April 29, 2019 — Larry Mcclellan can look from the porch of his century-old farmhouse out across Jeremy Creek where the shrimp boats rock under their hanging nets.
Mcclellan captains one of the boats there and his son captains another. The creek, which leads to the rich Bulls Bay shellfish waters, is his livelihood and his life. The hub of it all, where the boats are moored, is the Carolina Seafood dock.
That’s how integral Carolina Seafood owner Rutledge Leland’s business is to McClellanville, the modest fishing village north of Charleston.
The seafood dock is the cultural heart of the place. And it could be lost.
Mcclellan was among a roomful of town residents who turned out at a Charleston County Greenbelt meeting last week to support an East Cooper Land Trust request for funding to conserve the Carolina Seafood dock as an open space and cultural heritage worth protecting with sales tax dollars, but also as a business.