Florence Artisans' Center planning under way

It’s still just words and pictures on some pieces of paper, but plans for a Florence Artisans Center are under way in a project organizers called “possible and feasible.”

The only thing left to do is figure out how much it will cost and how to pay for it.

Board members of the Florence Downtown Development Corporation, along with officials with the Florence Children’s Museum and several other interested parties, met downtown Wednesday for a presentation from architects to see what an artisans center in downtown Florence would look like.

According to presentation material from the Boudreaux Group, an architecture design firm located in Columbia, the proposed site – currently the Royal Knight Building, located at 104 W. Evans St. on the corner of Evans and Dargan streets – will serve as a key point in the overall downtown development package.

Requests for a proposal were sent out last fall, paid for by a grant from the city, and Ray Reich, downtown manager, said that while Wednesday’s presentation went well, the mortar and brick aspect of the center is still a ways off.

“I think that there’s total support for the project. The big question always become where does the money come from,” Reich said.

While there was no cost analysis for how much renovations and construction of the center according to the plans – as well as a feasibility study from ArtsMarket Inc., a marketing and development consulting firm located in Bozeman, Mont., that also presented Wednesday – Reich said estimates for the renovations currently run in the $2-3 million range -- $1.5 million after tax credits and grants – but those figures are hardly set it stone.

“At this point, those numbers really don’t mean much until it’s decided who the tenants would be,” Reich said.

Current plans make room for 18-20 spaces for artists to work and lists more than 30 organizations that have expressed interest in the project.

Artistic renderings for the facility show what the reports say would be the cultural hub of the downtown area and have significant economic impact.

According to documents from both presentations, the space would have an economic impact of $7 million each year and upward of $9 million if certain entities are included in the plan with more than 20,000 visitors each year.

A major player in that increase is the Florence Children’s Museum, which sent two representatives to Wednesday’s meeting, according to Reich.

The studies said that with a children’s museum in place, traffic to the center would increase and result in a nearly $2 million increase in economic impact.

Reich said it will be awhile, years, before significant work is done on the center, but that the exterior of the building will likely be the first that will see work, mostly because of new maintenance standards the city council put into place.

This article first appeared on SCNow.com.