We are honored to partner with Mayor Mullens and the City of South Charleston on the design of the new health and wellness facility. More about the growth in South Charleston, including information on the facility project, is included below in the WOWK article.

by Blake DeJarnatt

Long-time Mayor of South Charleston Frank Mullens said that to build a thriving city, there are a few things that need to be done. First, you have to be open-minded and welcome to major changes. He exemplified this early on in his mayoral career.

“I remember when I took office, the first thing I did was strip downtown. We stripped down the trees. We took the landscape away. We took the crosswalks away. We rebuilt it, and we made it a little more business-friendly. We made it so you could see the business’s signs. When I first did it, some people were like, ‘I can’t believe you did that,’ but wait a minute, let’s see how it plays out. Change is hard for some folks, but you’ve got to do it,” Mullens said.

Diversifying a town’s economy is also one of his major goals.

“Diversity is a big thing. We learned our lesson. At one time, South Charleston was the chemical city of the world, and that was great. But, we learned our lesson. You can’t put all your eggs in one basket. You have to be a diverse economy. In that way, if something doesn’t work out well, it doesn’t crush you. You can survive because you’re diverse, you have other things to fall back on,” Mullens said.

Most importantly, cities have to be able to support small businesses. Both Ream and Mayor Mullens cited this as one of the reasons for the recent boom of business in the city. The way they’ve accomplished that is by implementing a graduating scale tax system that allows small businesses to lay a solid foundation before paying full taxes.

“We have a tax credit on our books that allows new and expanding businesses to use. Basically what it is, it’s a 0 to 100% graduating scale. So you start out at 25%, then go to 50%, 75%, 100%, kind of graduate up. It gives you time to get your foundation laid, your feet under you, and grow a little bit. It’s really good for small businesses in particular,” Mullens said.

Finally, one of the major strategies is capitalizing on small and large businesses’ successes by carrying that momentum forward and reinvesting it in the community.

Mayor Mullens said they’re going to take some of the profit gained through sales taxes from the upcoming Park Place shopping outlet and use it to build a new recreation center in South Charleston.

“We’ve got a conceptual design, we have hired an architect, ZMM. My vision is for us to have two facilities to replace the one. It’s a health and wellness facility, along with a small coliseum that will seat about 3,500 for our high school basketball games and other major events. We’ve got a conceptual drawing, it’s got an aquatic center, a health club, a gymnasium, the whole works. It’s a beautiful facility,” Mullens said. “The funding mechanism is the TIF district. So once our stores are open and those sales tax dollars start rolling in, then we’ll be able to start issuing bonds and get things going. It’s not a rumor, we are going to get it done.”

The goal is to give each new business and resident of South Charleston the best experience possible, leading to more businesses and residents moving in. Mayor Mullens, Ream and the South Charleston City Council created a snowball effect where they don’t plan on slowing down anytime soon.