Turner Padget to lease former Florence County Memorial Library building

FLORENCE — Turner Padget Graham & Laney P.A. has signed a letter of intent to lease office space in the historic former Florence County Memorial Library building at 319 S. Irby St. in Florence.

Turner Padget plans to occupy the greater portion of the 20,000-square-foot structure.

A vacant, one-acre, city-owned lot at the northwest corner of Cheves and Dargan streets was once the planned home of an office building with Turner, Padget, Graham & Laney P.A. as the anchor tenant. It’s not clear if those plans are still in place.

The firm is currently located in the BB&T building on Evans Street.

The Florence County Memorial Library was built and opened to the public on Nov. 4, 1925. In 2006, the library building was admitted to the National Register of Historical Places.

In a June interview, Florence attorney Ben Zeigler described the former Florence County Library as an “architectural gem.” Zeigler and business partners in LIBRIS Redevelopment LLC, John Chase and Randy Key, bought the structure and renovated it as professional commercial space in 2009.

The private group, pursuing a for-profit venture, aimed to renovate the library back to its original, 1925 appearance, as well. That included the demolition of the 1970s addition to the back of the library, which faces South Irby Street and which Zeigler said in June doesn’t fit with the “neoclassical” architecture of the rest of the building.

The company approached the county several years ago, and the county tried to sell the library last year, but received no viable proposals, Zeigler said in that interview.

“For about three to four years, we’ve been concerned about what’s going to happen to” the former library, Zeigler said in June. He was concerned about the deterioration of the building, which suffers from a leaky membrane roof.

Current and former county elections officials expressed the same sentiment; the elections commission met at the building, and the county’s voting machines are stored there.

Florence County Council agreed after three readings and a public ordinance in 2009 to allow LIBRIS Redevelopment to buy the old library building, with the condition that the buyers to pay for space for two years to store the county’s voting machines stored in the 1970s wing, Florence County Administrator Richard Starks said.

Walt Barefoot, managing shareholder of the Florence office, said the firm is very excited about the opportunity to locate in the space.

“Turner Padget hopes that, by this move, we will be better able to serve our clients as well as assist in the redevelopment efforts in downtown Florence,” he said in a press release.

Turner Padget, practicing law in South Carolina for more than 80 years, opened its Florence office in 1985. The Florence firm employs 18 attorneys and 18 staff members.

In addition to signing the letter of intent to move into the refurbished library building, the firm will donate 25 new books to the Florence County Library System in honor of its 25th anniversary in Florence. The books have been selected by the library staff to add to its small business collection.

“With us signing the letter of intent to lease space in the old library building, we thought it would be an appropriate gesture to celebrate our anniversary by donating books to the new Drs. Bruce & Lee Foundation Library,” Barefoot said.

Founded in 1929, Turner Padget is one of South Carolina’s largest law firms with 90 attorneys and five offices in Charleston, Columbia, Florence, Greenville and Myrtle Beach.