’ve heard, and our firm has been involved with Johns Island for quite some time, is with the growth and the traffic, a lot of residents want to see vital services and retail on the island, so they don’t have to leave,” Grubbs said. “So, our marketing efforts are really curtailed toward what would be uses that are needed on the island.”

The cost of the project was not disclosed.

Phase one of Southwind Station is intended to be four buildings, said Peter McKellar, owner of Harbor Contracting. He expects phase one’s first four buildings to take 10 to 12 months to complete.

The team intends for tenants to begin moving into the spaces as soon as phase one construction is completed.

Harbor Contracting is leading the construction for the project following Gulf Stream Construction’s contributions to phase one. LFK Architects are the design team, and civil engineering is led by HLA.

“The design team has done a great job of really making it fit on Johns Island,” Grubbs said. “I think that’s something that takes a lot of thought. We are excited about it and the feedback we’ve received from prospective tenants is they really love the feel of the project and how it blends in with the landscape.”

JOHNS ISLAND, S.C. (WCBD) – A local youth baseball program on Johns Island has plans to expand so more kids can play ball, but they will need Charleston County’s help.

“A lot of our kids have to go elsewhere to play other sports and that’s what we’re trying to do is just keep it here on Johns Island,” said Todd Rieger who leads the Youth Umpire Program for the Barrier Islands Little League.

Barrier Islands Little League dates back to the 1950s and currently serves more than 600 players. The organization is looking to build a new complex off Main Road to accommodate even more kids.

“We’ve got some high dreams for the kids that will serve age four all the way up to 16 in Little League, and possibly American Legion, which is getting into more 17 to age 21,” Rieger explained. “So, very exciting time for our community and for the kids to have a really nice complex to play in.”

The nonprofit, Lowcountry Land Trust, requested over $1.6 million from Charleston County’s Greenbelt funds to purchase 40 acres of land which would be transferred to the Barrier Islands Little League.

The money in the county’s Greenbelt Program comes from a half penny sales tax approved in 2004 and then again in 2016.

“We rely heavily on our partners, nonprofits, municipalities. They apply for grant funding to acquire land and once they do that, then we place a grant agreement on it which protects that land,” said Eric Davis, the Director of Greenbelt Programs for Charleston County.

Aside from the new baseball facilities, the proposed active and mostly passive park would include greenspace and hiking trails.

The Charleston County Finance Committee will consider making a recommendation to approve the request on Thursday which is one step in making the project a reality.

Rieger said they are still going to need help from a generous donor with what could be a $15-20 million total cost.

“Is that a lofty goal? Sure. But why not?” Rieger asked. “That’s what we teach our kids, set goals, try to reach them.”

County officials said the recommendation from the Finance Committee will go to full council for their approval.

Pat Franquelin and her husband, Marcel, were three weeks from closing on their Johns Island home when the builder unexpectedly called and canceled their contract.

Now, more than three years after filing a lawsuit against the builder for breach of contract, the Franquelins are still fighting to move into their dream home.

The couple is one of nine who in 2020 were suddenly denied homes they designed in the Swygert’s Landing community on Johns Island. A year later, each family individually filed a breach of contract lawsuit against Charlotte-based builder Eastwood Homes. While the families won the initial court battle, Eastwood has appealed the judge's decision.

Real Estate

Eastwood is citing a paperwork error as the reason for the sudden terminations years ago, saying the homes in the Franquelin's phase of the Johns Island development were accidentally left out of the homeowner’s association covenants. Rather than resolving the problem while homebuyers waited, Eastwood canceled the contracts and told buyers they'd have to negotiate new contracts for the same property at current market value rather than what they originally agreed to pay.

Home prices ranged from $534,000 to nearly $609,000 when the lawsuits were filed. Sales in the community have since reached upwards of $800,000.

“We made it very clear we didn’t want to lose the house and would be willing to do anything necessary to assist them in resolving whatever issue they may have had,” Pat Franquelin said. “However, they dismissed us completely, canceled all our appointments and shut the door to any communication.”

Canceled contracts are not just a local issue. Home builders in hot real estate markets across the country have been tossing out agreements and telling buyers they must renegotiate at higher sales prices. It's a practice the Better Business Bureau has called "unethical," and is becoming more common as construction costs have spiked since the pandemic.

An unexpected loss

The Franquelins say they were blindsided. They had been meeting with builders on a weekly basis to talk about their home's progress and spoke with Eastwood just days before their contract was canceled.

Dion Matheney, Eastwood's division president, and Allen Nason, the homebuilder's general counsel, say the buyers should have known cancellations might occur. In testimony last December, they said Eastwood's standard contract gives the builder the right to terminate any home purchase agreement for any reason Eastwood defines as a “bonafide dispute."

Eastwood considered the HOA issue such a dispute and said there's no room to negotiate.

“Your opinion is irrelevant because it’s the seller’s sole judgment, so I don’t really care what your opinion is," Nason said during a court hearing. "It is only my opinion that matters, period."

Charleston County Judge Mikell Scarborough sided with the buyers in December. He ruled that Eastwood could not enforce the contracts as-is and ordered the builder to strike the language about an arbitrary dispute being just cause for leaving homeowners in the lurch.

Scarborough called the contract's language "unconscionable" and a violation of public policy.

Lawyer Ross Appel with the McCullough, Khan and Appel firm in Mount Pleasant is representing all nine families with co-counsel Michael Cooper of the Apostolou Law Firm in North Charleston. Appel said the judge's ruling "recognized the vastly different negotiating power between the builders and the homebuyer."

For example, when Eastwood canceled the contracts, it simply refunded the buyers' deposits, gave them $100 in damages and offered them first right of refusal when their homes were ready to be sold again. But if the buyers had canceled their contracts, they would have forfeited all of their payments and faced a potential lawsuit, Appel noted.

Eastwood filed its appeal in June, hoping "different judges (review) this issue differently,” Ward Bradley, Eastwood's legal counsel, told The Post and Courier. Ward said Eastwood offered to re-contract with each buyer once the existing phase was annexed into the Swygert's HOA, but "these individuals refused that offer."

Business

A national concern

The buyers say they'll continue to push back in appeals court. Appel believes there needs to be a genuine disagreement on both sides to enact the cancellation clause, not just a paperwork error the buyers were willing to wait out.

He added that this ruling goes beyond Swygert’s Landing and stretches throughout the Carolinas to all Eastwood communities. Anyone who purchases an Eastwood home could suffer the same fate as the plaintiffs, he said.

“Our clients’ contracts are the same form contract Eastwood uses for all its residential developments in South Carolina,” Appel said. “If Eastwood can terminate these contracts at its ‘sole option’ and for any reason in Eastwood’s ‘sole judgment’ up to the minute of closing — as Eastwood’s representatives admitted at trial — this can happen to any other Eastwood homebuyer in South Carolina.”

Eastwood did something similar at a community in Durham, N.C. A woman bought a home in that city's Highland Park neighborhood for $309,000 in 2021 and, four months later, the builder canceled the deal, saying the property hadn't been properly recorded. It was one of nine contracts Eastwood terminated, giving buyers the right to repurchase their homes at a higher price.

Builders in other parts of the country also are exercising their "right to terminate," particularly in markets like Texas and Florida, where prices have skyrocketed in recent years.

A public school teacher in the Atlanta metro area reported two years ago that her home builder canceled her contract a week before closing, then raised the sales price by 25 percent.

Farther west, a group of Central Texas homebuyers sued their builder for the same reason in 2023. Six months into their agreement, the builder, Buffington Homes, acquired another company, LGI-Homes Texas, and unilaterally canceled a number of homes under construction in its Esperanza Development in Dripping Springs.

Business

The suit is ongoing and the Esperanza homes, like those in Swygert's Landing, are now at an indefinite standstill. Some of the nine Johns Island homes are fully built while others have bare-bone foundations.

To date, the HOA annexation has not occurred because of the litigation, Ward said.

“Sometimes doing the right thing isn't the easy thing, but Eastwood is confident the appeals court will resolve the legal interpretation at issue,” he said.

The majority of the original buyers have moved on, Appel said, but a few, like the Franquelins, still hold out hope for living in Swygert's Landing.

Appel and Cooper filed a response to Eastwood's appeal on Aug. 15.

Both sides are now looking at potentially years of litigation ahead, Appel said.