Williamston Managing Growth as Town Witnesses Continued Progress
Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer
Williamston Mayor Rockey Burgess talks about growth as something to be watched, managed, and occasionally persuaded not to ruin the afternoon. With a string of new businesses moving in, the town’s biggest summer events are returning, and a heavily used public park is getting a round of improvements that Burgess is proud of the town’s progress.
Among the new arrivals is the long-awaited Sphinx, where Burgess expects the gas station known for its hot fried chicken and fried chicken livers to add to the town’s offerings as well as the hospitality-tax base. Nearby, a Domino’s pizza is under construction, and at the old Fast Fuels site at Gossett and Main, the town expects a new Swift Stop after the former station is demolished and replaced by a larger convenience store and restaurant with easier parking and access. These projects are not isolated openings but as small acts of stabilization, with each business bringing a little more revenue, a little more foot traffic, and a little less municipal strain.
Big Creek Station, the former water treatment site, is also expected to add to an already busy area which has already hosted several disc golf tournaments and is expected this summer to draw food trucks and outdoor events while the owners look for a long-term tenant. The goal is not merely to fill the space but to find a use for it that suits the building’s scale and location near the center of town. He compared the early vision to Gather Greenville — not a copy, exactly, but an attempt to make the place feel like a destination before it becomes fully defined.
The summer activities calendar is built around Williamston’s appetite for public gathering. The Spring Water Festival, delayed by weather in May, has been moved to August, and the town’s Fourth of July Freedom Celebration and music event, which Burgess described as the town’s largest event, is set to draw five to six thousand people. This year’s celebration, on June 27, will feature Travis Denning, Elizabeth Jo, and Guy Rigdon of “The Voice,” along with a fireworks show timed later than usual so the evening can cool and the crowd settles in.
The most unusual flourish may be the holiday’s return of the town’s cannon. Burgess said he has been in contact with the Citadel about bringing down the town’s 1864 rifled bronze cannon — presently on loan there — so that it can fire again in Williamston, probably for the first time in two decades. In a town that likes its commemorations visible and audible, the prospect of that sound is part history lesson and part spectacle. Burgess said it is the grand finale of the 250th celebration, which is about as close as local government gets to the pyrotechnic theater.
Other events, Bobbers on Big Creek, in which local businesses participate by stamping passports and placing numbered bobbers in the creek, a back-to-school giveaway from the police department on July 18, a children’s scavenger hunt later in July, an end-of-summer bash; and a business expo in late August are events to serve as both entertainment and economic circulation, a way to draw people into town and into its shops, restaurants, and parks.
Mineral Spring Park, meanwhile, is getting the sort of attention that tends to matter most over the long run: infrastructure. The bridge at Veterans Park, damaged during Hurricane Helene when rising water took out its abutments, has been repaired and reopened after the town decided not to wait years for FEMA reimbursement. New handrails have gone in, the ground is being leveled, the town hopes to add a larger pavilion someday, one capable of hosting family reunions of 200 or more.
The park is also receiving new restrooms, built after the old ones were demolished. The new facilities, funded in part by a Duke Energy Foundation grant, will be larger, more accessible, and air-conditioned, with diaper-changing stations and other features Burgess said reflect a practical understanding of who actually uses the park: parents, grandparents, children, and older residents who need a place that is both dignified and functional.
That emphasis on access has become a part of Burgess’s governing style. He said the town has tried to make its playgrounds, bridges, and public facilities more usable for residents with disabilities, not just for compliance but as common sense moves.
The hospitality tax, he noted, is being put back into the very places that draw people to town — the park, the recreation program, the restaurants, the events — creating a loop of spending and reinvestment that he said is part of the basic machinery of a healthy small town.
Williamston’s youth recreation program also continues to grow to the point where the challenge is not only participation but space: gyms, church facilities, portable goals, temporary arrangements wherever they can be found. Housing growth, too, is continuing, with more homes under construction at Saratoga Oaks and Saratoga Villages, and new work expected on Mahaffey Road.
Burgess made a point to dispel the notion that a mayor can simply decree growth into a shape he likes. Zoning, he said, is the real guardrail, and property owners still retain the rights that come with ownership.
As the town grows, Burgess said he meets newcomers in a golf cart he drives around town, introducing himself and trying, in his own way, to make growth feel less anonymous. In the final stretch of his last term, with a year and a half left before he leaves office, he said he hopes whoever follows will care about Williamston enough to keep it from becoming too much like anywhere else.
