EDITORIAL: Keep supporting downtown Lake City businesses

Don’t forget about our downtown businesses that are closed for the summer as they prepare to reopen in new and improved incarnations.

The History Store and The Railway Restaurant are two of those businesses that are undergoing renovations.

The History Store plans to add a coffee shop with a patio behind the building. We hope this will be a successful social place for the community and a boon to a downtown that’s moving gradually but surely to a remarkable revitalization.

We’ve also got Joe Ryan’s Café on Main Street. In a world where you can find a Starbucks literally across the street from another Starbucks in some places, Lake City’s coffee shops have a much more local personality.

On top of that, The History Store plans to bring the building’s second floor back to life. Kent Daniels, who runs the store, said it’s Lake City’s oldest two-story brick building, constructed in 1903. The building originally opened as a drugstore and has 11 offices upstairs, some of which apparently served a doctor’s laboratory while others belonged to the Greater Lake City Chamber of Commerce in the 1950s.

While driving down Main Street, a close look reveals that many buildings have second stories with vestiges of the department stores of yesteryear. It’s a kind of architecture you simply don’t see anymore. In addition, many second floors downtown have windows and doors that have been boarded or bricked up. These certainly once offered an impressive, rare view of downtown Lake City — even access to a long-gone patio, in some cases.

The History Store is doing the right thing by making the most of the space it has — moving offices and historical records upstairs and expanding its offerings on the first floor. On top of it all, the owners hope to reuse as many of the original boards and other building materials as they can. The store is certainly living up to its name.

The changes that are happening offer more reassurance that downtown continues to move in the right direction. A true spirit of collaboration among downtown merchants also is necessary, and we’re seeing evidence of that.

“We go to great pains to make sure we bring in items that won’t take away from the other shops,” National Bean Market Museum Associate Director Sherri Moore said in a previous interview about the museum’s gift shop.

Meanwhile, the museum directors have relocated their offices to the gift shop as the museum undergoes a major renovation.

The museum also held its South Carolina Farmers Festival on June 19 and 20, which brought an estimated 1,200 visitors to downtown.

And some recent events seem to hint that Lake City could even have a cultural Renaissance of sorts, if it continues to play its cards right.

Kendall Wingard, owner of The Pink Fish, said the store held its first art showing on Thursday. An impressive crowd was in attendance. She also hopes to work with the Greater Lake City Chamber of Commerce and the National Bean Market Museum to hold more events of the sort.