Rock Hill set to tell its success story to economic development professionals across SC

Rock Hill serves as an example for South Carolina communities in transition from a mill town production past to a more modern future. Now, Rock Hill also will serve as host.

The first week of May, the city will host the 2023 South Carolina Community Capital Conference. Economic development professionals from across the state will come to learn about investment and community financing options. They’ll tour Rock Hill from Knowledge Park to Freedom Walkway to Clinton College.

Mayor John Gettys said people have come to Rock Hill for years to talk about sports tourism, community empowerment or special projects like the Rock Hill Sports & Event Center.

“It’s nice to now have them come specifically to talk about investing, how you create those opportunities,” Gettys said.

Gettys is a panelist at the May 2-3 conference, and will open alongside UNC public policy and business professor Jeanne Milliken Bonds with a presentation on Rock Hill’s strategic vision. Gettys said the success Rock Hill had the past four decades of reinventing itself isn’t some closely held secret.

Rock Hill is South Carolina’s fifth largest city.

“Historically, it’s very easy to explain,” Gettys said. “It’s relationships.”

Rock Hill economic success

Community members and groups like the Rock Hill Economic Development Corporation put a critical eye toward the city in key moments of transition, to set a vision for what Rock Hill could become.

In fall 2019 a large gathering of economic leaders and investors came together in Rock Hill to outline more than half a billion dollars of planned downtown revitalization. Much of it stemming from economic incentives available at the time, like federal opportunity zones. Former mill, warehouse and other buildings would become apartments, restaurants and business sites. Despite COVID-19, some of those projects are open and others are under construction in a rapidly growing center city.

However, Rock Hill isn’t all success.

The high-profile plan to bring Carolina Panthers headquarters to the city fell through after disputes between the team, city and county on financing. Yet that site remains a key piece of the city’s future. It’s now hundreds of acres the city owns through bankruptcy proceedings by the team, with new roads under construction and a new interchange off nearby I-77.

Gettys said work on roads, a bridge, the interstate and demolition of the former Panthers facility will take another six months. Then the city will be in a better place to determine what will go there.

“We do have, it seems like almost daily, contacts,” Gettys said. “Interested people or interested companies. We’re in no rush.”

As mayor, Gettys often talks about the transition in Rock Hill from successful city to a significant one. As change at the downtown mills and warehouses brought opportunity in recent years, so can the former headquarters site off the interstate.

“Opportunities like this are what allows successful cities to become significant,” Gettys said.

Example for SC growth

The upcoming conference centers on the theme “Forget What You Thought You Knew: A New Vision of an Old Town.”

It will dive into community financing options and new capital sources for economic growth in South Carolina. Speakers include Tara Sherbert whose company is behind The Power House project, Justin Smith with Hoppin’ and Gary Williams with Williams & Fudge to explain how deals came together at Knowledge Park.

“The economic growth and robust community development projects in the Rock Hill community make it an ideal venue to showcase and learn about how community development financing can grow and evolve a community,” said Bonds, who also chairs the capital alliance board of directors.

Other speakers bring a wider view. Tonya Matthews is CEO of the International African American Museum set to open in Charleston this summer. Jennifer Clyburn Reed is federal co-chair of the Southeast Crescent Regional Commission. Both will serve as keynote speakers.

“This is a wonderful opportunity for community development financiers and leaders to hear first-hand about the powerful and positive impact provided by creative financing tools for community economic development projects,” Matthews said.

Clyburn Reed co-chairs a federal-state partnership that focuses on economic development for 428 counties and areas in seven Southeastern states. She served almost three decades in education with South Carolina public schools.

“South Carolina communities are in constant need of more creative financing tools and capital sources to drive economic growth,” Clyburn Reed said. “I look forward to connecting with leaders from around the state to discuss ways we can move community financing forward.”

Rock Hill as a significant city

With a revitalizing downtown corridor, Rock Hill has something of a new challenge.

Anyone can look at dilapidated structures or failing areas and see the need for change. But can the city maintain that momentum -- that decades-long foresight -- when the present seems so promising?

Gettys said it’s still about relationships, about taking success and extrapolating it to parts of the city that haven’t yet seen it, to all areas and for all citizens.

“Successful as Rock Hill’s been for a while now,” Gettys said, “you still see something like Miracle Park built. You still see Clinton ConNEXTion come together.”

The city has an ongoing commerce corridor plan focused on zoning and land use implications for close to 3,000 acres along I-77 in the southern part of the city. It will look for ways to best match residential, commercial and industrial uses as land develops. It’s one of several large projects aimed at creating what Rock Hill wants to become, before the city gets there.

“It was just a few years ago we were talking about the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of development downtown,” Gettys said. “Now we’ll see, who knows what the numbers are now?”