West Pelzer Finds Growth in Efforts to Build Community
Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer
In the first six months of Rick Sanders’ tenure as mayor, the has moved smoothly into the role as only one already deeply connected to the town might do. Sanders, who also owns Westy’s Antiques and the Lincoln Tap Room, said the job has suited him because it lets him do what he has always preferred to do: talk to people, knock on doors, and try to pull a community closer to itself. That instinct has is already shaping the town’s public life.
Sanders said the budget is in decent condition, though the town is tightening spending with an eye toward hiring another police officer next year. It is the sort of municipal ambition that sounds modest until one remembers how many small towns live on the margin of “good enough,” and how often adding one more officer can mean the difference between a town that feels watched over and one that feels abandoned.
West Pelzer’s growth, meanwhile, remains a challenge hampered by the available land left in the town. This brings the measured growth of one house, one road, one storefront at a time kind of growth. A new business called “The Well Market,” across from Milltown Restaurant, is selling fresh produce, honey and local goods on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
On Dendy Street, construction crews are putting up new homes, with five already rising as he drove through the neighborhood this week. The town may be landlocked, but it is not standing still. For Sanders, the larger project is social as much as physical. He said West Pelzer’s first annual Neighbors Night Out in April drew about 150 people for barbecue, a local band and the deliberate mingling of council members and police officers with residents.
He wanted people to see faces, not offices, with a goal almost old-fashioned in their faith in proximity — that a town works better when people know the names and faces of the people who govern it. The town is already looking toward a active summer and fall calendar. West
Pelzer plans a “Jaws” screening during Shark Week, with a 20-foot inflatable screen, free popcorn and families invited to bring chairs and blankets. In October, Sanders said, the town will hold a Thriller parade on Halloween, led by a dance team and followed by children in costume and the Ghostbusters car from Belton. The route will end at Chapman Park, where the festivities will continue in at Pumpkinpalooza.
Part of these plans is a building with a strange and civically revealing history. Sanders said the structure behind the park was once the jail, later used for storage after it received a new roof, soffit and windows. Now, with grant help, the town is turning it into Gaines Hall, named for John Gaines, the longest-serving mayor in West Pelzer’s history. The first use will be as a Santa hut, part of the town’s Christmas season. Sanders imagines lights on the tall cedar trees near the entrance and a fuller holiday display than the town has had in years. The future, though, is not just seasonal. Sanders said he and the mayors of nearby Pelzer and Williamston are trying to build on the idea of the Tri-City as something more than a geographic accident. The towns plan to share fireworks and concerts, host a Tri-City 5K in November, and connected trails and other joint projects. There is a modern strain in Sanders’ approach to government: he likes deadlines.
A former business owner, he said he is accustomed to action registers, due dates and the satisfaction of seeing a task move from assignment to completion. Government, he has discovered, is slower, with more people, more dependencies and more opportunities for delay.
Still, he has made peace with one of local government’s most stubborn problems: communicating with the public. Sanders said too few people read newspapers now, and that town notices often vanish into the noise of social media or the assumptions of word of mouth. The town has mailed newsletters and posted flyers, but he remains frustrated by how hard it is to reach everyone.
That is one reason he is leaning into more visible, more communal events — not because they solve every problem, but because they give people a reason to show up and a place to hear one another.
Sanders also said the town is also preparing to seek a grant for a small amphitheater om the park, with drawings already in hand for a 24-by-36-foot structure that could host music, plays or speakers. It would be called Frankville Stage, a nod to the town’s founder and its earliest name, before West Pelzer was West Pelzer and before the mills and rail lines settled the place into its present form.
That detail is apt for Sanders’ first months in office: a mayor trying to build not merely events, but continuity — a way for a small town to recognize itself and, in public, to stay recognizable.
