Excellence on Main Street Award
City of Sumter Receives Excellence on Main Street Award at the 2018 Annual MASC Meeting, held in July in Hilton Head Island.
Excerpt from MASC Award:
City officials understood that one of the secrets to making a city's downtown a desirable destination is making it easy to get to and enjoy. And one of the biggest complaints about most historic downtowns is that there is nowhere to park. If there's nowhere to park, residents and visitors avoid the area.
So city officials decided to build a municipal parking garage — one that was free and open to the public. The new parking garage was built in an existing open air parking lot and offers 201 spaces, which is more than double the number of spaces that available in the flat lot there before.
The idea for the garage was born alongside plans for the Hyatt Place Hotel. When the Hyatt Place Hotel decided in 2016 to locate in Downtown Sumter, part of the agreement was that the city would build a parking garage. It was funded using tax increment financing dollars and built by the same construction company that was building the hotel so as not to get in each other's way. The garage opened in December 2017, and the hotel opened in the spring of 2018.
City leaders wanted more than functional infrastructure, though. The garage was built to blend in with adjacent buildings by using similar brick and muted colors. While mainly built for function and convenience, it is also an attractive building and adheres to the city's Historic Preservation Design Review Guidelines.
Read more on the Main Street Inspiration Award at http://www.masc.sc/pages/programs/knowledge/InspirationAwards.aspx
Click here for more info on the Downtown Garage and tax increment financing used to build it.