SUMTER, S.C. — If you’re walking around downtown Sumter, you’ve probably noticed that the Rotary Centennial Plaza at the intersection of Main and Liberty Streets is open after months of construction.
“I feel like it’s very beautiful,” Ahmad Dickey shared.
His sister Iris added, “I really like it."
“It adds more to Sumter,” Amor Dickey chimed in.
The three siblings say the plaza is a positive upgrade to downtown Sumter, which resident Charmaine Griffith agrees with.
“It’s a definite improvement and this is a pretty area here in the downtown and it’s going to be a great place to sit, relax,” Griffith explained. “Once you leave JO Grady's or the [Sumter Original Brewery] or anywhere down here, it's going to be a good safe place to sit and relax.”
For local businesses like Brubaker’s, having more public spaces to bring people downtown is helpful, says co-owner Jeff Chaney.
“It's great. Downtown is growing, and there's new places coming in all the time and it's great bringing people downtown,” Chaney said. “That's why we came downtown. We have a lot of support from Sumter. As you can see, [the restaurant is] very full today. It’s a lot of fun being in Sumter and we’re really glad we’re downtown because it’s really growing and things are happening.”
“This is part of Sumter on the move,” Rotarian Chuck Fienning smiled. “What has happened that I've seen over the years is this downtown area has improved. You see people coming downtown at night. In 1983, the streets kind of rolled up at seven o'clock at night. Now you see live things going on well after my bed hour here, which is a great thing for Sumter. And I think that one of the important things about this is to encourage younger people who are in their teens and 20s to stay in Sumter, work in Sumter, get a good job in Sumter.”
Fienning has lived in Sumter for 40 years, where he served as past president of one of the two local rotary club chapters, which fundraised to build the initial plaza in 2005 for Rotary International’s 100th anniversary.
“They seized upon the idea of creating a centennial plaza in the heart of Sumter. This where we're standing now at Liberty and Main Street is the heart of Sumter,” Fienning explained. “When Sumter Rotary Club celebrated its 100th anniversary last year, what we wanted to do was to upgrade Sumter’s Centennial Plaza.”
The new plaza features benches engraved with the Rotary Club’s four-way test, which is a “nonpartisan and nonsectarian ethical guide for Rotarians to use for their personal and professional relationships,” according to Rotary.org. The questions include:
- Is it the truth?
- Is it fair to all concerned?
- Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
- Will it be beneficial to all concerned?
“They wanted to come in and do a little refresh, bring it up to date, especially considering how downtown has changed over the past 20, 30 years. So they wanted to come in and just make a change,” the City of Sumter’s Communications and Tourism Director Shelley Kile said. “Like any city, you have to have a very strong central business district, and that's what our downtown is. We have a lot of people that refer to it as downtown Sumter, downtown Sumter. It is our central business district. So we have to have a very strong central and then we move out.”
It’s an effort that residents like Griffith appreciate.
“Drawing people back to the foundations of this little town, the little boutiques and restaurants that are down here,” Griffith shared. “It's not going to happen overnight, but it's a sense of community and what this town started off as and it represents the people who built it up to what it was. So getting back in touch with that I think is important because when we go forward, then we have a strong base in the foundation.”
The plaza is officially open, although there are a few finishing touches left to make including repainting the clock and landscaping.
When the plaza was initially built in 2005, Fienning says the rotary club fundraised for the construction, collecting money from private donors. While the two local chapters, The Rotary Club of Sumter, The Gamecock City and Rotary Club Sumter Sunrise worked to raise money for the upgrade, Fienning says the city covered the majority of the cost this time.
“What is our secret sauce in Sumter is a team effort,” Fienning shared. “City and county council, Chamber of Commerce, development board, the educational people, the school district, the technical college, USC Sumter; we have assets that we are leveraging up together to make this community grow and prosper. That’s Sumter, South Carolina.”
“We're just really excited that we can all come together and make this happen,” Kile says.