Buy a home at a reasonable rate with a VA loan in Sumter, SC

Summerville stuck with the top Class 5A girls’ team in the state but didn’t muster the finish needed to advance to the state finals.

Summerville’s Lower State Championship game against undefeated Sumter Friday, Feb. 23, was tighter than some anticipated. The Lady Green Wave (22-8), ranked No. 7 in the season’s final Coaches’ Association 5A girls rankings, kept the contest tight but eventually fell 35-27 to the top-ranked Lady Gamecocks (24-0). Sumter advances to face Rock Hill March 1 in the state title game.

“I’m very proud of our girls,” said Summerville coach Calvin Davis. “We won 22 games, and that is very special. We’ll return (most) of our players, so I just told them they have to work in the offseason because we are going to get better, and we are going to go to state.”

Summerville only has two seniors on the roster, Kadence Brown and Elliot Harley.

The teams played sloppily during the game at the Florence Center. Both sides feature a pressure defense, and there were a lot of turnovers, both forced and unforced, as well as poor shots. Sumter was particularly aggressive, yet Summerville got into the most foul trouble.

“I’m very surprised I had four starters foul out of the game,” Davis said. “Having four starters foul out in a Lower State Championship is very rare. I mean, Sumter was fouling, too.”

Molly Daugherty, the team’s leading scorer all season, hit a pair of early 3-pointers to give Summerville a 6-2 lead. However, she picked up her second foul in the first quarter and her fourth in the final minute of the third. Daugherty fouled out on an offensive foul with 2:36 remaining in the game.

“A lot of our offense goes through her, but some of our other kids stepped up,” Davis said. “We could have been right there at the end. To be as young as we are, I think we handled Sumter well. We prepared for it, and I think we did a great job.”

Sumter led 8-6 at the end of the first quarter, 15-14 at the half and 25-19 at the end of the third. Summerville’s Jordan Espinal scored in the paint with 2:57 remaining to cut the Gamecocks’ lead to four. Then Madison Thomas hit two free throws to pull Summerville within two with 1:53 remaining.

However, Sumter closed the game on a 6-0 run to clinch the Lower State Championship.

Daugherty led the Summerville scorers with 12 points. No other members of the team hit double digits. Four days earlier, Daugherty drained a team-high 21 points during a 38-25 win at Goose Creek to lift the Green Wave into the semifinals.

This is the second consecutive season Summerville has lost its starting point guard to an injury late in the season. Daugherty’s sister, Emma, was injured early in the team’s final regular-season game.

“Next year, we’ll have all the pieces back, so we should be so much better,” Davis said.

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Square Feet

Charter schools are popping up in struggling malls as landlords look for alternative tenants and communities seek to increase educational opportunities.

Feb. 23, 2024

In the early morning in November, with a chill still in the air, three lines of cars inch across the open, cracked parking lot at the Sumter Mall in Sumter, S.C.

It’s still hours before the doors open at Belk, a department store with roots in the Southeast and the mall’s last remaining anchor tenant. The mall, which is about 60 percent vacant, has a hodgepodge of other tenants. Call center workers are parking or being dropped off for their shifts. People are making their way into a nearby Planet Fitness.

But on the other side of the parking lot, scores of young children dash out of cars and through a mall entrance. They’re not playing hooky; they’re going to school in a former J.C. Penney store. And if all goes according to plan, they will keep going there for years as the school adds more grades and takes over more of the mall each year.

Developers across the country are putting new schools in struggling malls, a growing trend that serves several purposes: increasing educational opportunity, revitalizing communities and reimagining the thousands of vacant retail spaces that make once-vibrant shopping centers a blight.

“We’ve definitely seen all kinds of alternative uses of malls — to redevelop, repurpose and reimagine them,” said Thomas Dobrowski, vice chairman of the capital markets group at Newmark, a real estate services company.

Mr. Dobrowski added that more mall owners were coming around to the idea of adding schools as retail tenants dropped out. “I remember malls where 10,000 to 15,000 square feet was devoted to schools,” he said. “Now, more higher education and schools are wanting to take vacant anchor boxes for full educational use. That could be 80,000 square feet and up.”

Nationally, mall vacancy rates were about 10.3 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, up from 10.2 percent in the pandemic, according to a report from Moody’s Analytics.

Community malls like the one in Sumter have been hit even harder as consumer tastes change. “Retailers that have traditionally been mall-based have been closing underperforming stores and are now looking to smaller-format open-air suburban centers for expansion,” the commercial real estate services firm CBRE said a recent report.

More on U.S. Schools

But at Sumter Mall, a combination of community initiative, philanthropic interest and pragmatism on the part of the mall owner, the Hull Property Group, has led to the creation of a new tenant, Liberty STEAM Charter School.

The school was started five years ago by Greg A. Thompson, a local businessman and philanthropist, who was seeking a way to bolster the fortunes of his hometown and help him attract workers. Liberty STEAM plans to add a grade a year, with a fourth grade coming in the fall.

“Our mission is to prove that we can give a world-class education to everyone and, in particular, to our disadvantaged children,” he said. In Sumter, only 30 percent of the students can read, write or do math at their grade level.

Liberty STEAM did not start in a mall. Initially, classes were held in an unused elementary school in an underserved part of Sumter, but the school quickly outgrew the space (though the building still houses kindergarten and first grade).

After looking for a larger space, Mr. Thompson, the founder and chief executive of the Thompson Construction Group, chose the enormous, mostly empty mall after failing to reach deals for more traditional school properties in the town, which has a population of about 43,000. It gives Liberty STEAM room to keep adding grades for the next decade, as well as other services for children.

“We want to focus on the whole child,” Mr. Thompson said. “As we grow the school, we’ve had conversations to have a doctor there. We want to have a little clinic and an eye doctor there, too.”

Mr. Dobrowski said the arrangement offered many advantages for schools and landlords. Malls are generally in highly trafficked areas, so they are easy to get to. And they can be a blank canvas for a school to reimagine how it wants the inside to look.

For owners, selling or renting the spot of a former anchor tenant to a school brings life to what was a dark, empty part of a vast mall, revitalizing 400,000 square feet or more of unused space. The conversions are also a great driver of good will in the community.

“You’re not going to get the same rent as a retail tenant or a medical office tenant,” Mr. Dobrowski said. “It has to be used more as, ‘How can I improve the community and ingratiate myself here?’”

In Sumter, Trevor T. Ivey, the executive director of Liberty STEAM, said moving into the mall aligned with the school’s mission of revitalization. “It’s important for people to understand that the mall fits in with the approach that we’re going to revitalize our community and renovate its buildings,” he said.

High Point Academy in Spartanburg, S.C., is an example of a school’s being part of a larger redesign. It operates in a space in an outlet mall that once housed a Waccamaw Pottery store, which was home to a church before the academy moved in. The mall now has a volleyball center and a medical office to supplement the school.

James M. Hull, founder of the Hull Property Group, which owns and manages the Sumter Mall and another three dozen malls in 18 states, said Liberty STEAM was the third school in one of the company’s malls. The other two are in Greenwood, S.C., and Augusta, Ga.

When he considered putting schools in his malls, he did so with an eye toward the overall return on the investment. “I am not doing any of this philanthropically,” he said. “I’m doing this because it’s in my best financial interest to be a good steward of the property.”

But for Mr. Thompson, who sits on Sumter’s Development Board, the investment in Liberty STEAM and the mall is part of an initiative to help revitalize the town and make sure his businesses can attract workers to the area and retain them.

“If we want to have sustainable success, we need to have educational success to create the work force of the future,” he said.

KIPP, the national charter school operator, has about a half-dozen schools in malls, with a high school being built inside a former Macy’s store in Nashville.

“We left the four walls and mixed it up on the inside,” said Marc Gauthier, founding principal at KIPP Antioch Global Middle and High Schools, which will run the high school in the Macy’s shell. “Where the men’s department was will be our weight room. Where the escalators once were, we’re drawing in some natural light. The bottom floor will be our science lab.”

Reworking the Macy’s was cheaper than building a high school on farmland, which was all that was available. “Having built ground-up buildings and knowing how expensive that is, it was attractive to already have a shell, the utilities, the zoning, the parking,” said Daniel Gennaoui, who was the chief financial officer for the KIPP schools in Nashville.

The renovation cost about $200 to $250 a square foot, whereas new construction would have been upward of $300 a square foot. “We’re very cost conscious,” he said. “Every dollar we spend on a school building is a dollar we’re not spending on a teacher or a program.”

Mr. Thompson said he wanted the school to serve as a model for improving education in the Southeast.

“More money doesn’t solve the problem,” he said. “The right vision, the right leaders and the right followers solves the problem.”

A correction was made on

Feb. 23, 2024

:

A caption in an earlier version of this article reversed the identities of the two people in the photo. Greg Thompson, the founder of Liberty STEAM, is on the right, not the left. Trevor Ivey, the school’s executive director, is on the left.

When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more

Paul Sullivan, the Wealth Matters columnist from 2008 to 2021, is the founder of The Company of Dads, a work and parenting site aimed at fathers. He is also the author of The Thin Green Line: The Money Secrets of the Super Wealthy and Clutch: Why Some People Excel Under Pressure and Others Don’t. @sullivanpaul More about Paul Sullivan

A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 27, 2024, Section B, Page 5 of the New York edition with the headline: When Science Class Is in a Former Macy’s. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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e-VAC Magnetics, a manufacturer of rare earth permanent magnets in the Western Hemisphere, today announced it is establishing U.S. operations in South Carolina, building its first facility in Sumter County.

The project is expected to bring more than half a billion-dollar investment and create 300 new jobs for Sumter County, according to a news release from the South Carolina Department of Commerce.

“e-VAC is grateful for the support of the State of South Carolina, Governor Henry McMaster, Senator Lindsey Graham, and Representatives Jim Clyburn and Ralph Norman,” VAC Group CEO Erik Eschen said in the release. “We are excited to become a member of the Sumter County community. This project represents a significant commitment by VAC to re-shore critical process and product technology, creating good paying and highly skilled jobs for residents of the community. With this support, we will directly contribute to U.S. energy independence and national security.”

Related content: Electric vehicle battery manufacturer announces $810M expansion in Florence

The company will construct, own and operate a new facility on 85 acres in the Pocotaligo Industrial Park in Sumter County, according to the release. The facility will house production of permanent magnets for electric vehicles and defense applications.

e-VAC entered into an agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense, which will provide $94.1 million to acquire and install manufacturing equipment, operationalize technical infrastructure, and engineer production lines for the facility, the release stated.

Operations are expected to be online in late autumn 2025.

e-VAC is part of the VAC Group (VAC), a leading developer of magnetic materials and solutions. e-VAC produces rare earth neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnets, which are critical to automotive, defense, industrial and renewable energy applications. This facility and VAC’s decades of experience in rare earth magnet technology and process intellectual property represent a critical step to ensuring a resilient, U.S.-based supply chain.

Through the readySC program, South Carolina’s Technical College System will help e-VAC recruit and train potential employees. A website with hiring information will be available next year.

“The arrival of e-VAC Magnetics in Sumter County is a testament to our state’s booming economic growth and our commitment to fostering an environment that attracts business and opportunity,” Murrell Smith Jr., speaker of the South Carolina House of Representatives, said in the release. “With the addition of 300 new jobs in the region, e-VAC will be a welcome partner to the readySC program, our technical schools, and the larger community. South Carolina continues to be a leader in the advancing electric vehicle sector, and I could not be prouder to continue this trend in Sumter County.”

The S.C. Coordinating Council for Economic Development approved job development credits related to this project, according to the release. The council also awarded a $13 million Rural Infrastructure Fund grant to Sumter County to assist with the costs of land acquisition, site preparation, road improvements, water and wastewater improvements, and building construction related to this project. Sumter County was also awarded a $2 million LocateSC grant to offset costs associated with infrastructure improvements for the Pocotaligo Industrial Park that are needed for and will benefit e-VAC.

“More than half a billion-dollar investment and the creation of 300 well-compensated technical positions is significant for our community and certainly exemplifies our continued readiness and ability to foster growth in Sumter, South Carolina,” Sumter Development Board Chairman Greg A. Thompson said in the release. “We are excited about this new surge of opportunity for our residents and what it will mean for our community.”

Public history student Stevie Malenowski spent his summer job surrounded by boxes of documents that had not seen the light of day in decades.

Years of furniture pamphlets, corporate memos and yellowing photos tell the story of Williams Furniture Company, a major employer in Sumter, South Carolina, from the 1920s through 2004. Malenowski’s task was to sort through the collection and scan some 1,200 items for digital preservation.

He was excited to learn from the specialists at University Libraries, who taught him standards for digitization and how to create a finding guide. He was less excited, though, to learn more about lumber.

“Honestly, the last thing I wanted to do was read more about wood products,” says Malenowski. “But the great thing about history is that the more you look into things, you see these characters start to emerge.”

Malenowski came to the project after taking a graduate class with history professor Jessica Elfenbein, who has been working to create a more complete historic record of forestry in South Carolina. In researching the industry in Sumter, known as part of the “wood basket of the world,” Elfenbein learned about the Williams Furniture Company archives at Sumter County Museum.

The museum loaned the archives to USC for digitization, and the collection is now available online through the South Carolina Digital Library.

“It’s amazing to think that all this history has been largely unknown until now,” Elfenbein says. “You’d never know that the ‘Williams’ in Williams-Brice Stadium is named for this furniture company in Sumter, or how the community there rallied to bring the factory to town. It was truly a community effort, and these are stories that are very important but little-known.”

Malenowski has also gone all-in on researching Williams and stayed on into the fall semester to complete the digitization project. He’s using the archives for his graduate thesis, which examines the impact of unionization on the culture of the Williams Furniture Company and the surrounding community.

“There’s so much to unpack in just this one area,” he says. “Having a union shop with an integrated workplace at this time was practically unheard of in the South, and it’s incredible how the union played a role in changing the social fabric of the town.”

Elfenbein hopes making the archives available will bring greater awareness of the far-reaching impact of this industry for the history of Sumter, South Carolina and beyond.

Last fall, Elfenbein taught an undergraduate honors course to feature the Williams collection. Lynn Robertson, longtime director of USC’s McKissick Museum, co-taught the course and led the class in creating a traveling exhibit that will debut later this year.

“All the students are from different academic backgrounds — business, science, the arts and, of course, a few history majors,” Robertson says. “What’s so great is that they all bring their own backgrounds, so they all look at it from different points of view.”

The course showed students just how relevant history can be as the students worked together to bring this untold history to the public for the first time.

In addition to creating exhibition displays, they worked in teams to conduct the first seven oral histories, which provide context for the archive materials and a different angle on the company’s story.

“Initially, I thought this class was completely unrelated to me, but I was wrong,” says Lauren Reasoner, an honors student in the College of Information and Communication. “Not only am I getting to professionally design the exhibit, but I also learned how to conduct oral histories, which turned out to be a crucial part of my senior thesis.”

Reasoner interviewed a Sumter resident whose grandfather sustained a devastating injury while working in Williams’ lumber yard, which shed new light on the company’s worker safety records. Other students talked with descendants of past owners and managers of Williams.

These interviews are now transcribed and housed in the Department of Oral History in University Libraries. Malenowski, along with another student, will continue the interviews this spring, thanks to grants from the College of Arts and Sciences Humanities Collaborative and USC’s Center for Integrative and Experiential Learning.

While the Williams collection is extensive, he says it offers an incomplete view of the company’s story without the perspectives of those who worked on the factory floor.

“The Williams collection is insightful, but it’s got such obvious blind spots. The workers are practically invisible, and you’d think the managers were the ones out there chopping down trees and building cabinets,” Malenowski says. “But we’ve finally gotten a list of people who want to share their stories.”

View the Williams collection online, or learn more about the Sumter County Museum. The exhibit will travel to locations throughout the state later this year. A comprehensive website, including content from the traveling exhibit, will launch in April.

SUMTER COUNTY, S.C. (WIS) - e-Vac Magnetics is choosing the Palmetto State to establish its first facility in the United States.

“e-VAC is grateful for the support of the State of South Carolina, Governor Henry McMaster, Senator Lindsey Graham, and Representatives Jim Clyburn and Ralph Norman. We are excited to become a member of the Sumter County community. This project represents a significant commitment by VAC to re-shore critical process and product technology, creating good-paying and highly skilled jobs for residents of the community. With this support, we will directly contribute to U.S. energy independence and national security,” said e-VAC Group Chief Executive Officer Dr. Erik Eschen.

On Wednesday, Governor Henry Mcmaster held a news conference where he revealed the plant that makes parts for electric vehicles, will be coming to Sumter County, creating 300 new jobs.

“South Carolina creates an environment of opportunity for e-VAC and Sumter County. The company has access to the tools and resources needed, like the readySC program, to cultivate a highly skilled workforce while creating 300 new jobs in the community. Congratulations, and welcome to our state’s business community,” said Secretary of Commerce Harry M. Lightsey, III.

The company will construct a new facility on 85 acres in the Pocotaligo Industrial Park.

During the press conference, McMaster said this testament to our state’s booming economic growth commitment to fostering an environment that attracts business and opportunity.

Officials said the project is expected to bring more than half a billion-dollar investment and will house the production of permanent magnets for electric vehicles and defense applications.

“I am elated to extend a sincere congratulations to e-VAC Magnetics for their impactful announcement today. More than half a billion-dollar investment and the creation of 300 well-compensated technical positions is significant for our community and certainly exemplifies our continued readiness and ability to foster growth in Sumter, South Carolina. We are excited about this new surge of opportunity for our residents and what it will mean for our community,” said Sumter Development Board Chairman Greg A. Thompson

A website with hiring information will be available next year.

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