Selling Hartsville Moving from concept to action

The following post was sent out to the people who were at the last Selling Hartsville meeting on March 18 and to others on the Hartsville Steering Committee mailing list. It gives a pretty good overview of the move from presentation to implementation. This is a big rock in the Hartsville pond and we are hoping to have a large number of intersecting circles continue to spark sweet spots of activity for lots of people:

March 18, 2008

There were more than 30 people at the March 18 meeting of the Selling Hartsville Task Force. You can see, we have gone from calling the group a steering committee to the name of Task Force. The name is not just semantics. We are now actively in the implementation phase of the Selling Hartsville project. Thank you for all your input, your efforts and your desire to see Hartsville continue its trend of positive, forward growth.

Here is another story that demonstrates how well the target of "Hartsville, The Art of Good Living," summarizes our lifestyle. Parents of a person who has moved to Hartsville to work are visiting this week. After only about a day and a half they began to seriously wonder if they might not speed up their retirement plans and look to Hartsville as their next place to live. Everything we reminded ourselves of in the report that Carolina PR provided they explained in a conversation. They talked about the "feel" of the community. They talked about the community of the community. They talked about the ease and accessibility of so many different things like the walking trail at Byerly Park, the beautiful scenery of Kalmia Gardens, the downtown that was really alive and the YMCA and all it had to offer. They understood immediately when I told them of our efforts and before I could say more they filled in all the blanks about how while this is a small town it is not what they would describe as a small town from what they could see being offered.

Task Force Info --
We have a marketing task force and Johnna Shirley is going to be bringing that group together to begin thinking of the various places throughout and across Hartsville that we can begin to use, for and with an umbrella marketing strategy. They will also be working with the agency on graphic suggestions as well as many other areas.

There is another task force that will be composed of many of the organizations that recruit people for jobs in Hartsville. They are going to be meeting to discuss the impediments of people moving to Hartsville, the tools that might be needed to help better sell Hartsville and even some very hands-on tactics that might be devised to implement an aggressive, recruiting effort to educate those people who might really like the quality of life Hartsville offers. Roger Schrum is taking an initial lead on this task force.

The legacy entrances to Hartsville is a concept that has evolved since the consultants strongly recommended that the former Butler School property be thought of as a major part of the South entrance area to Hartsville and that it be made into a legacy entrance to highlight the African-American history and tradition in Hartsville. Jim Dawson, Coker President, then thought the legacy theme might be a great way to devise improvements for the Hartsville entrances with a manufacturing legacy to the North, an educational legacy to the east; an agricultural legacy near the Coker Pedigee Farm museum and the natural resource legacy at the Kalmia entrance to the west. Jim Dawson is pulling together this task force.

While there was not time for as much discussion, it is apparent that some good movement is taking place in the Vista area and the parties most associated with this area, the City of Hartsville, Coker and the Governor's School are going to be continuing progress in this area.

This is a short synopsis of activities. Anyone who has not signed up for one of the three task forces or who would like to begin to call another together should reply to this message and that work can begin.

We have pretty much decided on The Art of Good Living and now we have to continue to find ways to even better define this "product."

The meeting this past Tuesday was held at the new meeting hall of Jerusalem Baptist Church on Sixth Street and this is a beautiful facility and we appreciate their allowing this community-building meeting to take place in their Fellowship Hall.