Events Highlight West Pelzer for Fall, Holidays
Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer
West Pelzer could use more space for homes and businesses. It could also use more room to celebrate, but Mayor Rick Sanders is doing the best with the real estate available to make “The Upstate’s Front Porch” a place where people can gather and create community.
Sanders is approaching the end of his first year in office with the agenda to make his walking town better with repaired sidewalks, a restored former Girl Scout hut, a future stage at Chapman Park, a walking route that connects stores and churches, Saturday’s two-mile yard sale that joins West Pelzer to Pelzer, and a Christmas Santa house that will allow a town to make a tradition of its own.
The town’s limited footprint makes the town’s public spaces matter more. West Pelzer works with its existing blocks, buildings and relationships. The work is less about expansion than attention.
The fall season begins with the event that has become West Pelzer’s unofficial proof of scale: the two-mile yard sale.
The Saturday sale began as a one-mile event, created by Sanders’ son, S.C. Rep. Blake Sanders, during his time as mayor. The model had precedents elsewhere — the 13-mile yard sales that appear in communities across the South — but the idea took hold in West Pelzer because it fit the town’s particular habits of exchange.
People have things to sell, like to walk, browse, meet neighbors and eat breakfast at a church fundraiser, and people are willing to travel for a long line of tables holding whatever someone else no longer needs.
The event expanded to include Pelzer, becoming a two-mile route and turning the shared corridor between the towns into a temporary marketplace. Local businesses are allowing vendors to use their property, and a church is expected to serve breakfast.
“It just brings a lot of people in our community and in our stores,” Sanders said, “where money’s actually changing hands, and restaurants will be visited.”
The event is expected to bring substantial traffic. Sanders acknowledged that patience will be required, especially because the sale coincides with a Clemson home football game.
The town’s police chief and officers will manage traffic, slowing vehicles through the busy corridor. The sale is not merely an event on a calendar; it is one of those civic inconveniences that communities tolerate because the inconvenience itself signals success. People arrive. Businesses benefit. A stretch of road becomes, for several hours, a public promenade.
Inside a small former jail and Girl Scout hut building in West Pelzer, the town is preparing to cut a ribbon Oct. 13.
The building originally stood near Evans Street before being moved to its current location. Some residents have also described it as a former jail; it once had bars. When earlier renovations addressed the exterior through a grant obtained during Blake Sanders’ administration, the interior remained in poor condition.
“It had a dirt floor,” Sanders said. “It was really bad.”
Now the building has been restored and will be named Gaines Hall in honor of John Gaines, a mayor who served West Pelzer for nearly 24 years and died in office.
The renovation preserves a rustic quality rather than attempting to make the small building look new. Sanders pointed to the old smokestack opening, which is now paired with a potbelly stove, a bench and other furnishings intended to give the space character.
The hall’s first major use will be as a Santa house during the Christmas season. Santa is expected to begin appearing there on the first Saturday in December, the day of the town’s Christmas parade, and to return Friday through Sunday evenings from 6 to 9 p.m.
The town plans special events for families with pets and for children or adults with disabilities. A new concrete walkway makes the building accessible, a feature Sanders said was especially important to him.
“We wanted to make the building accessible,” he said. “That’s really important to me.”
The Santa house is a small project whose value lies in the kind of memory it can create: children lining up at a building that was once unused, a former Girl Scout hut becoming the place where a town goes to see Santa.
West Pelzer’s renowned Halloween celebration will return this year under the name Pumpkin Palooza.
After 2025’s “Boo with the Blue” and other Halloween programming, Sanders said it is returning to a more expansive fall format. The centerpiece will be a Michael Jackson “Thriller” dance parade.
A dance team has invited children, men and women to participate, and rehearsals are already underway. A truck playing the song will lead the dancers, followed by a Ghostbusters vehicle coming from Belton.
“They’ve been rehearsing,” Sanders said.
The parade will begin at the West Pelzer Fire Department and travel to Chapman Park. The town has coordinated with the South Carolina Department of Transportation to close Highway 8 for a few hours, allowing costumed children and families to move safely through the route.
At Chapman Park, the town plans to distribute candy, set up inflatables and continue the celebration.
The event will depend, as many small-town festivals do, on the weather, but Halloween has long drawn a
West Pelzer is still deciding what to do with Chapman Park at Christmas. A giant municipal tree is unlikely; the town does not have the open space available to larger communities. Sanders said officials may decorate the large cedar near the fire department instead, using a bucket truck to add lights at the entrance to town.
The Christmas parade will begin an hour earlier than in previous years, after practical concerns from previous years. Last year, many participants and spectators found themselves in the dark, while the parade had fewer illuminated entries than organizers expected.
The town’s Santa house, vendor activity and parade will all be part of the same day.
The three nearby towns — West Pelzer, Pelzer and Williamston — now coordinate more frequently than they once did. Their mayors share events, consult one another and try not to schedule competing activities on the same days.
“All three of us rely on each other,” Sanders said.
West Pelzer’s budget is stable, Sanders said. The town has avoided major unexpected expenses and is staying close to its financial plan.
The work that most directly affects residents’ daily routines, however, is occurring outside the regular town budget.
After a longtime resident fell on a sidewalk about three months ago, she asked town officials to inspect the area. Sanders said the town contacted the South Carolina Department of Transportation, which sent six people to walk the streets and assess conditions.
The result will be about $32,000 in state-funded sidewalk repairs.
West Pelzer has substantial pedestrian activity, Sanders said, including people walking from Dollar General to the fire department, a route of about a mile. Residents walk dogs, go to stores, visit churches and move through town without getting into cars.
The town also plans to install a dog-waste bag dispenser.
“It’s just something that makes you, when you come through, feel kind of warm and fuzzy,” Sanders said. “Hey, this is a cool town. This is where I’d like to stop and walk around.”
That is not an economic-development slogan likely to appear in a consultant’s presentation, yet it captures the town’s strategy. If people can walk safely, they may enter an antique store. If they enter an antique store, they may ask where to eat. Then someone can direct them toward Mill Town, Baby Sumo or Cotton Duck.
The commercial benefit of a sidewalk can be difficult to calculate. The feeling of a town that invites walking is harder still to quantify. But it may matter just as much.
Sanders’ next major project is an amphitheater stage at Chapman Park.
He has submitted plans to Governmental Affairs and Special Projects DirectorSteve Newton and hopes to apply for a grant that would allow construction to begin before spring. The goal is to have the stage ready in time to book music acts several months in advance.
“I’d really like to have that ready by the time spring rolls around,” Sanders said.
The stage would work alongside Gaines Hall, downtown restaurants and other public spaces, providing a small-town venue for concerts and gatherings.
“Between this building being used, if we decide to rent it out for meetings or whatever, and then we’ve got a stage and you’ve got restaurants,” Sanders said, “it’s a draw.”
The project reflects a recurring idea in the mayor’s approach where a small town does not need a massive civic complex to create public life. It needs a few places that work together — a hall, a park, a sidewalk, a restaurant, a stage — and enough programming to give people reasons to use them.
Sanders said he has enjoyed his first year as mayor, though it has been both what he expected and something else.
“Sometimes dealing with residents is a little tricky,” he said.
His approach is to treat a resident’s concern as he would want his own concern treated.
“Their issue, you need to treat it as if it was your issue,” he said.
The mayor has also found support in his relationships with Burgess in Williamston and Pelzer Mayor Chase Smithwick. The three have met regularly, shared ideas and developed a plan for a Tri-City 5K.
The tentative route would begin at Palmetto High School, travel down Depot Street, through Pelzer, up through the Courtney area and back to the school. A professional running company is expected to lead the event, which would physically link the three communities.
The idea emerged from a friendship formed outside official meetings. Sanders organizes an annual men’s fishing trip, now in its 10th year. What began with three people has grown to 57 participants, 13 guided boats and more than 1,500 pounds of fish.
The mayors’ cooperation is less formal than an intergovernmental agreement, but it has practical consequences. The towns share schools, businesses, residents, roads and public calendars. Their success is not easily separated.
“We want to do more of that,” Sanders said.
West Pelzer may be landlocked. It may have limited room for new businesses, no 40-foot municipal Christmas tree and a budget that must be watched carefully. But it is finding room elsewhere: in an old building, a repaired sidewalk, a park stage, a temporary market stretching two miles, a dance down Highway 8 and a Santa house in a former Girl Scout hut.
