Florence After Five brings crowd to downtown

The inaugural Florence After Five concert series featuring Florence band The Woody’s on Friday evening brought a crowd into downtown Florence.

Sidewalks were busy with pedestrians perusing the downtown area after visiting the concert in the plaza across the street from Central United Methodist Church on Cheves Street. Florence businesses on South Irby Street, such as Vintage Vogue and S & J Antiques, extended their hours and local artist Treifer Johnson opened his Irby Street studio loft for an art show.

Attendees — many of them Florence residents — expressed excitement over the event.

The event began at 5:30 p.m. and crowds continued to arrive until 7 p.m. The event finally concluded about 7:30 p.m.

“This shows Florence that downtown will be successful,” said Tim Norwood, who owns Victor’s Bistro, which was one of the event sponsors. “The people who are attending are the ones who can make downtown successful.”

The concert series will continue through the summer, with a concert on the first Friday of every month through September at the plaza.

Florence resident Marion Berry said he thinks the monthly concert series will carry the momentum from the first event throughout the summer. He attended Friday’s event with his wife and child.

“This is the first time I’ve been in downtown in years. I think this (is) a fun thing to have,” he said. “We’ll be back.”

Florence After Five was an idea discussed by the Downtown Development Corp. for several years before it finally came to fruition this summer, Downtown Development Corp. board member Ed Love said.

“I came onto the Florence Downtown Development Corp. board two years ago. One of the goals was to do a downtown concert series similar to those series in Sumter or Greenville,” he said.

Love said continuing the monthly concert series after its inaugural run through September will depend upon its success this summer.

“What I would like to foster is enthusiasm about downtown and enthusiasm about the downtown revitalization and breathe life into downtown on Fridays,” he said.

The Woody’s guitar player Jon Baltzell said structuring interesting events downtown is the first step to increasing traffic in the area.

“The vibrancy of classic downtowns is they bring people back (downtown),” Baltzell said.

Love said th Florence After Five concert series’ goal is to draw people’s attention to work going on in downtown Florence.

Leon and Carolyn Wagnon moved to Florence 10 years ago. They also attended the event Friday evening and said it shows the potential of downtown revitalization.

“We’ve seen a lot of South Carolina,” Carolyn Wagnon said. “We lived in Greenville when it was terrible and they turned their downtown into something nice, so it can be done.”

“A lot of people in Florence do not know of the subtle changes or changes that have occurred in downtown in recent years,” Love said. “My goal is to bring people to see those changes as they occur.

They may come downtown and say, ‘Downtown looks terrible,’ but they may come down to the third or fourth (Florence After Five) event and say, ‘Hey, something’s being done.’”

Florence resident Murray Jordan said events such as Florence After Five are the key to the downtown revitalization because they shed a positive light on the downtown area and bring people back into it.

“Look how many people are here,” he said. “There’s at least 500 and there’s still people coming up. This is quite a turnout and I think it’s really gonna grow.”