Not far from her lecture hall, first-year medical student Kendall Parsons can wander into greenery and shade in the midst of the Medical University of South Carolina campus and relax. "I feel like I'm a little bit more remote," she said. Nearby, pulsing rhythms from a disc jockey at Fiesta Latina drew people into a corner framed by flags from Mexico, Colombia and Costa Rica "to offer and promote diversity on the campus," said Nilsy Rapalo of Circulos de Bienestar .
"We bring them in and we dare them to dance." Along the MUSC Greenway , a mix of people, some seeking lunch or coffee at food trucks, others picking out a table to set up a laptop, others just sitting and watching people, rest in shade and dappled sunlight filtered by surrounding trees. What once was a busy and hazardous street in the Medical District, in the shadow of Roper Hospital and MUSC's hospital and clinics, has become something else entirely.
People walk down the MUSC Greenway Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024 in Charleston. It began to take shape about a decade ago, soon after Dr.
David J. Cole became president of MUSC. Back then, the campus could be best described as an "assembly of parking lots and buildings, which is not atypical for most health systems," he said.
Roper Hospital, which sits cheek by jowl with MUSC, was trying to decide on replacing its nearby medical office building and its parking lot with something else. Cole and Roper officials began discussing whether it might be possible to create greenspac.
