Newspapers / The Kings Mountain Herald … / July 15, 2009, edition 1 / Page 5
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< Wednesday, July 15, 2009 The Kings Mountain Herald A look at the four points of revitalization Editor’s note: This series focuses ‘on the plans for development and growth of downtown Kings Mountain through the possible help of the North Carolina Main Street Program. MPI applied for participation in this program today. This series is a collabora- tive effort between the Moun- taineer Partnership ‘and The Herald. MPI Dir. Adam Hines contributed to this report. Part 2 of a 7 part series By EMILY WEAVER, ADAM HINES ’ Mountaineer Partnership, Inc., Kings Mountain’s downtown revi- talization committee, is applying for participation in the North Car- olina Main Street Program. If accepted, the plan will help MPI breathe new life into down- town through technical assistance, training, program guidance, net- working, advocacy and leadership. Crafted by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the program has helped revitalize over 1,200 downtowns across the country. The plan is for communities to “recognize and preserve their his- toric fabric, and, using local re- sources, build on their unique characteristics to create vibrant central business districts that meet the needs of today’s (down- towns),” according to the North Carolina Main Street Center, which oversees the program. The NCMSP operates under a “Four-Point Approach,” focusing on the areas of organization, de- sign, promotion and economic re- structuring. MPI oversees and directs the efforts of all four of these committees of professionals and volunteers from the commu- nity. Organization Under organization, the plan in- corporates “building human and fi- nancial resources, through public and private partnerships, to achieve a common vision” for downtown. Diverse groups, consisting of merchants, bankers, public offi- cials, the chamber of commerce and civic groups, “must work to- gether to improve downtown,” ac- cording to the program. Mountaineer Partnership, Inc., has already demonstrated strengths for this part of the approach. The board consists of professionals, government officials and citizens, both public and private, who work together for the downtown initia- tive. Mauney Library Dir. Sharon Stack has chaired the Organization Committee for three years. “This committee provides the backbone of organization for Mountaineer Partnership and the four point approach,” she said. “It helps the organization to function effectively. Under the Main Street program the Organization Com- mittee is responsible for budgeting, planning, and membership.” The need of a shared vision for downtown branches off into avail- able human resources and avail- able financial resources to enact that vision. Promotion In the promotion approach, the main goal is to sell a “positive image of downtown based on the authentic, creative assets of the community.” The three basic areas of focus fall under image building cam- paigns, retail promotion, and spe- cial event development. The North Carolina Main Street Program suggests that communi- ties create a brand (logo or slogan) to help “sell” the downtown, using signage, websites, newsletters and social media networks to reach the public. MPI currently has a web- site (mtnpartnership.com), pro- duces newsletters and has a logo. At the request of and with the input from the Chamber of Commerce, City of Kings Mountain, and MPI, NCDOT recently put up street signs leading to downtown at the main gateways to Kings Mountain. The goal of retail promotion is to get customers into downtown registers to ring. This goal can be achieved through avenues such as joint advertising campaigns, side- walk sales, public art programs or art fairs, farmers markets, antique car shows, and marketing and edu- cation about the goods and services available. + Special events, which attract crowds to downtown, are already held in Kings Mountain. Christmas and Halloween parades, the inde- pendent film festival, Beach Blast, the Gateway Festival, Mountaineer Christmas and many other events continue to bring crowds into downtown each year. Look for the promotion com- mittee of MPI as it hosts its first Beer Garden Event this Saturday July 18th as part of the annual Beach Blast event held in Patriots Park. \ Design . The design approach operates simply under the principle of at- traction, “improving the physical aspects of downtown.” This approach focuses on store- fronts, streetscape design, signage and public spaces. The goal is to recreate the look of downtown to be both pleasing to the eye and Spirit by creating an enyironment where people will want to work, shop, relax and play. “The Design Committee is very interested in restoring the bollard monuments and chains in front of the parking area on Battleground,” said Chairwoman Shirley Brutko, who has served on the committee almost a year. She added that they are also in- terested in working on sidewalks, ‘cross walks, railroad crossings, bike lanes, signage and other beau- tification efforts through the Main Street Program. Facade grants for renovating shop fronts are already offered through the city, a joint effort be- tween MPI and city council. Streetscapes and all of their el- ements, including types of trees, lighting, furnishings and parking, are studied under this approach. Sometimes even the simplest im- provements can make the scene, as noticed in the ground-illuminating lights, which currently shine on trees downtown. The importance of design to a thriving main street was empha- sized by national revitalization ex- pert Dan Burden when he said, “Fix the streets, and the people and businesses will follow”. Dan Bur- den, selected in 2001 by Time Magazine as one of six of the world’s most important civic inno- vators, owns and operates Florida Based Walkable Communities Inc. traveling to downtowns around the country using pictures from around the world he has taken of building and streetscape design elements that can be beneficial to their par- ticular community. Economic restructuring In the economic restructuring approach, the goal is to strengthen a downtown’s existing “economic assets of the business district while diversifying its economic base. Ac- tivities include conducting market analysis to understand the chang- ing market place, adapting vacant buildings that have outlived their original purposes for use as enter- tainment or cultural facilities, cre- ating interest in completing the streetscape through infill or rede- velopment projects, and sharpen- ing the competitiveness of Main Street’s traditional merchants,” ac- cording to the program. This approach focuses on in- creasing the community’s tax base, increasing loan demand and de- posits in local financial institu- tions, enhancing property values, generating additional sales of goods and services and creating jobs. These goals are tackled through market analysis surveys, studying a community’s economic position- ing; database development; busi- ness retention, expansion and recruitment strategies; specific de- velopment opportunities; and hav- ing a mixed-use center of activity: retail, service, professional, gov- ' ernmental, institutional and resi- dential, according to the North Carolina Main Street Program. In next week's Herald, read more about how the city can grow through the promotion approach of the Main Street Program. Page 5A MILL From Page 1 businesses came to town and cotton was no longer King in this area, Gilbert's father, H. Lawrence Patrick ( for whom the Kings Mountain Senior Center is named) bought used textile equipment in the 1960s .and started Patrick Yarns, spinning industrial mop yarn. Fifty years ago there were 10 family owned spinning plants in Kings Mountain and hundreds of textile plant across the two Carolinas employing thousands of people. Today, Patrick Yatn Mills is the only family owned spinning plant in what used to be one of the busiest textile sites in the Pied- mont. In the Time news feature article, Patrick credited envi- ronmentally friendly business practices, above average pay to workers,.and good employee benefits. or making the com- pany more competitive. He lays most of the blame on the decimated manufacturing in- dustry on an uneven playing field in China. Patrick was also quoted in the Global business feature that he is not looking for govern- ment intervention to save his business!His epmpany spins a wide range of products for a di- verse group of customers in- cluding yarn for military applications, fiber optic cables, and antimicrobial yarn for water filtration, to name a few of the dozen or more different products supplied to many dif- ferent markets. Gilbert Patrick became president and chief operating officer in 1993 when Patrick Yarn employed 50 at a single plant across the railroad tracks on S. Battleground Avenue. Today, there are 170 employ- ees and two state- of- the art mills, the most recent location in the former big former Cleve- mont Mills plant on York Road. The plants operate three shifts, six days a week. Unlike any recession that most of us have experienced in our lifetime, the local com- pany is lessening the impact by creating new avenues for busi- ness and "thinking outside the box." On a recent holiday Patrick was modest about company successes, busy grilling burg- ers for his employees a a com- pany picnic. shops and to encourage those cash RECORDS From Page 1. everyone, this new feature will save time and money. Information overload Environmental Health Dir. Marty Allen said that the department’s filing cabinets were getting full. They were backed up with records they had to keep; public documents that state law requires them to hold on to for a period of time and information they couldn’t afford to toss out. Each onsite inspection of a property in- cludes extensive field investigations. From testing water quality and taking soil sam- ples to looking at old sewer systems, wells or foundations, the fieldwork is a thorough process. Sometimes investigators have to navigate around land rights, fussy property owners, animals or Mother Nature’s influ- ence to collect the information the govern- ment requires. “Once we get the information we need and nobody gets killed in the process, we're gone,” Allen joked. “So if we lose that in- formation and we have to go back and get that again, it would be like who’s going to get the short straw?” 7 Some of the information like that of un- derground sewer systems dating back to the 70s or beyond is irreplaceable, he said. There may be old systems or wells dat- ing back to the ‘40s or ‘50s that were re- paired and left on the property or that had broken down underneath the soil over time. But knowing what lies beneath without being an archaeologist or having a crystal ball to gaze into, Allen said, can be an im- possible feat. If landowners want to build an addi- tional wing onto their home or an extra cot- tage out front, these property questions come to surface. Instead of digging up a costly “roadblock” in construction, the En- vironmental Health Department helps de- velopers navigate this “mine field” of old foundation structures, sewer systems and wells. But all of the field notes, site drawings, plot descriptions, tests and other important information leads to a lot of paper work. “We were growing four-drawer filing cabinets,” he said about the department’s archive room. “I’ve got 23 in there that you can’t get your fingers in (between the files).” But even in those crammed cabinets packed with pertinent facts and figures, an- other threat, besides running out of room, was closing in on the department. “In the dark ages of Environmental Health,” he said, they used to have to make copies of records accumulated in fieldwork with carbon paper — a medium that seemed to pass the tests of age and time. But then came the more “environmental friendly” carbonless paper for copies. These copies began to fade. Without exposure to light, heat or moisture the words once . recorded on these back-up records vanished ' within the filing cabinets. “If we have to go back out there and run the gauntlet to get that information back, it’s expensive, it’s time consuming and we may miss something because in 10 or 15 years, a lot of things can happen,” Allen said. “Trees grow up, people bulldoze, they move things, you just don’t know and then it doesn’t even resemble what was out there. Then you miss something that you had record of that would have been a help.” Records check About 10 years ago, Allen started asking around, looking for any kind of media that . may help him save the information they had, shrink their overloaded archive room and help them retrieve the files without an ‘archeological dig through the cabinets. He knew about microfilm, but asked about any other method. They began to back up their records on compact discs, but even that became a daunting task. Then, one day, Allen went to the county’s Register of Deeds office and saw a light of hope on a computer screen. He no- ticed people pulling up photocopies of ac- tual deeds records online. : “How did you get that information on that screen?” he asked Bonnie Reece of the deeds’ office. He said that she told him the records were recorded through a process called “digital imaging,” through a company they used called Parker-Lowe and Associates. Through the office he was able to get in touch with Parker-Lowe and Associates. The company began to help them back up their files through high-powered scanners, which take a digital snapshot of each record. The files are then identified, labeled and catalogued in the system and backed up on a DVD, which, Allen said, has a higher . storage capacity than a CD. Should anything happen to the informa- tion floating around in cyber space, which is stored in two other memory banks throughout the country, or the office, which holds the records, Allen said that they will be able to get the site. back up and running with a computer and the DVDs. With this new technology they were able to scan all of the documents deemed “pub- lic record” for a given property, including department letters, field notes, soil tests, water and/or air quality readings, deeds, any land easements and other facts into a single group of accessible files. Medical records relating to a property and other “sensitive” information will not be avail- able. A clerk checks to make sure the docu- ments appear clear and legible in each scanned image. Once scanned and set, they send the information to Parker-Lowe and Associates, who backs up their system every afternoon, he said. EMILY WEAVER/HERALD Michelle Lovelace looks up a record online. About four and a.half years ago, their process of record keeping had changed. On off days or slow afternoons at the office, workers sit at the scanner backing up records. “We're really putting a lot of informa- tion on there,” said Allen, a 34-year- veteran in environmental sciences and Cleveland County native. Laying it online Then, one day, a representative of Parker-Lowe asked if Allen ever thought about having the records online. “Tell me more,” he said, intrigued. After more conversations and research, Allen then took the idea to Health Dir. De- nese Stallings. They talked to County Man- ager David Dear and the green light was officially given. On June 22nd, at the county commis- sioners’ meeting Allen unveiled their newest technological advancement and pride of the county — the first environmen- tal health department in the state to have its records accessible online. “We don’t have all of our records on it yet,” he said, adding that the most com- monly requested ones are being down- loaded first. “Every day there is more and more records available.” Allen added that they hope to have all of the public health records online within the next year. “I still can’t take care of those docu- ments and box them, burn them or shred them yet. The state of North Carolina does- n’t recognize a DVD as an archivable medium yet,” he said, adding that the DVDs are still being backed up on micro- film. But once microfilmed; the documents can be destroyed. The filing cabinets can have a little breathing room. The county’s Environmental Health De- partment’s information is used and needed by a variety of professionals and patrons. Attorneys need to look at records for title searches, real estate agents use it for list- ings, building inspectors seek notes for cases, contractors look at property infor- mation for new construction or repairs, and planning and zoning officials rely on the records for mapping. . What used to take a full day of digging through filing cabinets to fill the requests of nearly 25-30 faxes from people seeking in- formation can now be found in seconds on- line. New industries or businesses contem- plating moving into the county will be able to access records in a matter of minutes in- stead of weeks, he said. “We were walking a tightrope of trying to do the best we could as quick as we could and sometimes as quick as we could do it was not quick enough. I don’t know how to get any quicker than this,” Allen said. “This is light years ahead of what we did just 10 or 15 years ago.” With a username and password the pub- lic can search records by a landowner’s name, property address or parcel ID num- ber. The website is accessible at http://www.clevelandcounty.com/public/he alth/hd/pages/envhlth.html — SEG {
The Kings Mountain Herald (Kings Mountain, N.C.)
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July 15, 2009, edition 1
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