LAURINBURG — The Economic Development Corporation is going to be investing in downtown Laurinburg in the very near future.
Mark Ward, director of Economic Development and president of the Scotland County Economic Development Corporation, told the city council Tuesday that his board had agreed to buy two buildings downtown. The buildings are the old Art by Design on Railroad and Main streets and the former Harris furniture more recently housing Treasure City Pawn.
Ward says he hopes to close on the buildings in the next 30 days and the first thing that will be done is a new roof put on both the buildings.
The reason for buying the buildings is, according to Ward, “because it’s the right thing to do for both downtown and Scotland County.“
“My job is to do industrial recruitment but my job is also recruitment period,” Ward said. “We believe that by us owning those downtown buildings, we will manage it and we will do it the way we think the citizens want it to be done which is quickly not tear down or dismantle and leave vacant for a while.”
The idea is to really work first on the Harris furniture building and be able to present a vacant shell of a building that would only need minor tweaking for whoever would rent it out.
“The goal is to make it an incubator or a business that John A Smith wants to run that we decided as Scotland County EDC should be the type of business downtown wants,” Ward said. “We will allow them to go in there at a significantly low rent to build their business up to stimulate that downtown growth. So that will give mom and pop business an opportunity to go in.”
While Ward said he wasn’t asking for money at the current moment he would likely be back to the council to ask for help in the process. Some of the investment in the buildings will come from the sell of the EDC spec building at the Laurinburg-Maxton airport to Duke Energy for $1.3 million. Most will go to pay off the debt of the new 20,000 square-foot building behind the EDC office but the rest will go to the downtown buildings.
“We are taking an active role in developing not only industrial sites in the county but also helping the retail and the downtown group as well to make Scotland County a group effort,” Ward said. “Not the city do their thing, Laurel Hill do their thing, Gibson do their thing, main street do their thing, I do my thing. We’re going to do it all together because we’re all going to be partners.”
