FLORENCE — Organizers and participants hailed Wednesday’s first economic development forum put together by the Darlington County Economic Development Partnership as a successful first step in charting a course for the county’s future economic development.
The day-long event at the Southeastern Institute for Manufacturing and Technology at Florence-Darlington Technical College brought together officials from municipal and county government, representatives of large and small business, industry, education and others to discuss economic development goals and strategies for meeting them.
The key factor all the participants shared was an interest in encouraging economic development in Darlington County, said Robert Long, executive director of the partnership.
“Part of the purpose of this process is to get an open dialog going, and I think we got that,” Long said. “This is a start. I’m impressed with the response. Hopefully, this will give us a framework that will allow us to develop strategies.”
“This has been informative,” said Goz Segars, chairman of the Economic Development Partnership Board of Directors. “I don’t believe we’ve ever had a group that has included a comprehensive group like we have here today. I think we accomplished a lot.”
“You are moving in the right direction,” said Ed West, department manager for Workforce Partnership & Planning for the S.C. Department of Commerce. West served as a facilitator for the event.
Long said the turnout was greater than he expected.
“It’s encouraging. We’ve got cities, we’ve got the county, we’ve got school board, private business, the chambers, and we’ve got to have all those different sectors involved,” he said.
Information sessions during the morning focused on such issues as regionalism in economic development, land-use planning, infrastructure, workforce development and product development. The afternoon session focused on developing goals in most of those areas.
Long said the partnership staff will collect the information provided by participants and compile it into a report for the partnership board to review and begin prioritizing goals and developing strategies to meet them.
“The board will take that and review it and see how we want to move forward in Darlington County,” he said.
The group also toured the SIMT Advanced Manufacturing Center and got an update from Florence-Darlington Tech President Dr. Charles Gould on plans to build a manufacturing business incubator on the SIMT campus. Gould said the incubator will serve as a major tool in attracting new businesses.
The incubator eventually will house the offices of the Darlington County partnership. Long said the partnership hopes to move into temporary offices at SIMT by mid-March.
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