City of Anderson Prepares to Pave Main Street as Busy Summer Begins
Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer
Moving into summer, Anderson Mayor Terence Roberts is witnessing plans set in motion months ago. From the paving of Main Street to progress on the Franklin Street workforce housing, to renovation of historic buildings downtown, the city is humming with activity.
The most immediately visible project is also the most fundamental: Main Street is about to be repaved. The crosswalk work that must precede it is nearing completion — more than 30 crosswalks across the city, more than most people knew existed, now being rebuilt in concrete after years of historic brick. The brick had its day, Roberts said, but added that concrete is smoother, more durable, and considerably more forgiving for anyone navigating a crosswalk in wet weather or with a stroller or a cane.
Money has been set aside for the Main Street paving itself, and for Church Street Alley as well. The remaining challenge is the one that bedevils every municipal infrastructure project in South Carolina right now: finding a paving contractor with an opening on its schedule, in a state with a finite number of pavers and an apparently infinite number of contracts. Roberts is hoping work can begin this fall.
A yet unresolved question, raised by the paving work, is what to do with the stretch of trolley track and brick in front of the Calhoun — a remnant of the city's earlier transportation history that some would like to preserve as an artifact and others would like to simply pave over along with everything else. Roberts said he did not have an answer yet. The question of whether Anderson's downtown streets should carry physical evidence of their own past, or simply be smooth, is older than the current administration and is unlikely to be resolved before the paving equipment arrives.
Running roughly parallel to the Main Street work is the lane diet project on the corridor from Clemson Boulevard down to Lindley Park — a reconfiguration that narrows the roadway to slow traffic and carves out dedicated space for cyclists and pedestrians along a corridor that has historically offered neither. Construction crews have been working through the nights, weather permitting. The bike and pedestrian lanes are already drawing users before the project is technically finished, which Roberts said is a sign that the demand was always there.
The longer vision extends well beyond Lindley Park. Engineering is already underway for the segment connecting the recreation center to downtown, running up through Orr Street to Main Street. A public workshop was held months ago to introduce the concept to residents and collect their reactions. The goal, which has been a council priority for years, is a connected trail network that links the rec center, the park, downtown, and eventually the Civic Center — which itself connects to the East-West Parkway, which connects to further points east.
"Once you can make that connection," said Roberts, "that's a big piece of that puzzle."
The city's fiscal year 2026-2027 budget runs to $92 million, and its most significant capital commitment is a $16 million fire station — Fire Station Four — to be built along the East-West Parkway to serve the growth that has been accumulating on the city's eastern flank. The station will have three bays, will be built to accommodate future expansion, and is designed to last generations.
Firetrucks have been ordered. The building team, engineers, and architect met last week to review final details. Construction is expected to begin in early 2027, with completion approximately 18 months after that — subject, like everything in construction, to weather, materials, and the calendar's general indifference to anyone's plans.
The fire station will help the City of Anderson maintains a Class One fire insurance rating — the highest possible designation — and sustaining it as the city grows east requires a station close enough to the new development to meet response time standards. Without Fire Station Four, that rating could have been in jeopardy. Without that rating, every property owner in the city would pay more for insurance.
Police staffing, by contrast, is in good shape. Retention is high, the workplace culture is healthy, and vacancy rates are where they need to be. No additional officers are in the current budget. Roberts credited Anderson Police Chief Jim Stewart and the department's management for creating conditions that make people want to stay.
Another consequential shift in how Anderson approaches its downtown is the adoption of the Bailey Bill, and the use of the tax tool modeled on similar programs in Columbia, Florence, and Greenville that freezes the assessed tax value of an abandoned or underutilized building during renovation and holds it there for a set number of years, provided the owner meets investment benchmarks reviewed and certified by the city's Board of Architecture Review.
The program is available for both commercial and residential properties. It provides investors help in the first years of a renovation project when cash flow is most painful, because the money is going out and no tenants or revenues are coming in yet. This temporarily frozen tax bill helps bridge that gap.
The clearest local example of what this kind of incentive makes possible, though it used state historic tax credits, is the historic train station on the west end of downtown, restored by Steve and Linda Krause into a building that produced a faithful replication of the original structure. The constraints of those historic rehabilitations were significant and expensive, but the result is one of the more remarkable buildings in downtown Anderson. Across the street, Millie's On Main is preparing to open and the building that once housed M.J. Goodwin's law firm is being revamped as a children's boutique.
The Franklin Street project — 80 units of affordable workforce housing, built with low-income housing tax credits and priced relative to residents' adjusted gross incomes, is under construction. The elevator shaft went up last month, and the steel beams are now rising. The tax credits require completion by mid-2027, which means the schedule has real consequences.
The project is designed for the fire fighters, nurses, teachers, restaurant workers and other ordinary citizens, who might currently commute from wherever they can afford to live. Roberts said proximity between workers and workplaces is not just a convenience; it is a functioning part of a city's economic ecology.
The Murray-on-Mills project — market-rate apartments in and around the old Chemtex property, combining new construction with the renovation of several surviving mill buildings is, "kicking the dirt around again." Roberts said he has been told several times that the work there is close to getting under way. The proximity of the site to downtown makes it one of the more consequential pieces of developable land in the city.
Infill development throughout the city's existing neighborhoods is active with new houses on empty lots scattered across the grid and several new subdivisions on the books along Shockley Ferry Road, Belton Highway, and Midway Road.
Roberts said that every subdivision eventually generates the need for a fire station, which eventually generates the need for another one.
“If your city isn't growing, it's dying," he said, quoting Joe Riley, the longtime Charleston mayor whom he counts as a mentor. "But that's a balance."
The city's population is currently projected at around 32,000. Roberts expects 42,000-43,000 by 2040, based on current trends. All the revenue indicators, including property taxes, business licenses, hospitality fees, and accommodations fees, are trending upward.
The recent dedication of a historic marker at the corner of Main and Whitner Streets, commemorating the General’s Road once used by Revolutionary War General Andrew Pickens, and whose route through what is now downtown Anderson became, in the 1820s, Main Street.
The city’s recreation areas are already enjoying a good summer. North Main Commons, the new park on the city's northern end, is drawing well. The Carolina Wren Park splash pad was full of children at noon on a recent weekday. The outdoor dining scene is active now that warm weather has arrived. The Main Street block party on Thursdays, the Farmers Market, the summer theater series are all part of the programming that makes downtown a place people return to rather than pass through. The county bicentennial and the country's two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary are bringing events downtown through the summer and into the fall, including the first non-holiday downtown parade in memory, planned for October.
