Florence community rebuild: George Jebaily

Transcript

I'm George Bailey. I'm the managing partner of Jebaily Law Firm, but I'm also a member of Florence City Council. I got elected in 2014 and am very excited to be serving on City Council.

So, the question is about downtown redevelopment.

Well, for those who are relatively new to the Florence area, the process of downtown redevelopment, while it's very exciting what we see now, started a long, long time ago.

My personal involvement began 21 years ago with the whole effort, and the most exciting part for me has been two parts of it.

Number one, this was started out as a real grassroots effort. The group of us that kind of got together and initiated this, we went to the people and had town hall meetings. The energy and enthusiasm from the public was overwhelming.

It was a conversation with the public, and people came forward and said, "This is absolutely something we want. We don't necessarily think we're going to get it, but we want it. And you're maybe a little bit not so smart to be doing this, but it's your time, and you're welcome to do what you want with your time."

But the passion was there, and so I was like, okay, we have a commitment from the public. Let's go for it.

That was one piece of it that was crucial.

The other piece of it that's crucial is all the partnerships, the public-private partnerships that were formed between the city, the county, the state, the Drs. Bruce and Lee Foundation, Francis Marion University, the school district, the hospitals—you know, so many of the public institutions and private institutions coming together and working together.

What I like to say is Florence has pulled itself up by its bootstraps. We just said, "No one else is going to do it for us, so we're going to have to roll up our sleeves and get to work and do it for ourselves."

That's what's happened. Even the Provident people that have come forward recently with major investments in downtown, they're local people. So, it is kind of up Florence, by Florence, for Florence and for the Pee Dee region.

Because Florence is the center of the Pee Dee, what's good for Florence is good for the whole surrounding area because it's going to raise up all of us.

And let's face it, we have to compete with the rest of the state, much less other states. For us to be our best and to be able to go toe-to-toe when we want to attract another industry to come here, we need to have our best face and best foot forward and be ready to go and show off what we've got.

And we have a lot to be proud of.