Task Force hears about things in Hartsville

Last Wednesday the Marketing Task Force of the Selling Hartsville initiative had about 14 people present for a meeting to discuss the things that are happening in Hartsville. While the tone of the meeting was somewhat dampened by the gloom of very tight city budgets, there was some pretty encouraging news coming out; some of which had been announced and some that happens when dots are connected.

The big news from the city manager was the approval of a new Hotel facility for downtown Hartsville. This new facility will anchor the downtown area with a four-story hotel on the corner of Carolina, Fourth and whatever name Railroad Avenue takes in its new environment.

Part of the other good news is that the street paving on that small new part of the road is complete and by the next day the road was open to through traffic. That is finally good news for the new owners of Gardners, who had been losing business because access from Fourth Street was cut off while the paving was completed.

One of the group's members who deals with real estate told another member that closings had picked up and that real estate was selling in the city. While that was an informal conversation, it was also among the good news.

Johnna Shirley is the chair of this task force and her continuing leadership is also good news. The task force met a couple of months ago at Hartsville High School to discuss potential plans for enhancing the looks of the school. Dr. Burry, the principal, told the group he was hoping that the architects who are working on the new gym will also be presenting some informal ideas about ways to enhance the looks of the exterior of the campus. Last summer there was a concerted effort to launch the Selling Hartsville initiative. That was the time the overall economy also decided to collapse. Some people questioned the timing but I continue to note the timing might not have been better. Why?

Well, in addition to tight budgets the city manager also said that both hospitality tax and accommodations tax revenue is off inside the city. We have had a great deal going on throughout Hartsville since last summer. Imagine what those revenue streams might have been like without the Selling Hartsville initiative!

Remember, Selling Hartsville is multi-audience initiative with one major audience those of us who live, work and enjoy or small city. We have to make a concerted effort to check Hartsville first when we are making purchases and deciding on a night on the town. We also need to encourage our neighbors to do the same.

As the task force continues to meet it is focusing attention on those areas of the city that need improving. The city manager mentioned the street scape of several years ago with bricks now coming out of the street. I had thought that about 18 months ago there were crews working nights in Hartsville repairing many of those areas. But, as the city manager noted, some improvements that were made 10 to 15 to 20 years ago might need attention as they get older. Heck, if you ride on some of our city streets you will notice needs. The point of the task force in its present configuration is to look out for what it is calling the "holes" in the product we call Hartsville and then making suggestions or calling for action plans to address those holes so that we have product people want to buy.

What happens when we stop getting better and stop growing?
-- We have fewer people paying the taxes need to run a great city
-- There are fewer people attending our churches
-- There are fewer people to attract other people
-- There are fewer people taking part in Habitat, in the Taste in buying Red Fox Club tickets, etc.
-- You can add your own ideas of what happens

If you are reading this, you are probably already one of the people who see Hartsville as a great place to live and play, raise a family, and/or retire. So, when the call goes out to stay involved or become involved you may feel it is preaching to the proverbial choir. Okay, maybe, but we ask that you continue to sing the praises of this small city and send on the call to others to stay involved.

FOR FUN -- June 6 will be the Good Living Marketplace on Cargill Way in downtown Hartsville with a special veterans recognition in line with the 60th anniversary of D-day -- the start of taking back the continent of Europe in World War II.

Hartsville, the art of good living where you can always "expect pleasant surprises."

It's Hartsville, of course there is a Show opening

Hartsville - the Art of Good Living is the logo to identify the initiative we call Selling Hartsville. One of the first places that logo was unveiled was the Black Creek Arts Council on College Avenue in downtown Hartsville. The BCAC is one of the gems or jewels that in the push of the Selling Hartsville, we call a Pleasant Surprise. And, in Hartsville you can always "Expect Pleasant Surprises."

A pleasant surprise is what awaited Gallery visitors on Thursday evening as the large number of visitors went in to view the "Unbidden Visions" of Shawn Lay, a Coker College professor of history and talented artist. The visions that come to life in the drawings on the walls of the BCAC Gallery seem out of the past heyday of ComicBook art. Most of these visions seem to jump from the drawings as super villains, not super heroes -- but that could just be a personal perspective. Not being an art critic of any stripe the best advice here would be to stop by the Gallery and judge for yourself. Dr. Lay's show will be up until September 26th.

One of last night's Pleasant Surprises was the large number of new visitors I saw coming into the Gallery. Large numbers of students who did not even know the Gallery existed came to view the show. Lots of Coker professors also had their first exposure to the Gallery. With the innovative shows and programs that are a key hallmark of Black Creek Arts Council, it is likely many of these first-time visitors will become repeat patrons. Hartsville may be a small city but the resources available in this town do give us lifestyle riches beyond most imagining. One of the messages in the Selling Hartsville initiative (to those of us already living in this community) is to not take these riches and resources for granted. Sustainability requires nurturing. If you want more information on Black Creek, check with Bruce Douglas, the executive director.

Why a Selling Hartsville initiative? (repeat)

Change happens! The role of community builders is to Make Positive Change Happen – that is often very difficult. Jeanne Robertson, a motivational speaker from North Carolina used to use a line in some of her talks about how many of us feel about change. She said, “Change doesn’t happen until the pain of Change is less than the pain of staying the same.” Think about that… Do we really want to wait to bring about constructive change in our community until something happens that provides us no options?

The student business organization at Coker had some shirts printed with a quote from Walt Whitman, “Change favors the prepared mind.” That is an excellent quote for students coming from a dynamic liberal arts college. I think with a little tweaking, it is an excellent quote for the reason behind the Selling Hartsville initiative. The tweaking – “Change favors the prepared community.” If we want Hartsville to be a thriving community in another 10, 20 or 30 years we have to continue laying the foundation now. The best time to change is when you are in a position of strength and you can determine the direction of change. One of the worst times to begin managing change is when the change has control and you are just there for the ride. It would be my assessment that in Hartsville, we are in a good time for change. There are lots of positive things happening on which we can build. (For purposes of length, I will let you think of them. They are many.)

There are also alarms that have been providing some wake up calls. Some of the alarms are clanging, some just sort of nagging noises. A clanging alarm came the summer of 2007 when Harris DeLoach, CEO of Sonoco, told the July All-Chamber Lunch Meeting the number of Sonoco employees who moved their families to places other than Hartsville when they got Sonoco jobs. The income of those more than 100 families is being spent in places other than Hartsville. Recently, because of economic downturns, the Hartsville city manager has been warning council that less money is available for city projects and that this could significantly affect implementation of the comprehensive update of the city plan. Not too long ago updated census figures showed Hartsville had lost in-city population. In the past couple of weeks the Darlington County School District’s human resource department noted that new teachers do not have much to choose from in affordable housing in the county.

The Selling Hartsville initiative that is under way, which is going under the slogan/logo of “Hartsville, The Art of Good Living,” is one initiative aimed at building on the strengths of our unique community so that we can entice more people here to live, to shop, to play so that the vision that leads the updated 20/20 comprehensive plan is a reality in the next 12 years.

This blog has appeared as a letter to the editor in THE MESSENGER of Hartsville and is also on SC NOW, a Media General web presence.

What do you mean, Selling Hartsville?

Change Happens!

There are many people in the community development calling that talk about the difficulty of making change happen in a community but if they were more careful with their semantics, you would quickly understand they are talking about the difficulty of getting people to do things differently, move in positive directions and making change work for you, instead of against you. Change happens! The role of community builders is to Make Change Happen – that is often very difficult. Jeanne Robertson, a motivational speaker from North Carolina used to use a line in some of her talks about how many of us feel about change. She said, “Change doesn’t happen until the pain of Change is less than the pain of staying the same.” Think about that…

The Student Business organization at Coker had some shirts printed with a quote from Walt Whitman, “Change favors the prepared mind.” That is an excellent quote for students coming from a dynamic liberal arts college. I think with a little tweaking, it is an excellent quote for the reason behind the Selling Hartsville initiative. The tweaking – ‘Change favors the prepared community.’ If we want Hartsville to be a thriving community in another 10, 20 or 30 years we have to continue laying the foundation now. The best time to change is when you are in a position of strength and you can determine the direction of change. One of the worst times to begin managing change is when the change has control and you are just there for the ride. It would be my assessment that in Hartsville, we are in a good time for change. There are lots of positive things happening on which we can build. (For purposes of length, I will let you think of them. They are many.)

There are also alarms that have been providing some wake up calls. Some of the alarms are clanging, some just sort of nagging noises. A clanging alarm came the summer of 2007 when Harris DeLoach, CEO of Sonoco, told the July All-Chamber Lunch Meeting the number of Sonoco employees who moved their families to places other than Hartsville when they got Sonoco jobs. The income of those more than 100 families is being spent in places other than Hartsville. Recently, because of economic downturns, the Hartsville City Manager has been warning council that less money is available for city projects and that this could significantly affect implementation of the Comprehensive update of the city plan. Not too long ago updated census figures showed Hartsville had lost in-city population. In the past couple of weeks the Darlington County School District’s Human Resource department noted that new teachers do not have much to choose from in affordable housing in the County.

The Selling Hartsville initiative that is underway, which is going under the slogan/logo of “Hartsville, The Art of Good Living,” is one initiative aimed at building on the strengths of our unique community so that we can entice more people here to live, to shop, to play so that the vision that leads the updated 20/20 comprehensive plan is a reality in the next 12 years.

Selling Hartsville Task Force Talks Launch

The combined Selling Hartsville Task Force met at the Hartsville Library on Wednesday, August 6 and talked a lot about the coming public launch of "Hartsville, The Art of Good Living." The launch is set for Thursday, October 2 and will be centered in downtown Hartsville.

October 2 is the first Thursday of October. That date is when the Hartsville Downtown Development Association has their regular late night opening, "Alive after Five." Why this date? It turns out the first weekend of October is one of those times, that are generally quite common in Hartsville, where there is a great deal going on. What?
1 -- Alive after Five
2 -- Coker College Homecoming
3 -- Jazzfest
4 -- Battle of the Bands
5 -- Black Creek Arts has an event

And, without question I have probably left off some other major things that are happening that weekend. One reason the logo/slogan "Hartsville, The Art of Good Living," made so much sense was that something is going on all the time. The somethings may not be for everyone but in a month or two you find that there is something happening for almost everyone's taste. Lots of these events are often discussed in THE HARTSVILLE MESSENGER but sometimes people miss the stories.


That brings up the major reason for the launch, which is to get the word out to Hartsvillians that Hartsville is often more than most of us know. The agency that has been working with the Hartsville Task Forces noted early in their report that this city has a wealth of community resources that they initially called an "embarrassment of riches." They noted that communities throughout both Carolinas would be in envy for the wide variety of visitors who come to and through our Hartsville on a daily basis. They kept being amazed at the variety of events and happenings that just seemed to be on the schedule. Much of the time, those of us living here just take it so much for granted that we forget things are happening. So, the first major objective for Selling Hartsville is SELLING HARTSVILLE TO HARTSVILLIANS. If all of pay more attention to what is here, look here for what we want to buy before automatically leaving town, and look here for interesting things we will understand what the agency consultants mean when they use ad copy to say -- "Expect pleasant surprises."

To try keeping this in blog format instead of book-length, I will end this note.

Talking Together

Earlier this afternoon I had a phone conversation with a man named Scott London who is doing some consulting work with The Harwood Foundation that is involved with helping determine the elements involved in the dynamics of positive change in communities.

We were in a meeting in Alexandria, VA, that he was helping to facilitate that was discussing how people involved in community change go about this work. One of the things that he and I spoke of previously were the community conversations that were hosted by The Byerly Foundation in Hartsville over the period of about 13 months. In a very real way, these conversations led to the initiative that we are now calling Selling Hartsville that has resulted in the umbrella brand slogan of "Hartsville - The Art of Good Living." We covered a variety of issues in our phone conversation but he mentioned a couple of key points that continue to roll around in my thinking. How do you go from engagement to action? That is a key question and one we continue to wrestle with as we actively move to "launch" the Selling Hartsville campaign. One thing I hope I shared with him is that one key ingredient for moving from engagement to action is getting someone to commit to action. There are a good many people involved in the Selling Hartsville project and Johnna Shirley, whose full time position is with Mutual Savings and Loan of Hartsville, is chair of the marketing task force. Johnna is one of those who understands the importance of taking action and knows how to implement. Coincidentally, she came by the office just about as the phone call with Scott London was ending. We discussed some of the many things that need to be planned for the launch of Selling Hartsville. We also commiserated over the idea of how we continue to move from engagement to action. It takes a lot of people performing a lot of different roles who focus on a goal to make things happen.

And, that gets us into another major topic Scott and I discussed -- the question of where the focus needs to be -- one the process or on the outcome. He is doing a good deal of research on that question. But, as we discussed process, we got into how decisions might be made. The process of Selling Hartsville is currently what I would call a consensus process. We have three task forces that are working as part of the larger Selling Hartsville Task Force. All participants in the three task forces can also be on the major task force -- many are. Those involved are the ones working to make the right decisions.

As noted earlier, before all of this started, we began with community conversation dialogues. Scott mentioned he has a recent blog about dialogues and I am including one short paragraph of a very enlightening discussion of the role of dialogue.

"The process of dialogue is more important than ever today for a number of reasons. For one thing, the confrontation between different cultural traditions and worldviews requires some process by which people can communicate across differences. For another, the fragmentation of society into a myriad of subcultures based on profession, status, race, ethnicity, political loyalty, etc., make it necessary that people find a pathway to common ground. A third reason is that traditional authority structures are falling away."

This seemed a particularly appropriate topic for this blog because dialogue is one of the things that is helping us move forward in Hartsville and, in truth, the lack of dialogue is one of those things that is slowing the momentum. Hmmm