Mayor: Honea Path Progress Led by Downtown Growth, Mill Reclamation
Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer
Honea Path is moving out of the shadows of the past and Mayor Jimmy Smith is trying to manage that progress with the optimism of a man who has learned not to announce things until the money is actually in the bank.
Main Street just got repaved — a smooth surface which will soon cover North Main to the far city limits — and Smith is generous in crediting the South Carolina Department Of Transportation for finally getting the paving done. The pavement is new enough that visitors who have not been through town recently will be startled by the difference, in the way that good roads surprise you only when you have spent enough time on bad ones.
The bigger news is the demolition of what remains of the old Chiquola Mill. Workers have been tearing down the surviving walls, hauling off debris, and managing, at considerable effort, the hazardous material the building left behind. Smith said nearly everything in it contains asbestos: the obvious materials, the less obvious materials, even the old brick, which must be handled as hazardous waste and hauled off accordingly. The mill pond has been filled and graded flat. The walls are coming down. Smith estimates another 120 days to completion.
The demolition raised an immediate question about the two-story historical marker that had stood on the property, largely invisible for years because the mill had simply grown up around it. The marker, which commemorates James Hammett — whose family, along with his brother, founded the Piedmont Mill around the same time the Chiquola was established — comes apart into six pieces. Smith gave the public two weeks to claim it for restoration. The only group that expressed serious interest was the Piedmont Historical Preservation Society, which is converting the gymnasium of the old Piedmont Mill into a textile museum.
Hammett's great-grandson made contact and a deal was reached: the society takes the marker, restores it, and gives it a home in the museum. Honea Path, which had neither the funds to restore it nor a place large enough to put something of that size, sees this outcome as a good one.
What comes next on the cleared mill site is an ongoing conversation between the town and Anderson County. One developer has already expressed interest and indicated a willingness to build what the town wants on the site, rather than what maximizes return on the parcel. Smith said it is an ongoing process, a comment contains both hope and hard experience in roughly equal measure.
The mayor said Honea Path's recently passed budget for 2026-27 is tight. The town is in the middle of realigning its fiscal year — moving from a May 31 end date to June 30, which puts it on the same calendar as every other government in the state — and the transition year is adding complexity to a situation that was already complicated.
The town had to take out a tax anticipation note this year to maintain cash flow. It will likely need a small one next year. The goal, Smith said, is to get back to a point where it does not need one at all.
The challenges that arrived without warning were the ones that did the most damage to the budget include health insurance costs for town employees, which jumped $31,000 and every other insurance category followed suit: vehicles, buildings, general liability, all of it up. Fuel costs continue to rise. These are the expenses that look fine on paper in October and catastrophic in April, and they are the reason that every department head was interviewed and delivered a message that Smith summarized as: it may be in your budget, but you're not buying it right now.
Employees will receive a three-percent raise, but it may be fall before those raises actually show up on paychecks. He was also honest about the structure of town revenue, which is not, as most residents probably imagine, primarily a function of property taxes. A mill of tax in Honea Path generates roughly $13,000. That is not insignificant, but it is also nowhere near enough to run a town.
Revenue arrives from four directions: local property taxes, state shared-revenue distributions paid quarterly, business license fees, and various state rebate programs including tax relief for senior citizens. Taxes, Smith said, cover about a third of operating costs. The rest comes from elsewhere, and keeping track of it all — making sure the town is receiving its fair share from every stream — is itself a challenging piece of the work.
Law enforcement consumes $1.3 million of a total budget that runs close to $6 million, the largest single line item.
On the matter of a forensic audit that has been underway for some time following financial irregularities in a prior administration: the audit has come back. Smith and his team are reviewing it, along with outside advisors, before deciding whether to refer anything to SLED and the S.C. Attorney General's office.
"I don't want it all to be on us and we miss something," said Smith. The procedural reforms the audit recommended have already been put in place. The town, he said, is watching things very closely now.
The current town hall — a repurposed space that serves simultaneously as municipal offices, a museum, and, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a municipal court — is loud, crowded, and, on court days, nearly ungovernable. People wander the halls. Noise fills the building. The mayor conducts business through it.
Plans are underway to return town operations to the original downtown town hall by October, where renovation work is running ahead of schedule: demolition complete, framing underway, a new roof on one section and another to follow. The current town hall will become a dedicated municipal court facility with the museum remaining in place. A drive-up window for utility payments and other city business is planned for the downtown space, a small convenience that Smith described with genuine enthusiasm as a mercy for elderly residents and anyone who prefers not to get out of their car in bad weather.
Growth downtown is, by Honea Path standards, brisk. Bojangles is under construction just off Main Street, far enough along that the foundation is visible. The Burger King that suffered a serious fire in January is reopening by the end of the month, fully rebuilt. Southern Cotton, a coffee house and homemade ice cream shop, has opened downtown and is doing well. Two additional restaurant concepts are in conversation with the town: one Italian, one Egyptian or Middle Eastern.
"We're going to offer quite the international fare," Smith said, with the tone of a man who considers this an entirely welcome development.
The Covan development on North Main Street — a multi-phase project that has been working its way toward completion for some time — opened its first phase. Briarwood, the development's bed-and-breakfast component, occupies a restored historic building that Smith said is “breathtaking,” and which appears to have enjoyed sustained bookings from the day it opened.
Grading has begun on the farm market portion of the project, where the developers plan to sell beef raised on their own land. Demolition work has started on the old shirt plant section of the site, which represents the project's next phase.
Honea Path also operates the only municipal swimming pool in Anderson County — and, Smith noted, probably in a considerable radius beyond it. Daycares come from as far away as Walhalla to bring children to swim. The pool stays busy. The recreation program is active: little league baseball and softball are running, a soccer field is being finished and brought up to playing condition in hopes of launching a fall league, and two grant applications are pending for pickleball courts. The Dogwood Park has a new picnic venue, and the mayor is hoping it will be the site of a full summer of events.
The town is moving. The mill is coming down. The street is smooth. October brings the town hall back to Main Street, and the rest of it — the restaurants, the bed-and-breakfast, the soccer field, the mill site, the thing that will get built there eventually — is still being figured out, as most of the worthwhile things in a small town always are.
