Conway’s historic Whittemore school is being torn down. Should it have happened sooner?
Six years before a March 7 fire forced Conway officials to approve demolition of the historic Whittemore Elementary School, city leaders planned to tear it down as part of an ambitious community renewal plan.
But hopes of converting the landmark site into a vibrant, city-run community center gave way to a hard truth: It would simply cost too much for a municipal budget to absorb.
“Few cities can show a stronger commitment to their schools than Conway and we hope to continue that pride in even greater ways. The City hopes to partner with Horry County Schools to acquire the old Whittemore school property,” then interim city manager Adam Emrick wrote in a November 2017 letter to district officials. “We plan to demolish some portions of the school building and restore the core of the building as a Community Center that can benefit all of the surrounding areas.”
By June, the 10-acre site was handed over to Conway, which had $500,000 in federal U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development community development block grant money locked down to cover renovation costs.
It would take nearly 40 times more than that for the segregation-era school to be habitable again, the city soon learned.
In an effort to add Whittemore onto the National Register of Historic Places, city leaders retained Charleston-based architecture firm Liollio to work out renovation costs in October 2019.
Three months later, everything changed.
Soaring costs changed the conversation around Whittemore’s future
In part due to substandard construction that exacerbated damage wrought by Hurricane Matthew in 2016, Liollio put renovation costs at between $325 and $450 per square foot - a nearly $16 million overhaul.
The onset of 2020 saw Conway’s city council voting to defederalize Whittemore’s ugprades. By that time, officials already condemned the building.
Officials had to send $17,291 back to HUD while the rest of its grant money was shuffled into small business support programs.
Despite the well-known safety hazards that forced Whittemore’s condemnation, the 33,800-square-foot school, once a sanctuary for learning and community spirit, became a haven for illicit drug use and squatting.
Police chief Dale Long said March 13 trespassers made conditions even more dangerous by erecting internal barricades.
City officials spent the second half of 2020 and much of the next year talking about Whittemore’s future as repair costs ballooned to almost $30 million and would need private sector investment to be saved.
An historic preservation group had a multi-million site plan
Enter the Whittemore Racepath Historical Society.
The group on Nov. 7, 2022, submitted an 18-page proposal envisioning a mixed-use campus that included 120 units of affordable housing along with a 19,500-square-foot community center.
It would cost an estimated $16 million using short-term loans, state and federal tax credits and the city’s in-kind donation of property.
Emrick said March 13 that attorneys for the city were reviewing liability issues related to the transfer of Whittemore’s property when the fire hit.
“There are some deficiencies in the proposal beyond the liability, but the liability was the first obstacle we had to tackle,” Emrick said. With the school set for destruction, those concerns are alleviated.
Historical society president Cheryl Adamson said March 15 the group intends to offer a scaled back version of its plan sometime in the next several weeks.
“For now, the plan is to move full speed ahead on something as close to our original plan as possible,” she said. “I hope there is a little bit of flexibility in when they actually take the building down, because our desire is to our have professionals put eyes on it.”
Emrick said earlier this week the structure should be leveled by month’s end, driven by concerns of exposed asbestos and potential for a full collapse. A cost for the work wasn’t immediately provided.
Adamson hopes at a minimum bricks can be saved to erect some kind of memorial at a later date.
Suzanne Sasser, whose grandfather Archie helped launch what today is the Conway Medical Center, attended Whittemore when it was used as a middle school annex and supports its renewal.
“We all have something at stake here,” she said in a March 12 letter to the council . “Each and every person in Conway benefits by preserving its history. A town that includes everyone is a true home town. Anything less is counterfeit.”