In 2018, the Richland County Conservation Fee accomplished growth of the Decrease Richland Tourism Plan. Due to different priorities, together with ongoing flood restoration efforts and the county’s response to COVID-19, no motion was taken on the plan till Tuesday, July 12, 2022. Then Richland County Council accepted the Decrease Richland Tourism Plan (LRTP) as full and forwarded it to the County’s Planning Fee for consideration and inclusion within the Richland County Complete Plan as an appendix.

Through the October 3 assembly, the Planning Fee made a advice to Richland County Council to undertake the LRTP as part of the county’s Complete Grasp Plan. That advice was accomplished on March 28, 2023. From the start, the plan’s implementation was to be based mostly on obtainable funding and potential grants from exterior sources.

A 2020 Nationwide Park Service report confirmed that 159,445 guests to Congaree Nationwide Park in 2019 spent $8,173,000 in communities close to the park. That spending supported 102 jobs within the native space and had a cumulative profit to the native economic system of $9,643,000.

The peer-reviewed customer spending evaluation was performed by economists Catherine Cullinane Thomas of the U.S. Geological Survey and Lynne Koontz of the Nationwide Park Service. The report exhibits $21 billion of direct spending by greater than 327 million park guests in communities inside 60 miles of a nationwide park. This spending supported 340,500 jobs nationally; 278,000 of these jobs are present in these gateway communities. The cumulative profit to the U.S. economic system was $41.7 billion.

Capitalizing on the drawing energy of Congaree Nationwide Park as a hub for nature tourism and coordinating with the opening of the Worldwide African American Museum, which is scheduled to open in Charleston on June 27, the LRTP is a imaginative and prescient for a sustainable, inclusive tourism economic system in Decrease Richland that builds on and strengthens native nature and heritage property.

Decrease Richland’s historical past and tradition are deeply intertwined with the bottomlands alongside the Congaree River, a world-class pure setting that options the Congaree Nationwide Park and enormous quantities of extra preserved bottomland habitat on personal and county-owned properties. The Wateree River and Cook dinner’s Mountain signify extra alternatives to attach Piedmont and Lowcountry assets for guests and residents of the Decrease Richland space.

In the meantime, Decrease Richland residents and organizations keep a deep curiosity in and data of native historical past and heritage. Native historians have labored to uncover tales of African American communities and inventories of native historic property.

Decrease Richland’s historic assets and deep-rooted neighborhood current a super alternative for telling the story of the African American expertise regionally, however these assets should be related, interpreted, and obtainable to guests to be able to really seize the facility of the historical past that has formed right now’s neighborhood.

The Decrease Richland Tourism Plan contains three plan themes: ( 1) the Decrease Richland space should develop tourism infrastructure, (2) Decrease Richland residents should take part and profit, (3) a three-legged stool of small enterprise growth, nature tourism and heritage tourism are crucial for a profitable tourism plan.

Richland County owns two massive conservation websites within the Decrease Richland space, the Cabin Department and Mill Creek tracts. These two places enable for native tourism to develop, together with the inclusion of different privately owned properties.

Cabin Department is a 680-acre tract positioned on a number of former agricultural tracts slightly below the intersection of Garner’s Ferry Street and Decrease Richland Boulevard. Mill Creek is a 2555-acre tract positioned instantly on the Congaree River, near the Congaree Nationwide Park, with entry from Outdated Bluff Street.

Mill Creek presents a significant alternative to showcase the Congaree bottomlands, an setting that may incorporate extra artistic and wide-ranging tourism makes use of than Congaree Nationwide Park and that may complement the facilities obtainable on the nationwide park, driving extra tourism to each websites.

Richland County intends these tracts to function mitigation banks for stream and wetland restoration and conservation, in addition to for the event of recreation, lodging, and sustainable tourism-oriented makes use of.

There are three main hubs featured within the LRTP along with the Cabin Department and Mill Creek websites. These hubs will function major related emphasis factors to coordinate different places included within the LRTP.

•Mill Creek Nature Heart will function a customer heart for that website that gives instructional programming and recreation, an administrative facility for the lodging makes use of on the positioning, and a hub that may join guests to the opposite nature and heritage property of Decrease Richland via maps and excursions. It must also incorporate a restaurant or quick-serve restaurant that may serve guests and native residents.

•Hopkins Heritage Heart shall be positioned in the identical constructing as a proposed department of the Richland Library and the proposed Small Enterprise Incubator. The Heritage Heart presents oral histories, reveals, particular library collections, and video excursions of Decrease Richland heritage property. It additionally presents maps and excursions of heritage assets all through the realm, together with historic buildings, church buildings, historic websites, cemeteries, and different heritage assets.

• Small Enterprise Incubator contains assembly areas and laptop labs that may provide coordinated trainings by native college companions, agricultural specialists, lodging specialists, and extra, and can herald bankers, buyers, and others for networking actions with native enterprise homeowners. It additionally contains separate amenities for a Farmers’ Market and a Decrease Richland Business Kitchen.

The Decrease Richland Tourism Plan covers all of Decrease Richland and contains many hubs, corridors, and pure and heritage property along with these county-owned properties. Richland County and its residents are united in advancing the concept tourism should be sustainable, which means that it should leverage, help, and improve native pure and heritage property slightly than harming these property via overuse or extremely intensive growth.

The plan additionally takes as a core precept the concept tourism property and the financial alternative they generate should be inclusive and supply financial, leisure, and quality-of-life advantages for Decrease Richland residents in addition to enhancing visitation.

For extra info on the Decrease Richland Tourism Plan, go to www.richlandcountysc.gov/Authorities/Commissions/Conservation-Fee.