Alliance director: Art key to downtown revitalization

FLORENCE — Florence Regional Arts Alliance Executive Director Frank Crowe said one of the most impressive things he remembers about the initial meeting of the Florence 2010 Committee was “the gathering was predominately arts people.”

The things that are happening now, he said, have been needed for the past 30 years.

“With as many high-quality performing arts groups, it’s high time we had a place that would provide a home for them,” Crowe said. “Soon we’ll have the (Francis Marion University) Performing Arts Center and shortly after the (Florence County) Museum and where we go from there, the mind can only imagine. The idea being as you build entities such as we’re building, they will spawn the development of related businesses, studios, all sorts of arts-related shops.”

One of those visions has been consistent among members of the Florence art community for the past 14 years, said Florence sculptor Alex Palkovich, is an artisan center.

“Nobody was pushing this idea to make it more realistic until the previous mayor (Frank Willis) and George Jebaily succeed in buying the building (for it),” Palkovich said.

That building is the former Royal Knight home at the corner of Dargan and Evans streets.

Both of the building’s two floors would be utilized. The top floor has an amphitheater-like curve with small rooms on each side, formerly inhabited by businesses. When the building becomes an artisan center, they will become studios for local artists. The artists’ wares will be sold in a shop on the bottom floor.

“(The building) has windows in 14 rooms and it has a corridor around 10 feet wide, and visitors can see the studios where the artists are working,” Palkovich said. “We could carry around 30 artists in work. After 100-plus years, (it’s) the first time to have an anchor for artists (in Florence).”

The center, he said, would be educational as well as entertaining.

“Having such a center would bring youngsters, teaching them and bringing them to art,” Palkovich said.

Palkovich is optimistic the project will reach fruition very quickly.

“We applied for a $100,000 fund to make a feasibility study and we believe we will have it,” he said. “And then in two to three years, we will have an artisan center. It will really be a place of destination downtown.”

While Palkovich said he doesn’t believe the artisan center will be profitable during its early stages, “the years after it will be very profitable.”

Florence City Councilman Steve Powers said he believes a downtown doesn’t just contain art, but is art by using its historical landscape as a canvas.

“A lot of cities come in and say, ‘We’ll tear that building down and the community goes, “All right, I’ll tear it down. I’ll rebuild it,”’ and then you have new structures. What you have when you have our master plan is, instead of tearing these buildings down, you fix them back,” he said. “We, as a community, have the ability to control what our downtown looks like.

“The old adage, ‘If you build it, they will come’ won’t apply if you build it how you want it. We want to build it how everybody wants it. During final stages, people will come downtown because they were part of its revitalization.”

One aspect to this community creation is loft living, Powers said, which brings people into direct contact with downtown as well as their fellow residents to create a more communal atmosphere.

“(At) 6 p.m., we don’t want to look outside and hear crickets chirping.We want to see kids down here walking with Mom and Dad, outdoors art and outdoor sculptures,” Powers said. “We want traffic to slow down out here and we want people to look at downtown instead of fly through it.

“To do that, you take your sidewalks out farther, most of the time between 7 and 9 feet,” he said. “Then, you open up the opportunity for outdoor cafés. Then, you see a lot of businesses that don’t normally do outdoor seating may come in and put in a bench. You have people interacting with people.

“I like the interaction and I want people reacting with other people,” Powers said. “Our downtown was built with sidewalks, people walking. These sidewalks were full, parades running down Dargan Street, and we’re gonna have that again and we’re gonna take little steps, consistent steps, and do them one at a time.

“It’s a long, slow, tedious process, but it’s worth it.”