It’s hard to not be impressed with Florence’s downtown revitalization efforts.
Gone are the boarded-up buildings and deserted streets of its historic district. Now, it’s home to busy restaurants, a boutique hotel, renovated storefronts, a thriving arts center and popular events. Florence has accomplished 90% of the goals set out in its downtown master plan, and the city is the 2023 recipient of a national Great American Main Street Award, just the second city in South Carolina to ever win, following Greenville.
It’s a success story showing what a revitalization effort can accomplish. But here is what city and business leaders say: We’re not finished.
They’re not content with the building vacancy rates that have dropped from 42% to 6% in recent years in the eight-block downtown district, or the university health science graduate programs housed in renovated buildings.
“When you realize a fair amount of success, and the community responds and says, ‘This is wonderful,’ it reinforces what you are doing. And you want to do another and another and another,” said Fred Carter, president of Francis Marion University and current board chair of the Florence Downtown Development Corporation.
That enthusiasm is evident in the area’s new master plan, setting the city’s intentions for the next decade. By 2030, the city expects a larger, more diverse and more walkable downtown, with a goal of 1,000 more residential units covering a range of price points and styles.
“If we can accomplish all our goals in this master plan, the downtown Florence of 2030 will be a much more connected, walkable and thriving place than it even is today,” said Hannah Davis, Florence’s development manager.
Florence’s definition of “downtown” will change, too. The plan calls for expanding beyond the historic district’s borders into a larger redevelopment area, where enhanced corridors and gateways will announce that people are in a special place, Davis said.
“Our goal is to also create walkable, connected corridors that people feel comfortable utilizing for commutes and for recreation,” she said. “And in 2030, we hope that our intentional and thoughtful work along the lines of diversity and inclusion will pay off so that we can continue to cultivate a vibrant downtown reflective of the demographics of our community.”
It's an ambitious goal, but it’s something Florence city and business leaders believe is attainable. They point to what the city has done so far — redeveloping 79 buildings in a downtown that was on the brink of collapse in 2002.
Davis said there are several reasons the revitalization has succeeded, including a vision set out in an earlier downtown master plan that received support from the community, elected officials and staff through several administrations, along with the maintenance of a dedicated staff to make it happen.
A Main Street South Carolina member, the city also followed the Main Street approach, including appearance and maintenance codes, designating a historic district to define the program’s scope, identifying and managing the downtown’s assets, and promotion. But none of it would have happened without strong public-private partnerships, which will remain a priority.
Tim Norwood was an early partner and believer in downtown Florence, working with the mayor, city council and city leaders more than a decade ago to help progress a vision for downtown. Using a combination of local, state and federal incentives, Norwood and partners renovated and opened Hotel Florence and Victors, a fine-dining restaurant.
“Florence hadn’t had a credible downtown in 50 years. We wanted our children and the young people in Florence to have a reason to stay. We wanted to have a downtown people would be proud of,” Norwood said.
It wasn’t an immediate sell, he said, adding with a laugh that some of his friends and business partners questioned his sanity back in 2011. But he remembers what happened when the restaurant opened.
“It was a magical time. The place was flooded. Everyone was dressed up. People said, ‘I can’t believe I’m in Florence.’ It was like Dorothy in ‘The Wizard of Oz.’”
He now is a Florence Downtown Development Corporation board member and continues to work with his partners on development projects. He said getting more people to live downtown is key to continued success.
“Having people living downtown gives the community a fabric. You have people walking around, supporting retail stores. You want that busy feeling,” Norwood said.
Some of that residential development will be helped along by students at Francis Marion University. The university now has a significant presence in Florence’s downtown, opening its sixth building in the area.
Carter, too, remembers some of the early doubters.
“There were folks, old-time alumni, who cautioned me not to build downtown. They saw the decline and were fearful about graffiti and vandalism. But the group of people with whom we were working were determined we could put up a major arts venue that would spur development in the hospital sector downtown and maybe even residential development,” Carter said. “The bottom line: 13 years later, we’ve never had a single incident at the performing arts center, nothing has been vandalized. The community has had nothing but respect for the facility.”
FMU also decided to grow its health sciences programs in the downtown. The university built and renovated two health sciences facilities downtown, where nurse practitioner, speech pathology, clinical psychology and health science administration graduate programs are located — 7 miles from the FMU main campus, but placing clinical rotations of students closer to Florence’s health care facilities.
Photo: True Light Photography.
“We keep coming together and keep dreaming. What’s wonderful is figuring out what to do with the next block,” Carter said. “We’d love more retail, more commercial, more parking. I’d love to see more apartments and more residential building downtown. As we put more grad students downtown, these are students that need to live downtown.”
Clint Moore, Florence’s assistant city manager, said that increasing residential units is the next step in the central business district’s transformation.
“We have an aggressive goal within the master plan for 1,000 units in 20 years,” he said. “Having that 18-hour city life, with downtown busy all the time, is important. Like any neighborhood, you want people living there who take ownership of an area.”
New housing is in the works and more is on the drawing board, with new apartments, condominiums and some short-term rental units.
Moore said Florence will look beyond the small footprint of the historic district and expand its focus to the entire central business district. But projects in the historic area give existing property owners a clear vision of ways to improve or better utilize their buildings, allowing them to mimic the historic district’s accomplishments, he said.
“It would be very easy for the city to say, ‘Look at downtown, it’s full, there are only one or two vacant storefronts.’ You could look at it and say we were absolutely successful and we’re done. But that’s not something you should do,” Moore said. “You should continue that growth, that effort.”
Florence is also a model for others around the state, showing the importance of developing and using strategic planning “to establish a roadmap for intentional direction,” said Jenny Boulware, Main Street South Carolina manager.
“This roadmap provides purposeful and realistic goals with incremental steps to achieve those goals. Their roadmap does not sit on a shelf; the local team tracks and celebrates progress as it is made,” Boulware said. “I would also note that the Florence team is continually learning. They seek out downtown revitalization best practices from peer Main Street municipalities across the country. This is what makes the Main Street network so impactful — the ability to reach out to like-minded communities pursuing the same goal of a revitalized, vibrant commercial district.”