Passengers who leave a little soap behind at the end of their Carnival Sunshine cruises can take comfort in the fact that they're now doing something good for mankind.

Carnival Cruise Line, which bases its Sunshine pleasure ship at Union Pier in downtown Charleston, said last week it will become the first large-scale cruise line operator to recycle used soap to give to residents of poor countries around the globe.

Through a partnership with Orlando-based Clean The World, Carnival said it expects to reclaim about 40 tons of leftover soap each year. The cruise line will start collecting soap from guest and crew staterooms fleet-wide by the end of this month. Clean the World will then sanitize the bars, melt it down and reprocess it.

"Carnival guests use more than three million bars of soap each year," Christine Duffey, president of Carnival Cruise Line, said in a prepared statement. "With this partnership, we'll positively impact the lives of so many people who will have access to a basic hygiene product that so many of us take for granted."

The cruise line estimates 400,000 bars of soap can be created by the leftovers.

Breaking ground 

Years in the making, the long-awaited Charleston Tech Center on the upper peninsula goes from the drawing board to groundbreaking this week. 

The planned 92,000-square-foot building at 997 Morrison Drive is expected to be completed in late 2020. An 816-space parking garage will soon follow. The Charleston Digital Corridor, a tech-focused business accelerator that's been spearheading the project, will be the anchor tenant.

It's been a long wait.

The corridor holds a long-term lease on the land, purchased by the City of Charleston in 2013. The office building originally was expected to open in 2016.

Iron Bridge Capital Partners,which moved to Charleston from Atlanta in 2014, is the developer. The groundbreaking starts at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday at the project site between Romney and Conroy streets. Scheduled speakers include Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg, former Mayor Joe Riley and state commerce chief Bobby Hitt.

Market inn

A plan to convert classrooms into hotel rooms gets another airing this week. 

City zoning officials on Tuesday will take up a request to redevelop the former downtown site of the Art Institute of Charleston into a boutique inn.

The Carroll Building, a partially historic structure at North Market and East Bay streets, could become a 50-room lodging if the Board of Zoning Appeals gives its approval.

The hotel plan first appeared on a Technical Review Committee agenda last month. The committee directed the applicant, Mount Pleasant-based engineering firm SeamonWhiteside, to revise and resubmit its plan. 

The property, which is owned by a company formed by investor Karl Kuester, hit the market with a $22.25 million asking price in May. The last time it changed hands was in 1994, when it sold for $2.85 million. 

In recent years, the 53,600-square-foot building was the home of the Art Institute, which opened in 2007. Students were told a year ago that the for-profit school's downtown campus would be closing for good by the end of 2018.

The zoning board will meet at 5:15 p.m. in the public meeting room on the first floor of the Gaillard Center. 

The next day, Charleston's Planning Commission will review changes to the city's hotel ordinance which could make it more difficult to build new hotels on the peninsula. That meeting will also be held in the same room starting at 5 p.m. 

Change is in the air

A small Lowcountry airport has an unusual land-use classification.

Mount Pleasant Regional Airport at 700 Faison Road is currently zoned as a low-density residential district, which means, legally speaking, the 450-acre site could accommodate homes within its borders. And while it's surrounded by new housing developments such as Carolina Park in northern Mount Pleasant, the Federal Aviation Administration might have something to say about that.

Now the owner, the Charleston County Aviation Authority, wants to change the zoning at the East Cooper airfield for light industrial use. The agency, which also owns Charleston International Airport in North Charleston and Charleston Executive Airport on Johns Island, is looking at building hangars in Mount Pleasant to support more small aircraft. 

Of course, staying in compliance with FAA standards helps with grant assurances, according to the rezoning application.

The town's Planning Commission will consider the request July 24.

Jump shot

Go ahead and jump is what one company will be pitching in Charleston later this year.

The operator of the Summit Trampoline Park chain announced last week it plans to open in West Ashley in October.

The company will be springing into action at PinePoint Plaza at 1964 Ashley River Road. It will be San Juan, Puerto Rico-based Summit Trampoline Park Group's 13th entertainment center — most are located in South America — and its second in the U.S. The other is in Bellingham, Wash.

The Charleston expansion will create several full-time jobs and about 30 part-time positions, said Allan Jones, president.

The PinePoint Plaza space will offer about a dozen activities such as dodge ball, gymnastics, basketball and others, as well as what Summit described as “a huge main court.”

Summit will be competing for fun seekers and group outings with Sky Zone on Wando Park Boulevard in Mount Pleasant and Flight Fit N Fun, formerly Velocity Air Sports, on Rivers Avenue in North Charleston.  

Bored in Beaufort

A quirky Lowcountry museum was recently called out on a list of the worst "tourist traps" in every state. The travel website Far & Wide named the Kazoobie Kazoo Factory in Beaufort as South Carolina's "most boring" attraction. 

The factory produces around 1 million kazoos a year at its 6,500-square-foot facility. Tours are offered four times a day Monday through Friday for $7 for adults and $5 for children. The admission fee includes a kazoo to take home. 

During the about hour-long guided tours, guests see a variety of kazoo types and learn about the history of the instrument and how they are made. 

Other attractions named on the list include the now mostly closed Land of Oz theme park in Beech Mountain, N.C., Nashville's Parthenon replica and the Lunch Box Museum in Columbus, Ga. 

The COSCO crunch

The first "big ship" to sail to the Port of Charleston through the expanded Panama Canal got a little too close to one of the canal's walls last week.

The COSCO Development collided with the Agua Clara Lock wall, damaging a concrete staircase that runs alongside the waterway. The canal's integrity wasn't compromised, officials said, and the container ship wasn't damaged.

The vessel was headed from the Pacific Ocean.

Following a brief stop to check things out, the Development continued on its voyage to Port Colon in Panama.

The Development in May 2017 ushered in the era of large container ships traveling to the East Coast through the Central America shortcut. Capable of carrying 13,000 cargo boxes on a single voyage, the Development is among a new class of vessels transiting the canal and forcing U.S. ports to upgrade their infrastructure to accommodate them.

The State Ports Authority and the state and federal governments, for example, are spending more than $2 billion to refurbish Wando Welch Terminal in Mount Pleasant, build a new terminal in North Charleston and deepen Charleston Harbor to 52 feet so heavy ships like the Development can call at any time, regardless of tides.

The Development's next visit to Wando Welch is scheduled for July 23.

Sorry, Charlie

Another chain retailer is turning out the lights on all of its stores, including a handful in South Carolina.

Fashion accessory seller Charming Charlie will close all  of its 261 locations after filing for bankruptcy for the second time in less than two years, according to court documents. Liquidation is expected to take less than two months, with all stores closing by Aug. 31.

Four Palmetto State stores are affected in Columbia, Greenville, Spartanburg and Myrtle Beach, according to the retailer's website. The company does not operate stores in the Charleston area.

After shuttering 100 locations and emerging from its previous bankruptcy in April 2018, the company "continued to face challenges that make it impossible for Charming Charlie to continue as a going concern," finance chief Alvaro Bellon said in a report by Bloomberg News.

The closings will add to the roughly 7,100 retail outlets already announced to go dark this year, according to Coresight Research.