So let's dive into the the history of the town clock and the relevant context.

Start the timeline at the first time this town had a clock.

1881, the clock was purchased and installed as a prominent architectural feature of a new local government building.

1881 is also the year that the city charter was approved by the state government.

And so some point to that day is the is the day as the year Spartanburg was established as a as a city or town.

And at that time, the city leadership built what was known as the opera house on Main Street.

The seat of local local government in the community, and that building was the pride of the community.

And you see its most prominent architectural feature was the tower that contained the clock and the bell that we'll talk about more tonight.

That sat in place 26 years.

In 1907, the clock moved and was installed as a prominent architectural feature of a new local government building.

At that time, it was this courthouse on Magnolia Street.

You see different architectural style, similar composition, in that there were uh several floors of uh of various spaces, and then a signature element architecturally that included the clock uh the town clock there.

So a lot of similar similarities between those two structures, but they served different generations.

So that uh clock was in the courthouse from 1907 to 1958, and in 1958, the clock was put in storage uh and a decision was made that there wouldn't be a clock tower element in the new county courthouse, what was then the new county courthouse.

Obviously, it's no longer the new county courthouse because it was demolished within the last uh uh handful of years to make way for the current county courthouse.

Uh so that um so at 1958, they were the the clock uh and the bell were moved into the basement and sat in storage for 20 years in 1979.

The clock and the bell were restored, and a new uh what we now know as the clock tower.

New tower uh tower was erected at the intersection of Maine and Liberty.

Uh that uh Main and Liberty was as was referenced by common commenter tonight, uh part of the Main Street Mall, Main Street Pedestrian Mall.

That uh that intersection was known as Liberty Square.

Um my name's not in the clock.

Uh I moved to Spartanburg as a boy in 1983.

But I made it in time to shop on Main Street and see the clock tower at Liberty Square at that intersection.

Um remember its placement there, literally in the center of that intersection.

There was some there were some remarkably positive things about that effort.

Uh Mayor Stoddard, former then former Mayor Stoddard, uh chaired the bicentennial committee, and I'll certainly be talking more about that in the next few minutes.

Um they uh identified a number of uh things and activities, but uh committee was appointed to explore uh restoring the the clock and the bell.

Um that committee went out uh to engage a number of stakeholders and to and to get some support and I'll and I'll comment on that in just a minute.

But before I do, I wanted to remind folks here uh what the context was in that period of the mid-70s in Spartanburg.

These are not my opinions, these are facts.

Westgate Mall had just opened.

That was all the buzz.

Right.

Also, at the same time, there was a substantial increase in what some social scientists call white flight, but the the residential relocation from the aging housing stock in the city to newer neighborhoods further out.

That was a predominant condition.

So the folks that were sitting in your shoes at that time had naturally a great deal of angst about the core of downtown.

That was that had to be the thing that kept them up at night staring at the ceiling.

Is they knew the retailers were leaving or had left, and they knew that there were socioeconomic and uh uh factors that were pulling the center of activity to the commercial nodes on the east side and the west side and in other places in Spartanburg County, that they had every reason to be concerned that extraordinary steps needed to be taken to solidify a sense of connection between the next generation and downtown Spartanburg.

And I believe that their engagement of some 20,000 uh residents in uh building the clock tower was wonderful and brilliant.

We have seen evidence of folks saying that that is something they did they have they recall a connection to.

So at the same set of years that they went from shopping for their back to school clothes in downtown to shopping for their back to school clothes out at the mall or at Hillcrest, this was one effort that solidified connection.

Why was that important?

It was important because downtowns across America work because they efficiently create uh opportunity for folks at all income levels and they create successive opportunities for subsequent generations.

So I suspect that the city leadership at that time was very concerned about losing their downtown.

And I think that was their principal motivation.

And frankly, I think it's much more significant uh motivation than putting names on plaques and uh raising the funds.

If you look back at the funds that were raised, you'll find that they are a small fraction of what it cost to build the clock tower.

I'm not suggesting that that's insignificant.

I'm a parent.

I have kids, and I know when they go into their own pockets to invest in things, the dollar amount doesn't matter.

But the point is that uh that it was done as a community engagement strategy, and it was wonderful and it worked.

Um but the principal motivation for undertaking that communication uh I mean that community engagement strategy was deep and very necessary concern about the future of downtown and its importance to the region.

So that's um that project um and I didn't include in this uh uh uh a photo of it at the Liberty Intersection, but the actual tower itself looked very much the same.

Um the tower, the vertical part of the tower structure um uh as the photo you see here when the clock um uh was moved to its current location.

Now, why did that current why did that move happen?

The moved happened because as was commented upon tonight uh the pedestrianization of uh those blocks of downtown at that time in that generation didn't work.

Now we could have lots of discussion about why that didn't work, but I think if you want to know the answer, you would look at aerial photographs of Westgate and Hillcrest Mall of in the 80s.

That I was a frequent visitor to those places after I moved here, and they were busy and thriving.

Um and uh uh so I think that the effort to reopen Main Street was another important step to try to get to the condition where downtown is thriving and busy and the default uh place uh for activity and interest.

It's noteworthy to me as I think about the the current and future of the community where my 12-year-old daughter asked dad to take her and her friends today.

It's not to the malls, it's to downtown Spartanburg.

That is a very very different condition.

So in 1989, it moved to its current location.

What made this geographic location work was that there was a significant additional road right away there because as many of us remember, Main Street used to sweep around the curved uh parking lot next to the Herald Journal, sweep right into Broad Street, and you could you can continue on.

So there was a logical underutilized footprint there for that 6500 square foot landscape island in which the clock tower currently sits.

So the next point on this timeline that I think is particularly significant is that in 2020 uh or y'all have seen that picture, I think it was already up, or maybe I clicked the wrong button.

Uh, but that's how it sits sits to sits uh today.

I'm not sure the date on this picture, but roughly the same.

Um a 6,500 square foot landscape island in the in the center of uh what is Main Street.

Uh the next point on this timeline is this year.

2025, construction begins on a new local government building featuring a new taller clock tower architectural feature.

So I'll show you some images of that here today, and I think all of these are you know images that have been publicly available here.

Um you see the the clock tower there, uh it is about a hundred and thirty something feet tall in comparison to the to the to the 70-foot uh clock tower we have now.

It will be the central uh central hub of the new joint city county governmental complex.

A few additional images of that.

It will be one of the tallest structures in this in this section of downtown.

This is this is the view from if you were standing at the corner of church in Maine.

So a full block and a half, two blocks away.

Uh that clock tower will be uh a new feature of our skyline and a new landmark in this community.

Here's another look.

This is this is looking uh it from the south as you would be approaching if you were traveling north on Church Street.

Um see that there.

Um this is another look is if you were on the sidewalk of Church Street, walking south on the sidewalk, how the clock tower will look there.

And that's just another slightly different perspective from the main entry.

Um we look back at that timeline.

I think that's a that's a more comprehensive picture than some of the framing of uh the history of a town clock and the connection there.

I want to show these side by side uh because I've heard folks say um that what we're proposing disregards our history.

Uh I think all of that is dependent on how one looks at the history.

What I see is three local government, three the three buildings that were for their generation the principal seat of local government in Spartanburg with three uh uh clock tower elements as their principal architectural feature, and then I see uh uh standalone freestanding clock tower, which is what occupies our memories because it's what we're exposed to, but ignores the first two images, which are our history.

And the objective of the committee at that time in the 70s at the bicentennial effort was to create, they they were not in a position to undertake a new local government building and to hearken back to the history of those prior seats of local government.

So they did what they could and what was appropriate for them at that moment, just as their parents and grandparents had done and their parents and grandparents had done.

So what we've proposed, in addition to erecting a much uh taller clock tower, is to take the the truly unique historic elements that are within the building and celebrate them.

Make it so your kids and mine and your grandkids and others can get close to them to understand how those historic clockworks worked, to see that bell they've only seen from from hundreds of feet away, or at best 70 feet away.

Um, and uh get close to those things.

Um what you see here on this slide are two images from other communities that have done just that with other historic clockworks.

You see them the labor-intensive mechanics that went into building those, those are up on the inside of the clock tower right now.

Only a handful of have seen it.

Christopher George is in the back, he climbed that ladder to see it.

Um, but I'm and maybe there are others in the room, but not many that have seen.

Uh I'd like to make them visible.

I think it would be in our interest to do so.

This is a slightly more famous bell uh than the bell that's uh uh uh in ours, but it shows, and that bell, of course, one point in its history was in you know up above and in the air.

This shows that if you if you bring it down, polish it up and put it at ground level, it creates an interesting place to interact with and an interesting illustration that people can connect to of their history.

I think that's an idea worthy of exploration.

So just to just to recap a little bit of the history, um for 124 years, a town clock has been a feature of downtown for over 60% of that time that has been in the form of an architectural feature of a prominent local government, and recent city and county actions have ensured that that will be the case for the coming generations.

So again, I think I think seeing it in its whole context, uh it's possible to see how this is an entirely appropriate uh transition to recapture the spirit that folks felt was missing in 1970s when they came together to have these conversations about the clock tower.

So I will I will I'll now pivot to the question that's been been raised about the South Carolina Heritage Act.

Um South Carolina Heritage Act uh piece of legislation that was hashed out in Columbia when the Confederate flag was being brought down.

Um at that time uh there were some folks that said we'll we'll remove the Confederate flag, but we want to make sure we don't remove other things associated with uh at that time their principal motivation was the Confederate War, I mean the the Civil War.

Um so this was the the compromise that was hashed out.

Now I could talk for just as long as I've been talking about this about why it may be wrong for these type of local decisions to be made in Columbia and not locally, uh, but the reality is the law is clear, and we would we intend to follow the law.

Let's read what the law says.

The law says there's no revolutionary war, war of 1812.

Well, y'all can read all that, I won't read it to you.

Native American or African American history monuments or memorials erected on public property of the state of the state of any of its political subdivisions may be relocated, removed, disturbed, or altered.

So in order to argue that the South Carolina Heritage Act applies to the clock tower, one would have to conclude that the clock tower is a revolutionary war monument.

Has no known connection to any other wards.

Is in the fact that the bicentennial, which was again the celebration of the Declaration of Independence, that the Bicentennial Committee was an advocate for and conceived of bringing the erecting the clock tower.

That's the connection that advocates for the application of this act to this situation are making.

So we ought to examine that, right?

Is what did they actually say when they built the clock tower?

These are the same plaques that are there today.

What you won't find, I mean you can't read them off of this, but go read them after the meeting.

I'm sorry, I know those are bad pictures.

I was trying to just establish that they are in fact the same ones that were put in place on the ground in 1979 and that remain on the ground at the at the foot of the clock tower today.

Well, let's talk first about what you won't find in this 740-word essay.

You won't find the word revolution, you won't find the word war.

You won't find the word soldier, you won't find any of those things.

You will find the a reference to that I will read one sentence in the 740-word uh discussion.

In the 1970s, efforts were begun by the Spartanburg Bicentennial Committee to restore this symbol of the city in an appropriate central location.

That's the extent of any reference to any war of uh uh of you know, or the revolution itself.

The opening line of uh of these plaques is when again the folks who acted in the 70s told us what their intent was, the opening line is symbolic of the heartbeat of the city and its constant change.

That's what they told us.

Um let's talk about other things that the bicentennial committee uh did.

Bicentennial committee was a very successful effort.

Uh former mayor Stoddard led a remarkable, they were there were a number of subcommittees that did a number of different endeavors, various meeting media reports and Herald Journal coverage and and other things list uh some twenty plus projects, activities, and initiatives.

Uh one news article says let's see.

Uh see what they were working under was uh a desire to participate in a national effort that required um present projects to be undertaken in order to qualify for the bicentennial uh uh designation and funding that they were seeking.

And so there were uh let's let me find the exact wording.

Uh there was one list uh wherein the project prioritization committee identified uh, I believe it was 16 different uh projects and priorities, and ranked number 14 on that list below 13 others was the clock tower.

Uh this is a uh this document here is a report of the bicentennial committee.

It says some 30 odd projects were endorsed, and most of them have been completed.

Some of the projects include restoration of the say house, uh, restoration of uh Magnolia Street Cemetery, there's another cemetery cemetery referenced here.

Uh Walnut Grove House of Flowers Little Theater Production, a number of different things, some with all with a tie to community, all with a tie to positive activities, but what the law requires is a tie to the revolutionary war.

That's not in any way established in any of the many pages of documents I have read associated with the bicentennial committee.

So for those reasons and and others, uh we believe that in order to conclude this this applies, you'd have to look at all 20 plus projects that were implemented that were associated with the bicentennial and conclude that they all apply as uh decisions that have to be made by Columbia.

We just don't think that meets the test of reasonableness.

So we are not operating under the expectation that uh any change city council might consider related to the clock tower is subject to uh review in accordance with the South Carolina Heritage Act.

So I'll pivot now to New Main Street.

Sort of the question of why now would be one way to think about this.

Well, remember those folks in the 70s who were really scared about downtown, really scared about it its role in the region and being lost and left behind.

Well, now we have not one but the two largest investments in the city's history, inflation adjusted by a long ways happening currently in our time.

This is the kind of stuff those folks in the 70s desperately sought to see happen to solidify their downtown as a center of gravity that might be appealing to their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and they are happening now.

Um they force us all to consider adapting to some change.

This illustration I know is hard to see from there, but I'll tell you what's uh what it shows.

Um the lower left uh corner of the uh of the image is you can just see the uh the outfield wall of the new baseball stadium.

The upper right-hand corner of the image is the heart of Morgan Square, where you see uh number four on the left-hand edge of the image.

That's a new office building that'll be on Main Street immediately west of the AC hotel that will begin construction this year this year within the next couple months.

Where you see number three, that's the AC Hotel.

Where you see number two, that's a new office building.

So we're dealing with well over a thousand white-collar jobs concentrating on our main street.

White collar jobs, the kind of jobs we'd all hope our kids or grandkids could benefit from, concentrating on Main Street.

You see, number one is uh is a hotel with restaurant and retail spaces.

So collectively, again, we're looking at the large single largest single investment in the city here history.

We're uh if you incorporate what's going to happen just to just where the where the actual um legend is on this on this particular illustration is the former city hall block.

When that block renovation starts in a couple months, it'll be the second largest capital investment in the city's history adjusted for inflation.

So all of these are happening concurrently and in the and in a um small small area here.

Uh lots of jobs, uh lots of work, lots of visitors to this community.

We expect to have 1,000 construction workers in this image illustrated right here in this footprint over the next two years.

So this is not uh I this is when I'll um be can't be more pointed about one of the criticism I've I've heard.

One of the criticisms I've heard is we're just doing the bidding of a developer here.

This is this is not the developer's preference.

This is our community's aspiration for creating the downtown that can be an engine for a generation.

Now, why does this affect the clock tower?

Uh you can see I've added to this illustration a dashed blue line.

We believe it's important, not just today, not just tomorrow, but forever, uh, for the Harold Journal block to be built to that historic form street edge.

The buildings on the on the to the right hand end of that dashed blue line have existed for generations.

Um they have aligned with the basic uh the the aspect that doesn't deviate.

I mean, I'm sorry, the aspect that deviates from the historic form of our downtown is the swing that uh that is sort of the the turn in in Main Street.

That's the piece that you won't find on maps from a hundred years ago.

Um so we're trying to respect the original form.

We're also trying to build what is going to be one of the South's best main streets uh on the other side of all this work.

Um this is uh one of several images of the Herald Journal block development that I'll share, and again, all of this has been readily available on the city's website uh for months now.

Uh you see uh in the background in the upper left, you see the baseball stadium.

Um in the upper right, you see the AC Hotel and the new uh office building adjacent to it.

And as you come forward towards this towards the square, you pass an office building, a big event venue adjacent to and connected with the hotel, uh several restaurant retail spaces and the hotel there.

The hotel contains that includes a you see on the roof there, a rooftop uh event space, restaurant, um, and a rooftop pool and things of that nature.

This is uh an award-winning design, uh a top-tier quality design, and one that I think the community can be proud of for a long time.

Um again, collectively, we're talking about over 300 million dollars of private resources being invested here.

Um you see this is just a slightly different angle of of the same block, and this is more of a street view angle.

You can see how the facades align, and that is made possible by taking out the the wiggle in the road, and again, this creates the the street image and the street life that we've been aspiring to since back in the 70s.

So all of that is to say uh that we are recommending uh that we return the clock tower to its historic uh uh position overlooking the seat of local government, that we restore the bell and the clockworks to publicly accessible elements in the new building, and that we achieve the optimal main street.

We know that that means that folks whose names are in the clock tower, many, many, many of my friends and uh our friends and everyone are in that boat.

We know that that means that that destination would be somewhat different, but it does not go away.

And there's a very solid reason consistent with this community's history for making that move.

Lean into that and think about what is best in the long run for your community.