Winnsboro Council OKs water capacity for proposed Senior Center in Blythewood
WINNSBORO – A 64-room senior living facility proposed for downtown Blythewood crossed a major hurdle Monday night when the Town of Winnsboro voted unanimously to approve a Water Capacity Availability and Willingness to Serve Letter for The Pendergraph Companies. The letter approves 11,520 gallons per day (GPD) for the facility.
The facility, to be named Blythewood Senior Living, is proposed for a five-acre site on Creech Road between the Russell Jeffcoat offices and the IGA and behind Larry Sharpe’s BP service station and three other lots facing Blythewood Road.
According to Tom Ulrich, the project manager for the proposal, the water capacity is based on 32 two-bedroom apartment homes and 32 one-bedroom apartment homes. Ulrich told The Voice following the meeting that the facility would be for residents who live independently.
“The rooms will all be in one building, like a hotel,” Ulrich said.
Ulrich came before the Blythewood Town Council in the fall of 2017 to give Town Hall a heads up that his company was considering bringing a senior living facility to the town. Ulrich told The Voice that the company has been in discussions with Town officials for some months.
“I wrote a reference letter for the developer stating this would be great for our town,” Mayor J. Michael Ross said, “but that we are not advocating for any more affordable living apartments. We are very excited that this facility might come to Blythewood.”
“The project looks very positive from the developer’s perspective,” the Winnsboro’s utility attorney, John Fantry, said. “They’ve already built one of these facilities in Lancaster County. Now they’re taking that vision to Blythewood. They are currently doing due diligence for financing on a tract of about 52 acres on Creech Road. The developer will be coming back to us when financing is worked out. This particular request is to provide assurance to their financing process that Winnsboro does have the capacity to serve the proposed facility’s water needs,” Fantry said.
Ulrich said he expects the project to be complete by the end of 2019.
“We should have our water from Broad River by then,” Mayor Roger Gaddy said. “We oughta have all kinds of water to sell.”
RIDGEWAY – With the filing deadline ending on Feb. 2, four candidates have declared for the two open seats on Ridgeway Town Council and two have declared to run for mayor.
These candidates will be on the April 3 ballot: Council – Roger Herring, Rick Johnson, former mayor Rufus Jones and Dan Martin; Mayor – Councilman Heath Cookendorfer and Councilwoman Angela Harrison. Terms are ending for Cookendorfer and Doug Porter.
Both the council seats and the mayor’s seat are for four year terms. The election is nonpartisan, and no party affiliation will be placed on the ballot.
The election will be held on Tuesday, April 3, at the Ridgeway Fire Department, 170 S. Palmer Street. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. – 7 p.m. that day.
Those desiring to vote in the upcoming election must be registered by March 5, 2018, at the Fairfield County Board of Voter Registration, 315 S. Congress Street in Winnsboro.
WINNSBORO – South Carolina Electric and Gas Company has filed a motion for a change of venue for the lawsuit Fairfield County filed on Nov. 29, 2017 against the utility for a temporary injunction. The matter is to be heard on Thursday before Judge Paul Burch.
“SCE&G is asking to have the trial moved to Lexington County since they’re based in Cayce,” Fairfield County Administrator Jason Taylor told The Voice on Wednesday. “That would be more convenient for them, but we, of course, don’t want to do that. Fairfield is where the incident occurred, this is where we work and live and there would be many inconveniences for our council members if it were moved,” Taylor said.
Council members signed affidavits on Monday stating their particular inconveniences, health problems and other reasons why it would be difficult for them to travel to Lexington County for a trial.
“We’ve submitted the affidavits to our attorney, and he will submit them to the judge on Thursday,” Taylor said. “Hopefully, the judge will rule on Thursday, but at this point, we don’t know.”
RIDGEWAY – In yet another daring robbery at gunpoint of the Dollar General store in Ridgeway, a gunman got away with $1,400 after threatening to shoot the store’s manager during an early morning heist on Sunday, Jan. 28.
The store manager reported that as he was in the process of stacking items for display outside the store about 8 a.m. when a black male, about 40 years old and driving a gray Nissan Maxima, approached him from behind.
The manager said the suspect was composed and brandished a silver/chrome semi-automatic hand gun as he demanded money from the store’s cash register.
As the manager began to load money from the register and safe into a yellow Dollar General bag, the suspect demanded all the cash as well as the rolls of change. The manager said the suspect kept one hand on the gun and the other hand balled up, being careful not to touch anything.
After the money was loaded into the bag and placed on the counter, the manager reported that the gunman ordered him into a back storage room. The incident report states that the gunman followed the victim into the storage room, told him to stay there and threatened, “Don’t make me shoot you.”
Stating that he feared for his life, the manager said he waited a few minutes after the gunman left before exiting the storage room and calling law enforcement.
While Fairfield County Sheriff’s deputies state that the store did not have exterior surveillance cameras, the entire robbery scene and the suspect were recorded on interior cameras. Deputies also reported that they hoped exterior cameras from the adjacent Nelson Funeral Home would offer a good angle of the suspect and the suspect’s vehicle.
Deputies also visited the AM/PM Convenience store on Highway 34 E in Ridgeway to review surveillance camera footage in an attempt to identify the suspect’s vehicle as it drove along Highway 34 immediately prior to and following the nearby Dollar General robbery.
The surveillance footage is reported to show the Nissan traveling east on Highway 34 E towards the Dollar General at 7:58 a.m. on Jan. 28. The same vehicle is then seen traveling west on Highway 34 E, headed towards the area of I-77 at 8:07 a.m. However, Sheriff’s deputies say they cannot be sure at this time whether the Nissan on the surveillance footage is the same as the suspect’s.
The report stated the modus operandi of this incident closely resembles those of a recent string of armed robberies at Dollar Generals in Kershaw, Lancaster, York and Richland Counties.
RIDGEWAY – A high speed chase that began in Ridgeway, ended on Garner’s Ferry Road and reached 123 miles per hour, resulted in attempted murder charges for Michael Odell Lewis, 24, of Columbia.
Lewis
The incident began during an early evening traffic safety check conducted by the Fairfield County Sheriff’s Department at the intersection of Syrup Mill Road and Peach Road on Jan. 26, when a blue Hyundai Elantra pulled up to the check point.
Deputy Amber Shults reported immediately smelling the odor of an alcoholic beverage and what appeared to be marijuana coming from the vehicle. Shults said she observed an open container of liquor in the center console and a small scale on the driver’s lap.
When the driver was asked to turn off the vehicle, he complied, then turned the engine back on and accelerated at a high rate of speed towards another deputy who was standing in the roadway speaking with the driver of another vehicle, according to the report. The officer moved quickly out of the way to avoid being struck while Dep. Shultz pursued the Hyundai onto Devil’s Race Track Road then right onto Syrup Mill Road, traveling back through the safety check point area.
The Hyundai continued, reaching 90 miles per hour as it entered Richand County and turned left onto Blythewood Road, heading for Blythewood, the report stated. Turning south onto I-77, the chase was reported to reach 123 miles per hour.
Richland County deputies attempted to use stop sticks at Exit 22. The vehicle swerved toward a Richland County Deputy during the pursuit.
After leaving I-77 at Exit 9, the vehicle turned onto Garners Ferry Road and pulled into an apartment complex where the Hyundai’s front passenger side tire blew out. The suspect, later identified as Lewis, and a passenger fled on foot but were apprehended in the complex, the report stated.
Both Fairfield and Richland County officers charged Lewis with attempted murder and failure to stop for blue lights.
The passenger, Travol Robinson, 25, was charged with open container. Both were transported to Fairfield County Detention Center. Lewis was denied bond and Robinson and released on his personal recognizance.
WINNSBORO – The construction of the new emergency services facility for Fairfield County and North Richland is about to begin. The ground breaking for the new Providence Health – Fairfield Emergency Room will be held Feb. 15 on property located across the Highway 321 Bypass from the Winnsboro Bi-Lo.
Plans for the one-level, 17,700 square foot facility call for 12,700 square feet to be dedicated to emergency services, a triage room to properly access the emergent need for care, four exam rooms, two trauma rooms, two entrances – one for walk-in patients and one for ambulances – a laboratory, and computerized tomography (CT) scan equipment. The remaining 5,000 square feet will be used for future expansion.
According to a Providence hospital representative, the emergency service facility is expected to be completed this fall.
While attending the Fairfield Memorial Hospital board meeting in January, Scott Campbell, Market Chief Executive Officer of Providence Health, was asked by FMH board trustee James McGraw about the ability of Providence Hospital Northeast to handle patients who might be coming from Fairfield County.
“We have added 24-hour cardiology services there (at Providence Northeast) … we opened the ICU back up, we have a general surgeon starting there and a urologist starting there next month,” Campbell told him. “We are going to have a different level of services that previously were not available.”
RIDGEWAY – The County’s Director of Economic Development, Ty Davenport, is tickled pink that the county has a potentially interested buyer for its only spec building, a 75,000 square foot big box in the Walter Brown Industrial Park off Cook Road, but his elation is exceeded by his worry that the County doesn’t have the marketable industrial properties that it needs to stay up with its competition.
Some Fairfield County residents, however, have voiced objection when the County considers purchasing more land for economic development.
Fairfield County Administrator Jason Taylor, left, and the County’s Director of Economic Development Ty Davenport, survey infrastructure construction in the Fairfield Commerce Center off Peach Road that is scheduled to be finished in the spring. | Barbara Ball
“When it comes up that the County is looking to buy several hundred acres of property for economic development, the perception is that the County owns all this property and has a tremendous amount of inventory,” Davenport told The Voice last week during a tour of the County’s 600-acre Fairfield Commerce Center off Peach Road, the second of its two industrial parks.
“But we don’t,” he said. “Our marketable territory is pretty slim today compared to the main counties we compete with. We have a total of about 600 buildable acres. Chester County has 1,353 marketable acres available, twice what we have. Kershaw has 1,000+ marketable acres and Orangeburg County, a big competitor of ours, has 1,850 acres ready to go,” Davenport said. “Orangeburg has 10 industrial parks compared to our two – the Fairfield Commerce Center and the Walter Brown Industrial Park. And these numbers don’t include mega sites.”
Davenport said the County has about 475 buildable acres in the Fairfield Commerce Center and only 32 total buildable acres in the Walter Brown Park.
“When recruiting industry, we have to be ready for them. Things happen faster today than they did 20 years ago, and the county that has marketable, ready-to-go property is going to do better,” Davenport said.
Asked what other inventory there is in the County, Davenport said there are six available buildings – the former Mack Truck building, (676,000+ square feet), the former Caterpillar building (50,000+ square feet), the spec building (75,000 square feet), the 123,000-square-foot Charm building in Ridgeway that has only 22,000 square feet available, the Fazio (Plastec) building (175,000 square feet) on Highway 34 and about 20,000 square feet available in the 65,000+ square foot Ying Zin building in Walter Brown Park. All but the spec building are privately owned but marketed by the County.
“With the improving economy, the Mack Truck building has been getting lots of looks lately. It’s one of only six buildings over 600,000 square feet available in the whole state. It has rail and a new $3 million roof. It’s a clean building inside with a clean environmental report. It’s ready to go,” Davenport said. “It’s a big property with a lot of value on 150 acres. It could be expanded up to a million square feet fairly easily. A company that’s interested in a big building in South Carolina will look at it,” Davenport said. “Besides the potential jobs, that building can bring in significantly more property taxes annually for the County than the $400,000 it now generates.”
The only other site that could hold a building the size of the Mack Truck building is a 100-acre site located in the 210-acre second phase of the Fairfield Commerce Center. That site will be ready to market in late spring. Graders are currently adding water and sewer lines and roads. That work is being financed with $7 million from the County’s $24 million bond money.
Davenport said the County has saved about $1 million on the project by redesigning part of the site and securing almost $700,00 in grants. The County harvested a portion of the timber on the property and plans to use the proceeds to pre-grade building pads for new users.
Driving past BOMAG, a mid-size company that sits at the entrance to the Fairfield Commerce Center, Davenport pointed to a yard full of shiny yellow road paving equipment that the company assembles. He described the company as fantastic.
“It’s an international French-owned German company that employees 120 people and owns 120 companies around the world. That’s a good connection for us.” Davenport said.
For some in the County, the 1,200-acre mega site purchased last year on Highway 34 east of I-77 is the elephant in the room. Shortly after the County purchased the site, Val Green, a local engineer, announced during public comment session of a County Council meeting, that the property was full of granite and would be difficult to develop. Davenport said the state conducted geo technical studies on the property that show the granite to be well below the surface and should not be an issue. He also said soil borings were conducted on the site. Davenport conceded that this site, like all sites, has grading challenges. He also said the site would require water, sewer and natural gas before it would be marketable. However, he said the site has two big pluses.
“It’s the only industrial site the County owns that has rail access,” Davenport said. “That’s a top priority for the more desirable industrial sites.”
Another plus is that while the property cost a whopping $8,700,000, the County only had to kick in approximately $3,000,000. The Department of Commerce covered the remaining $6,000,000. The state has also agreed to assist in covering the cost of infrastructure for the site.
“This site is for the big one, the big user, the grand slam, the home run,” Davenport said of the mega site. “But it’s not going to be marketable for 12-18 months. We still have to design truck access. As for rail access, a spur just needs to be constructed from the track to reach into the site,” Davenport said.
In the meantime, Davenport said the County is trying to recruit more good mid-size companies like BOMAG for sites soon to be available in its two existing industrial parks. “I’d like to bring in 10 companies like BOMAG,” Davenport said. “Ten companies bring in 10 accountants, 10 lawn care people, 10 people doing whatever. We want those people in the County. We’re trying to figure out ways to drive the local economy, not the national economy.”
While Davenport said he feels the County is woefully short on marketable properties, he rattles off some of the County’s assets.
“The region is attractive, and the County brings a lot to the table to attract good, clean industry,” he said. “We have 1.2 million people in a 60-minute drive time, giving us access to a good workforce – about half a million employed people – and companies are looking for people who are currently employed. We have Lake Wateree, Lake Monticello, proximity to an international airport in Charlotte and a world class zoo and university in Columbia. We have the Fairfield County museum and Carolina Adventure World in our back door, Gamecock sports, plenty of great housing in Columbia, Northeast Columbia, Blythewood and other rural and small town settings in the County. And the shopping in Ridgeway and Winnsboro is getting better every day. There’s something for everyone here,” Davenport said.
Another plus, Davenport said, is that Winnsboro and the County are becoming big assets to each other. He said the two leaderships are working together now to make things happen.
“County Administrator Jason Taylor has a background in town administration and understands town development. He has a passion for it. We have a new grant writer in the Town, and the County has hired a new community development director who will be working not only with Winnsboro but the smaller towns in the County as well. What he’s doing will make my product easier to sell,” Davenport said.
“More than anything, I hope the people in the county understand that when the County buys land, we are not just land banking. We are trying to acquire an inventory to accommodate different size buildings that meet the needs of multiple end users,” Davenport said. “We have to have outside money coming in or the town and county will wither up. That’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to recruit money into the County.”
BLYTHEWOOD – A Blythewood family was not at home on the afternoon of Jan. 12 when a bullet came crashing through the breakfast room window of their home and traveled through a kitchen cabinet, into the dining room before embedding into an adjacent wall.
Rimer Pond Road resident Gina Lee points to a bullet hole left in her family’s breakfast room window during the afternoon of Jan. 19. So far there are no suspects. | Barbara ball
“It had to have happened between 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. that Friday afternoon,” homeowner Gina Lee said on Tuesday.
“My husband, Pete, and my mother-in-law left the house about 11:30 that morning,” Lee said.
When Lee came home from work at her hair salon in downtown Blythewood about 12:30 p.m., she started to make coffee and noticed a bullet hole in the kitchen cabinet, just above her head.
“It scared me to death!” Lee said. “I could see inside the cabinet that it went through the wall into the dining room so I checked in the dining room,” Lee said. “I could see where the bullet lodged in the far wall of the dining room.”
“We won’t know the caliber of the bullet until we tear out a place in the wall to retrieve the shell,” she said.
Curtis Wilson, Public Information Officer for the Richland County Sheriff’s Department, said on Wednesday that the incident is still under investigation.
Anyone with information about shots fired in the vicinity of Highway 21 and Rimer Pond Road on Jan. 12 should call (803)576-3000.
WINNSBORO – A presentation of Fairfield Memorial Hospital’s increasingly difficult financial situation during recent Board meetings indicates that the Board may be inching closer to having to ask County Council for a new infusion of funds. So far, a funding request has not been discussed in public meetings. Sources say a funding request could come as early as February.
Meanwhile, the hospital’s December financial statement continued to show how FMH is shrinking since it closed Blue Granite Medical Center, cardiac rehab services, and its home health business. The hospital reported a net operating loss for December of $225,886; this did not include any bad debt recoveries. However, this loss was improved from November which showed a $421,171 operating loss. Average daily gross revenues also increased slightly, from $32,045 in November to $33,431 in December.
While the hospital has reduced operating costs by $388,115 so far this fiscal year, gross patient service revenues have fallen even faster, by $886,484 during the same period. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for the past three months were a negative $634,538.
Remarkably, there was no public discussion about how the hospital could potentially plug this hole in the face of continually shrinking revenues.
However, chief financial officer Timothy Mitchell said he is already seeing positive trends in January as a result of shedding those hospital services which were losing money. The Finance and Audit Committee also approved a revised fiscal year budget to reflect the changes in hospital operations.
Ground breaking for new ER Feb. 15
The ground breaking for the new Providence Health free-standing emergency department will be Feb. 15 at property located across the street from the Winnsboro Bi-Lo.
WINNSBORO – County Council voted 5-2 Monday night to accept transfer of the deed for the Mt. Zion property from 1st and Main Development Group, should the renovation of Mt. Zion prove, in the end, not to be feasible. Mikel Trapp and Neal Robinson voted against the County accepting the deed.
During County Council time, however, Robinson said, “I’m definitely for the renovation of Mt. Zion because I see the potential. We definitely have to move forward with it. This [current administration] building is falling apart. I helped put out two fires here when I was with the Sheriff’s Department,” he joked.
Robinson said he received many emails concerning the vote.
“And I got more emails for the renovation than I got against it,” Robinson said.
Trapp said he needed more information on the project.
The vote paved the way for the County to explore the possibility of restoring the dilapidated school building to accommodate a county complex that would include 10,000 square feet of office space over what the county now has. The cost of that exploration would be borne by the developer who has 180 days to come up with a plan and a price for the project with an allowance for extra time if needed. If the County agrees to the proposed plan and price of the renovation, the developer will proceed with the project, bearing the entire cost to completion.
At that point, under a lease/purchase agreement, the County will lease the facility from the developer until the renovated property is paid for, after which time the County will own the property and building.
“Should the County not decide to go forward with the project,” County Council Chairman Billy Smith clarified following the meeting, “the deed would transfer to the County and it would be the County’s responsibility to demolish the building, if desired.”
Smith also said there had been discussions with Town of Winnsboro officials who had expressed a willingness to share in the cost of the demolition of Mt. Zion, estimated at around $200,000, if necessary.
While two residents, Shirley Green and Renee Green, spoke during public comment time, asking Council to not accept the deed and to not go forward with the renovation, resident Pat Curlee spoke in favor of the renovation.
“Construction of an administration building is not an economic driver for downtown Winnsboro,” Shirley Green said. “The administration building is already in the town…Everything is hypothetical…if the plan is acceptable, if the plan is cost effective. It’s a construction scheme,” she said, also alluding that the County would be purchasing the property without knowing the price.
“That couldn’t be further from the fact,” Smith said during County Council time. “The plan is to have a proposal from 1st and Main Development Group and at that time we will learn the price of what we’d be getting ourselves into and we would vote, at that time, up or down, whether to proceed with the project. And, in my mind, community development is economic development, and this is absolutely good, positive, community development for the town as well as the county,” Smith said.
Renee Green addressed integrity and suggested the County should not spend money on construction or destruction of Mt. Zion, but should expand the current administration building. She also suggested the County might not be able to move the confederate monument that occupies space adjacent to the Mt. Zion property.
“That monument is not even on our land. It is on state land,” she said.
Smith countered Green’s claim, stating that the state does not own the land the monument sits on.
Both Trapp and Councilman Dan Ruff sought documented assurances that the monument will be moved if the County goes forward with the plan.
“We are committed to moving the monument, and the Town has said that they would be willing to allow us to do so,” County Administrator Jason Taylor said.
“If there is a way to compromise and everyone can be happy, we can set an example that we are trying to work together to make something good happen,” Ruff said.
Smith agreed. “Everyone on this council has said they would do everything they could, as a part of this project, to have the monument moved,” Smith said.
A & F Committee Report
Following the regular Council meeting, the Administration & Finance Committee voted to move forward to accept the deed of ownership for Garden Street Park from the Town of Winnsboro.
It also voted to defer a vote on whether to accept ownership of the swimming pool in Fortune Springs Park from the Town until the next meeting to gather more information about the cost and timing of renovating the pool.
The committee also agreed to recommend that Council adjust the pay scale of EMS employees, revise the County’s procurement manual and establish procedures to expend funds appropriated by Fairfield County in its annual fiscal budget for collaborative capital public works projects.
The facility, to be named Blythewood Senior Living, is proposed for a five-acre site on Creech Road between the Russell Jeffcoat offices and the IGA and behind Larry Sharpe’s BP service station and three other lots facing Blythewood Road.
