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Hartsville wins Main Street SC pilot grant; city reports rising downtown event attendance
Summary
City Manager Moore told the council Hartsville was awarded a Main Street SC and Southeast Crescent Regional Commission pilot grant (total $300,000; Hartsville received roughly one-third) for storytelling, branding, apprenticeship and workforce initiatives. Moore also said cellphone-derived data show higher parade and open-house attendance this year.
Hartsville has been chosen as one of three pilot cities for a Main Street SC program funded through the Southeast Crescent Regional Commission, city officials told the council on Dec. 9.
City Manager Moore said the overall pilot grant is $300,000 and that Hartsville "received roughly a third of that." He said the pilot will support storytelling and branding initiatives, a digital marketing campaign, community micro-sites, an apprenticeship component and workforce recruitment efforts targeted at health care and education. Moore said the city expects a January 2026 launch for program activities.
Moore also presented attendance figures from recent downtown events derived from anonymized cellphone-location data. "The parade brought into this downtown area about 5.3,000 people ... This year we exceeded 6,000," Moore said. He reported last year's open house drew roughly 7,900 cellphones in the downtown area and that this year the event registered about 8,500, while the children's carnival rose from about 3,100 to roughly 4,400.
Officials said the metrics do not count children without phones and are intended as directional measures of visitor activity. Moore credited staff and volunteers for supporting the events and said businesses and a local ambassador team will participate in the pilot's outreach and recruitment work.
Next steps include preparing marketing content and local coordination ahead of the January launch and briefing the council on specific program activities once contracts and scopes of work are finalized.
