Town homes planned for downtown area
By Bobby Bryant
Editor
editor@newsandpress.net
A Darlington investor and a Florence homebuilder have announced plans for a complex of 14 “high-end” town homes on the site where a crumbling warehouse once stood.
Investor Sam Evans and builder Louie Hopkins said June 11 that they would build the complex on the corner of East Broad Street and Russell Street, where the derelict Tyner Warehouse stood for decades until Mayor Curtis Boyd and a group of investors bought the property in 2019 so it could be torn down and redeveloped.
Hopkins expects the project to cost at least $1 million and says it likely will be completed by the fall of 2021.
The 14 brick town homes will be two bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, with granite countertops and wood floors. They likely will rent for $950 a month.
“I think the goal is to get people living in the town of Darlington,” rather than going to Florence to find equivalent housing, Hopkins said.
This would bring more activity to local businesses, he said.
“The influx of housing in the downtown area is extremely important,” said Darlington County Coroner Todd Hardee, who runs Kistler-Hardee Funeral Home, owns South of Pearl restaurant and whose family recently purchased the former Post Office building off Pearl Street.
Hardee was among those attending the announcement of the town-homes project.
Hardee said he believes that the town-homes project will be “a huge part of the salvation of our community, to go along with the revitalization of the old Post Office, which will be a cultural center that fell from heaven when we get through with it.”
“We’re on a forward push,” Hardee said. “We can see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
