20 for ’20: New restaurants, roads and more prove 2020 wasn’t all bad in York County
2020 was a challenge. Pandemic, job loss, event cancellations, social distance — for many it’s a year that won’t be remembered fondly.
Yet a full calendar year, even this one, can’t be all bad, can it?
Here’s a look at 20 silver linings to the storm, bits of good news that dotted the year in York, Lancaster and Chester counties:
New 2020 babies born
For more than 1,000 people in York County 2020 was, by default, the best year ever. It’s the only year they’ve ever known.
Piedmont Medical Center alone delivered 1,366 babies between Jan. 1 and Nov. 30.
The Carey family in Tega Cay welcomed a Christmas Day baby, Charli James, at Piedmont. Mom Hallie and dad Joseph said they were overwhelmed with joy and blessings this holiday season, with an amazing addition to the family.
Quote: “Babies make things better.”
-- Maria Gomien, Lake Wylie mom whose son Aiden was the first New Year’s baby of 2020 at Atrium Health Pineville
More places to eat
It was a tough year for restaurants with dining room closures and social distancing. Yet there were some prominent new openings throughout the area.
Just a handful of them include Kounter in downtown Rock Hill, Sweet Tea Cafe and Big Boys Country Cooking. Fort Mill saw Epic Chophouse in Kingsley, Blue Smokehouse & Bar and Let’s Crab.
2020 also saw the launch of the YoCo Taste Trail to highlight an expanding dining scene countywide.
Quote: “Once upon a time, there were a lot of limited options if we were going to take some folks out to dine in the local market. But man are we lucky now because we have so many great choices, such a diverse culinary landscape.”
-- US Foods area president Andy Clark at the January YoCo Taste Trail launch
Traffic? What traffic?
When people stopped driving to work and school this spring, roads opened up like they haven’t in years.
For once, area traffic wasn’t a concern. South Carolina Department of Transportation data shows traffic statewide was down 20% in March, 45% in April and 25% in May compared to those months in 2019.
Road reliability, a metric planners use to measure how roads operate with traffic, typically runs a little less than 90% in the area on I-77. From spring to early fall it was 100% in the Rock Hill and Fort Mill areas. The road network functioned at full capacity.
Road planners compare the pandemic traffic impact to major events like gas shortages from the 1970s. There’s discussion among area road planners whether work-from-home setups and other pandemic changes might last well beyond COVID-19 and provide answers for growing traffic concerns as more people move to the region.
Quote:
“It’s one that oddly enough, has been on the minds of many people. (The pandemic is) something that everyone is trying to work through. You don’t see events like this very often, that impact the entire country.”
-- David Hooper, director of the Rock Hill-Fort Mill Area Transportation Study
Family and forever homes
The last week of 2020 brought family court adoptions — two infants and an adult — and forever families in York County. A family court judge met and finalized adoptions for a Marine couple who took in a baby boy born prematurely, a nurse who fostered a girl born with substance addiction, and a couple who adopted a long-time family friend.
Quote: “I couldn’t think of any better way to end the year, or a better Christmas present than to have a final adoption go through so that a child gets a forever home.”
-- Judge David Guyton
Homegrown help and mask makers
The mask industry as its now known didn’t exist in early 2020. Then recommendations came that people wear face coverings just about everywhere in public. Many made homemade masks. A furloughed York man used his 3D printer to make face shields for hospitals. Rock Hill companies that make battlefield tourniquets, aerospace products and race team components pivoted to make medical grade masks. Lancaster County passed new tax incentives to lure businesses that create protective equipment, in hopes of heading off future shortages.
Quote: “There’s a way that everyone can help. I’m glad that I now can see a way to help people help, with me just doing my little part of 3D printing.”
-- York resident Travis Taylor, who made hundreds of face shields for hospital use
Teacher parades, graduation
Schools went virtual in March, which shut down sports seasons, proms and other end-of-year school events. Schools scrambled to create virtual learning. Yet many schools and districts went the extra mile, literally, with events like teacher parades through neighborhoods. Districts figured new ways to hold graduation. Schools honored seniors with parades and virtual celebrations.
Quote: “Obviously it’s not a normal situation. The fact that they can put this together in such short notice, it’s fantastic and it’s definitely where I want to graduate from.”
-- Fort Mill High School senior Zanna Lowery, at a senior parade in May
Panthers headquarters in Rock Hill
Ground broke in summer 2020 on a new Carolina Panthers headquarters in Rock Hill.
The first phase will open in 2023. In all, the project will have team offices, an indoor practice facility, outdoor fields, an indoor athletic facility, sports medicine site and other features. The almost 4 million square feet of proposed development is billed by team and city officials as the most significant economic investment in Rock Hill to date.
Quote: “The long range impacts are going to be, I would call them transformational.”
- Panthers COO Mark Hart
Riverbend site takes shape
In January York County put a conservation easement on what projects to be a transformative riverfront park. Riverbend Park is on the Rock Hill side of the Catawba River. York County bought about 1,900 acres for $21 million. Most of those acres — about 1,700 — will become a public park similar to what the Anne Springs Close Greenway is in Fort Mill. County officials spent the rest of 2020 setting up and convening a committee to decide details on how and when the park will be ready for public use.
Quote: “It’s one of the monumental decisions that this council has ever made. It’s going to have a lasting legacy.”
--Steve Hamilton, executive director with Nation Ford Land Trust
I-77 construction
The biggest road in York County will someday look much different thanks in part to 2020.
This summer the state infrastructure bank approved $75 million for interchange improvements along I-77. One involves the S.C. 160 exit in Fort Mill. The other is the Cherry and Celanese roads exit in Rock Hill. There’s still hope a coming round of infrastructure bank funding may add the Carowinds exit in Fort Mill. A separate state decision paved the way for a new interchange in Rock Hill at the planned Carolina Panthers headquarters site.
Quote: “It means less time sitting behind the steering wheel and more time at home with family, or at work doing things other than wasting time sitting in traffic.”
-- state Sen. Wes Climer
Great Falls gets its falls back
Land clearing is underway on work to bring the great falls back to Great Falls.
Duke Energy will restore Catawba River flow to the Chester County area dried up by construction of dams a century ago. Whitewater rafting, fishing, canoeing and kayaking are planned just outside downtown Great Falls.
Land for a parking lot and boat launch are being cleared now, The Herald reported in December. The first whitewater channel will start construction in spring 2021, with opening to the public in 2022.
Quote: “It will be complementary to the white water center in Charlotte...It gives people an opportunity to come here, stay local, and support the local businesses.”
-- Robert Long, Chester County economic development director
Fort Mill hospital options expand
A new hospital in Fort Mill is ready for construction.
After more than a decade of debate and legal challenges among hospitals competing for a Fort Mill site, Piedmont Medical Center parent company Tenet Healthcare got the final go ahead in 2019. Piedmont officials began 2020 in design and layout talks with town officials for the 100-bed facility and separate medical building at S.C. 160 and U.S. 21. By December they were down to appearance review, a late stage step just ahead of construction.
Piedmont also opened a separate, freestanding emergency room on Gold Hill Road in early 2020.
In spring 2020 the Medical University of South Carolina applied for a zoning change on an 87-acre hospital site in Indian Land. In the fall, Encompass Health proposed a new rehabilitation hospital at Pleasant and Vista roads in Fort Mill.
Quote: “I’ve lived here my whole life. I know that the expectations of the town, it’s much anticipated. There’s a lot of buzz about this for many, many years.”
-- Fort Mill planning commission member Ben Hudgins in January, of the Piedmont hospital plan.
New Lake Wylie park opens
Lake Wylie is finally ready to play ball.
After more than a decade of work that includes a voter-approved special tax district, the York County sports park on Crowders Creek opened in October. Field Day Park is a 32-acre, $13.5 million project that has synthetic baseball/softball and soccer/multipurpose fields. It has playgrounds, pickleball courts, picnic shelters and other features.
Quote: “This has truly been a field of dreams for me.”
-- former York County Councilman and park organizer Perry Johnston
High school, college champions
COVID cut short many, but not all, sports seasons in 2020.
In March the Great Falls boys basketball team won its 11th state championship, while Clover and South Pointe girls teams made state finals appearances. Winthrop University won the Big South tournament and a bid to the NCAA men’s tournament that ultimately was canceled because of COVID.
Play resumed in the fall as Northwestern returned to the upper state championship game in football, as did second-year school Catawba Ridge in Fort Mill. Nation Ford runner Katie Pou won an unprecedented fourth straight 5A cross country state title.
Quote: “Any time you’re playing on Thanksgiving, it’s really exciting for the town. Win, lose or draw on Friday, we can say that we made the town of Fort Mill proud, hopefully.”
-- Catawba Ridge football coach Zac Lendyak, prior to his upper state title game
Free lunch milestone meal
What started as a Lake Wylie lunch gathering a decade ago grew into a nonprofit that serves most of York County. In December the Community Cafe reached a milestone when the group gave away its half-millionth free meal.
The cafe based in Lake Wylie and Fort Mill added a food truck and mobile sites to keep up with growing demand. While it took the cafe four years to serve its first 100,000 meals, volunteers served more than 114,000 this year as economic uncertainty and social distancing from the pandemic created need.
Quote: “Yes, we make a lot of food, but we do it because it’s neighbors helping neighbors and we love our neighbors. We want to take care of them. And so we just tell people we serve love.”
-- Don Murfin, Community Cafe head chef
COVID vaccines arrive
Regardless of the varying opinions on COVID vaccines, it’s clear they are a major step toward ending the coronavirus pandemic.
Less than a year after the threat of the virus shut down schools, restaurants and businesses, vaccines arrived. Just this month Piedmont in Rock Hill received and administered its first doses. So did Lancaster Medical Center. Medical workers are first in line, but vaccines are expected for the wider public as 2021 progresses.
Quote: “We’ve seen during this pandemic that COVID-19 is devastating for those who are vulnerable. This helps us move in the direction of navigating through this pandemic and getting to the other side.”
-- Edward McCutcheon, chief medical officer at Lancaster Medical Center
2020 election season wins
Political news that’s good news to everybody isn’t easy to come by, but here’s a shot.
For Republicans, a whopping 22 of 24 partisan elections this fall in York County went red. Republicans took federal Senate and House seats, state seats, sheriff, coroner, and every county council seat on the ballot. For Democrats, there’s the presidential election. For people who aren’t into politics and wish presidential debates would go away for four years, the next contest isn’t until 2024. For people who can’t get enough politics, Georgia isn’t far.
There’s something for everybody.
Quote: “This is the type of election that can go either way. And considering all the options ... it just was an obligation as a citizen to vote for whatever candidate you choose. It’s an important election.”
-- Fort Mill voter Ross Polson, on election day
Rock Hill adds indoor sports destination
The Rock Hill Sports & Event Center opened its doors in the final days of 2019, but had its grand opening and first major public events in 2020.
The site also pumped cash into the city economy when indoor play resumed after spring social distancing. Area high schools competed in basketball tournaments. Travel basketball and volleyball events came. The site also is available for city rec league and other local uses.
Quote: “This will really be our first event in there that (Visit York County is) responsible for. It’s the beginning of a lot of good things that are going to happen in that facility.”
-- Billy Dunlap, Visit York County president and CEO, at a January 2020 basketball showcase
Yung Icey goes gold
A hip-hop producer from Rock Hill went gold after working on a project with rap icon Future this summer. Yung Icey helped produce “Pray for a Key” on the Future album “High Off Life.” That album reached the top hip-hop spot on Billboard’s list. Yung Icey hopes to inspire fellow Rock Hill natives through his promising music career.
Quote: “I want kids to be able to look at me and be like, ‘Well, if Icey can do it — get a platinum record, and be working with Future and all these artists — and he’s from the same place as me? I can do it too.’”
-- Yung Icey
Chanticleer vision from Clover grad
One of the most unexpected stories in a unique college football season was the rise of Coastal Carolina. A team whose athletic director is Clover High School graduate Matt Hogue. The Chanticleers finished an undefeated regular season with a top 15 national ranking, before an overtime loss in a bowl game against Liberty.
Quote: “What we’re doing in football now, this was the goal. This was not, ‘Hey, let’s hope we have a year when everything kind of comes together.’ It’s very much all been by design.”
-- Matt Hogue
Meeting community needs
Rock Hill has Pathways Community Center. Fort Mill has the Fort Mill Care Center. Clover has Clover Area Assistance Center.
Many area agencies help neighbors in need, which in 2020 includes new ways to serve more people. The Manna House Pantry in Rock Hill, at Pathways, more than doubled to serve about 300 families a week this year. They’ve started pick-up options to continue service amid the pandemic.
Quote: “What we thought we were going to do and the way we thought we were going to be able to serve, everything changed.”
--Manna House president Sandra Evans
This story was originally published December 31, 2020 at 2:09 PM.
