Rock Hill gives downtown apartment, Woolworth Walkway an abandoned building tax credit

An apartment building under construction in downtown Rock Hill that will include a civil rights memorial walkway is now slated to receive an “abandoned building” tax credit.

The new development called 139 Main is eligible for the tax credit because it replaced a former Woolworth’s department store at that address that had been closed for at least five years before the building was demolished to make way for the apartments.

The Rock Hill City Council approved the former building’s eligibility for the tax credit at its Nov. 23 meeting.

The former Woolworth’s store closed in 1989. The developer, a partnership of The Tuttle Co. of Rock Hill and Lat Purser & Associates of Charlotte, also received $325,000 in incentives from the city to demolish the structure in favor of a four-story, 37-unit apartment building.

The site also will include the Woolworth Walkway, a planned memorial to the city’s civil rights history, including the Friendship Nine, arrested for a sit-in at a segregated lunch counter in the present-day Five and Dine restaurant, which is in the neighboring building.

This story was originally published November 29, 2015 at 5:56 PM with the headline "Rock Hill gives downtown apartment, Woolworth Walkway an abandoned building tax credit."