The Community Foundation for a Better Hartsville and Pacolet Milliken Enterprises, represented by Vice President of Real Estate John Montgomery, will host a public presentation at 10 a.m., Monday April 29 at Twitty United Methodist Church in Hartsville to share news about a development that will give a boost to the Oakdale Neighborhood Renaissance.
Built in 1900 for employees of the Hartsville Cotton Mill and first known as “Mill Village,” the Oakdale Neighborhood has experienced significant decline in recent decades.
Efforts to revitalize the neighborhood began in 2004, shortly after the South Carolina Governor’s School for Science and Mathematics was built on the original Cotton Mill site.
In 2011, Oakdale residents and other members of the Hartsville community formed the Oakdale Community Development Project Team and developed a successful proposal for a Phase II grant from the Community Development Block Grant Program. The $500,000 award was announced in December 2011 and is being used to improve, among other things, lighting, security and sidewalks in the neighborhood. Other improvement initiatives undertaken by the neighborhood association since 2011 have included neighborhood clean-up projects and a crime watch program.
Last month, the Community Foundation for a Better Hartsville began a 12-month project to expand and update “Hartsville 2020 Vision” and create a visual framework for the continued development of the city. Funded by the Byerly Foundation, this master planning project is intended to help synthesize existing research and planning documents with new data, citizen opinions and professional design expertise to offer a coherent vision, strategy and action steps to guide development in Hartsville for the next 20 years.
The Community Foundation for a Better Hartsville, a nonprofit public benefit corporation that comprises a cross-section of institutional and community partners, exists to further local community improvement projects.
