SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WOWK) — It’s not quite an exaggeration to say there’s a new ribbon cutting, groundbreaking or project announced weekly in South Charleston. In fact, there are quite a few more ribbon cuttings planned in just the next two weeks.
“I can tell you this, in just the next two weeks, we have four ribbon cuttings for new businesses in the area. You can see it’s been a continuous and steady volume of businesses. You’ll also see more groundbreakings as Park Place continues to expand,” said Amanda Ream, the executive director of the South Charleston Chambers of Commerce.
Business is booming in South Charleston as the Park Place project draws attention to the city and attracts more businesses. But Ream said there’s a few reasons for the cities success.
“The City of South Charleston, with its mayor and its city council, have always been very pro-business. We have a location that’s great. It’s centrally located here in Kanawha Valley. It also provides a lot of terrific amenities, free parking, convenient parking, easily accessible off the interstate. People are picking up on that and taking advantage of it,” Ream said.
Long-time Mayor of South Charleston Frank Mullens said that to build a thriving city, there are a few things that need to be done. First, you have to be open-minded and welcome to major changes. He exemplified this early on in his mayoral career.
“I remember when I took office, the first thing I did was strip downtown. We stripped down the trees. We took the landscape away. We took the crosswalks away. We rebuilt it, and we made it a little more business-friendly. We made it so you could see the business’s signs. When I first did it, some people were like, ‘I can’t believe you did that,’ but wait a minute, let’s see how it plays out. Change is hard for some folks, but you’ve got to do it,” Mullens said.
Diversifying a town’s economy is also one of his major goals.
“Diversity is a big thing. We learned our lesson. At one time, South Charleston was the chemical city of the world, and that was great. But, we learned our lesson. You can’t put all your eggs in one basket. You have to be a diverse economy. In that way, if something doesn’t work out well, it doesn’t crush you. You can survive because you’re diverse, you have other things to fall back on,” Mullens said.
Most importantly, cities have to be able to support small businesses. Both Ream and Mayor Mullens cited this as one of the reasons for the recent boom of business in the city. The way they’ve accomplished that is by implementing a graduating scale tax system that allows small businesses to lay a solid foundation before paying full taxes.
“We have a tax credit on our books that allows new and expanding businesses to use. Basically what it is, it’s a 0 to 100% graduating scale. So you start out at 25%, then go to 50%, 75%, 100%, kind of graduate up. It gives you time to get your foundation laid, your feet under you, and grow a little bit. It’s really good for small businesses in particular,” Mullens said.
Finally, one of the major strategies is capitalizing on small and large businesses’ successes by carrying that momentum forward and reinvesting it in the community.
Mayor Mullens said they’re going to take some of the profit gained through sales taxes from the upcoming Park Place shopping outlet and use it to build a new recreation center in South Charleston.
“We’ve got a conceptual design, we have hired an architect, ZMM. My vision is for us to have two facilities to replace the one. It’s a health and wellness facility, along with a small coliseum that will seat about 3,500 for our high school basketball games and other major events. We’ve got a conceptual drawing, it’s got an aquatic center, a health club, a gymnasium, the whole works. It’s a beautiful facility,” Mullens said. “The funding mechanism is the TIF district. So once our stores are open and those sales tax dollars start rolling in, then we’ll be able to start issuing bonds and get things going. It’s not a rumor, we are going to get it done.”
The goal is to give each new business and resident of South Charleston the best experience possible, leading to more businesses and residents moving in. Mayor Mullens, Ream and the South Charleston City Council created a snowball effect where they don’t plan on slowing down anytime soon.
