Sunday, November 13, 2011
STATE Newspaper has excellent story on Charlie Coker
Charlie Coker is one of the business legends in South Carolina. Here The State newspaper provides an interesting overview of a long career building a company and a community. Charlie's efforts continue today. I think you will enjoy reading this story from The State newspaper on the influence Charles W. Coker has had on the State of South Carolina, Sonoco and Hartsville.
Sunday, November 06, 2011
How does a small community create jobs?
One of the major questions that some people in Hartsville have been discussing over the past several months is "How does a smaller community like Hartsville engage in economic development and create needed jobs."
One idea that is being discussed is finding a way to infuse more new and niche businesses into the Hartsville retail community, taking advantage of the amazing downtown ambiance that many of us seem to take so much for granted. But, as this idea is being discussed, we also hear of some of those same nice, niche, new businesses that we have considering closing their doors because business is just not good enough to pay the bills.
In fact, one of our major communication businesses is moving from their home and for a number of weeks they had problems finding a location in the rental-price range they were needing to pay.
So, as this question of how to create jobs is being discussed, one idea is that we find a large retail space in downtown that could be subdivided into smaller stores that could give a new business enough space to create their "SPACE" while keeping rent low enough to be affordable for a start-up enterprise. If you were going to give a name to such a business, it would probably be incubator -- at least that is what Mayor Pennington calls this space when he is thinking about what might work. A retail incubator could be an idea with merit. There are certainly some major questions. How would a building owner recoup investment? Would it be possible to add to the downtown-loft apartments that have been built the past couple of years and get enough rent from those to make some money on the building, which might now even be able to get enough retail floor rent to pay bills. Would a public passage from the parking lots on College Avenue to the store fronts on Carolina Avenue be a incentive for more shopping in the downtown. Would such a building area be available at price that could make the dream a possibility.
There are many people I have spoken with who say they would like to open a business but looking at space costs of more than $800 a month give them a great deal of pause. But, they would love to be in a downtown area that looks like Hartsville's downtown -- if they could afford it.
So, this might be one idea for creating opportunities for people to open new businesses in Hartsville. And, new businesses can create jobs. What other ideas are there for creating jobs in a community like Hartsville?
One idea that is being discussed is finding a way to infuse more new and niche businesses into the Hartsville retail community, taking advantage of the amazing downtown ambiance that many of us seem to take so much for granted. But, as this idea is being discussed, we also hear of some of those same nice, niche, new businesses that we have considering closing their doors because business is just not good enough to pay the bills.
In fact, one of our major communication businesses is moving from their home and for a number of weeks they had problems finding a location in the rental-price range they were needing to pay.
So, as this question of how to create jobs is being discussed, one idea is that we find a large retail space in downtown that could be subdivided into smaller stores that could give a new business enough space to create their "SPACE" while keeping rent low enough to be affordable for a start-up enterprise. If you were going to give a name to such a business, it would probably be incubator -- at least that is what Mayor Pennington calls this space when he is thinking about what might work. A retail incubator could be an idea with merit. There are certainly some major questions. How would a building owner recoup investment? Would it be possible to add to the downtown-loft apartments that have been built the past couple of years and get enough rent from those to make some money on the building, which might now even be able to get enough retail floor rent to pay bills. Would a public passage from the parking lots on College Avenue to the store fronts on Carolina Avenue be a incentive for more shopping in the downtown. Would such a building area be available at price that could make the dream a possibility.
There are many people I have spoken with who say they would like to open a business but looking at space costs of more than $800 a month give them a great deal of pause. But, they would love to be in a downtown area that looks like Hartsville's downtown -- if they could afford it.
So, this might be one idea for creating opportunities for people to open new businesses in Hartsville. And, new businesses can create jobs. What other ideas are there for creating jobs in a community like Hartsville?
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