There was a great deal of activity in the gym at the former Butler High School this past Tuesday evening. The Hartsville Planning Department under Rodney Tucker put together an event to generate community input to a process of redeveloping the Butler property, which at one time was a focal point for the South Hartsville community. Butler is also a major legacy in the history and education of many long-time African-American Hartsville area residents.
Currently, the Butler Heritage Foundation is rebuilding the former administration area to make a community center. The Hartsville Boys and Girls Club has been using the gym and a former wing of the school for their activities and the Pee Dee Council on Aging also has daily events at the location.
City planner Rodney Tucker learned a great deal about community planning and development at Clemson and he had an idea the school could could help develop a framework to help with redeveloping this property, which plays such a prominent role in the South entrance to the city of Hartsville. A large team of graduate students led by Professor Dr. Grant Cunningham were in Hartsville earlier this week meeting with lots of people and organizing the community-input session.
This project is a hands-on learning experience for these students, who are working for graduate degrees in planning or landscape architecture or a combination of these fields. The students were deeply involved in running the sessions and there were a significant number (my guess is 50+) citizens who were joining in this process.
This project will last through January. Anyone with questions should contact Rodney Tucker at the Hartsville Planning Department. This was an exciting night for building community and for an extremely focused effort of thinking about a specific area of the community.
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