3/1/07

Vision
Manning plans for future downtown improvements
By Cathy Gilbert

BRIAN JARVIS/Manning Times
DesignWorks partner Scott Parker discusses potential downtown improvements with Marie Land and Manning Public Works Director Reuben Hardy.

Following five months of focus groups, economic development workshops, visioning studies and community surveys, DesignWorks, a Charleston-based planning firm recently unveiled its master plan for the future of Manning’s commercial core district.

“Decisions should be by choice, not by chance,” Scott Parker, a DesignWorks partner told an audience of nearly 100 interested citizens at F.E. DuBose on Feb. 22.

“This is a vision of what your downtown could be,” said. “The challenge comes in embracing the vision and determining what steps we must take to get there.”

Parker’s firm was charged with examining the nine blocks of downtown that are bounded by Rigby, Boundary, Huggins and Church Streets, which ironically are the same nine blocks that appear on an 1856 plat created by Joseph Burgess as Manning’s original downtown.

“What is good for the downtown area is good for the neighborhoods,” he noted. “You have the bones for making Manning a great place to live.”

As the DesignWorks team met with a broad range of community residents and business owners, several issues, both positive and negative, came to the forefront.

The “best things about Manning” were identified as the people, the location, its physical beauty, its history and its facilities.

Things identified as needing improvements were vastly the same issues that have been named before as challenges to community improvements: transportation, maintenance, lack of retail, dining, entertainment and recreational opportunities and not enough well-paying jobs.

“The question becomes, how do we make (the vision) happen,” Parker said.

His suggestions included embracing new business and guiding investment in the downtown core.

“Some of our suggestions could be implemented at a very low cost … but with very big impact,” he said.

Parker’s first suggestion is for the City of Manning to annex the land from the current town boundary on Hwy. 261 West to Interstate 95.

“This will help you control land use, development practices and road and street design,” Parker said while showing a slide of the Hwy. 261 corridor. “This is not what you want your town to look like.”

He also suggested updating building standards for the downtown core, enhancing the courthouse square (the “crown jewel of Manning,” according to Parker), creating a downtown historic district, suspending parking requirements for private redevelopment in the downtown core, creating cross easements for public parking behind stores and eliminating rear entrances to stores.

“Downtown needs to be a pedestrian experience,” Parker noted. “You want people out on your sidewalks, going into stores and businesses, not just zooming by in their cars.”

While all of the DesignWorks ideas were attractive, many, from creating an amphitheater venue in the courthouse parking lot to construction of some sort of civic center or facility at the corner of Mill and Keitt Street, were large in scale.

“I think they presented a really good plan,” said Manning Mayor Kevin Johnson, who along with most of the town council was in attendance at the presentation. “The challenge will come from finding the money to accomplish it.”

Parker said he believed that the plan would have to be driven by a coalition of citizens and business owners.

Marie Land, who has been involved in Manning’s downtown revitalization for more than a decade, was notably pleased with the plan.

“This is really an exciting plan and it includes some things we have never thought about before,” she said.

What the future holds for this plan remains to be seen.

“I invite additional input from the community and we welcome additional committee members,” Land said. “This is not something that we expect to happen overnight, but every little step forward is for the betterment of Manning.”