“Downtown Florence group looks forward to moving forward” |
| Downtown Florence group looks forward to moving forward Posted: 21 Feb 2011 05:23 PM PST FLORENCE, SC -- "Life goes on," "keep on rolling" "keep on keeping on." No matter how you say it, the Florence Downtown Development Corp. is apparently ready to do it. Just one week after supporters and members of the group's board of directors asked Florence City Council not to approve a job description prohibiting the new downtown development manager from serving on various boards and nonprofit organizations, chairman Tom Ewart said the Florence Downtown Development Corp. is eager to work with the new manager when he or she is hired. "All the folks that are wanting to see our downtown grow and prosper," Ewart said. "We all want to have somebody that's professional that can help us move forward." That "kumbaya" attitude was somewhat absent Feb. 14 when some members of the public addressed the city council at its regularly scheduled meeting and asked them not to approve a job description with language prohibiting the new manager from serving on the Florence Downtown Development Corp. directly. Some of the harsher remarks came from people Ewart said weren't Florence Downtown Development Corp. members. He said this week that despite the minor controversy over the job description language, the Florence Downtown Development Corp. is ready to welcome the new director with open arms. "There wasn't a real problem," he said. "It was simply a clarification of how we interpreted the process as far as an executive director ... we will grasp on and look for direction from that downtown manager. There is a professional that is going to be in place and I'm sure that they are going to work very effectively with the Florence Downtown Development Corp." Councilwoman Octavia Williams-Blake said she thought the language passed at last week's council meeting ensures the new manager will not have a conflict of interest while doing his or her job for the city and serving the board of the Florence Downtown Development Corp. or another group. "In this role, where there are many groups that are interested in bringing businesses downtown and revitalizing downtown, I think it's good to have this person sort of be pure and not have that potential of a conflict of interest," she said. Ewart said he anticipates the new manager will play a key role pushing forward on development projects "on the cusp. "We are very positive and feel very good about the fact that we are going to have a downtown manager," he said. "We weren't looking for someone to give direction to. We're looking for someone to help us, to give us direction." The manager can still work with Florence Downtown Development Corp. and other organizations but not as an official member of another board or as a board's director. Ewart said even though the relationship between the group and the incoming manager won't be exactly as originally planned, the two will still work closely. Ewart said while volunteers with the Florence Downtown Development Corp. have done what they can for downtown, they need a more permanent source of guidance, someone to give them direction on ways to interact with other groups vested in the downtown area. That's what he hopes the manager will do for the Florence Downtown Development Corp., as well as organizations like Francis Marion University, the Drs. Bruce and Lee Foundation, McLeod Health and Florence-Darlington Technical College. While much of the debate has focused on the amount of time city council took to reach this point, Ewart called the process "healthy" and said he was glad to see council members looking at their options carefully before making a decision. Revitalizing downtown is something Ewart said will not happen overnight and as long as council continues to stay true to the master plan, the better the entire process will be. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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