Zoning change opens door for Dollar General on North Main
By Melissa Rollins, Editor, editor@newsandpress.net
Last Tuesday night was a down to business, in and out, kind of night for Darlington City Council. Council gave final approval for two ordinances relating to zoning and also gave first reading to the 2018-2019 budget.
Ordinance 2018-07 gives the property on North Main Street, next to Darlington Amusement Company, the zoning designation of General Commercial. The property is expected to house a new Dollar General, according to Greg Googer with Coastal Development Partners.
“We have the site under contract,” Googer said. “We are looking to develop the parcel as commercial. We are nearing the end of our due diligence and we do have an active lease from Dollar General. If we can have this approval we’re requesting tonight they will come.”
Googer said that the business would bring jobs and that the company had taken steps to place any concerns over the placement of the store at ease.
“It will bring about six to ten full-time jobs as well as about a million-dollar investment into your community,” Googer said. “We were here earlier tonight, met with some neighbors who had some questions and I think we addressed a lot of their concerns. We talked about fencing; we talked about lighting, security systems to make sure that everything is secure.”
Darlington County Recreation Director Lee Andrews updated council on the softball and baseball league signups.
“I just wanted to come before you and speak a little bit about the baseball league again; I want to keep that at the forefront of your mind,” Andrews said. “We got so much bad publicity when we talked about combining everything but it has been such a good experience with the kids out there. I ain’t going to tell you it’s been all roses; it hasn’t. There have been some growing pains just because we are right at 500 kids in the program right now. It has been a very good thing that has happened. I just want to put that out there.”
Andrews said that the property purchase from the Darlington County School District went through.
“We bought some property over by Virgil Wells Stadium and we are very excited about that,” Andrews said. “Matter of fact, I cut the grass for the first time over there this week; I had to after the school district relinquished it. The guys found out real quick that that’s a lot of land but we are excited about that and we’re excited about the pool opening. I’ve already had the phone ringing off the hook about the pool. Recreation is headed in the right direction and we appreciate ya’lls help.”
Councilwoman Carolyn Bruce questioned doing first reading of the 2018-2019 budget before they had completed all of their worksessions, during which city department heads present their budget. Council will hold several budget worksessions in coming weeks, Garland told council members, getting the first reading of the budget out of the way will simply allow them to give the required two readings in plenty of time before the start of the new fiscal year instead of being under a time crunch.
