NCLM Southern City Volume 71, Issue 2, 2021

NCLM.ORG 43 Talk of Our Towns Best of all, it now represents the commu- nity it serves. In the Town of Ocean Isle Beach , a col- laborative project led to a new, beautiful park. An effort of the Board of Commis- sioners, Town Staff, Parks and Recre- ation Trust Fund and donors, this space includes an outdoor performance stage, playground, promenade with personal- ized engraved bricks, interactive fountain/ splash pad, bocce courts, and more. Plus, it will be home to the Summer Concert Series as well as numerous other commu- nity activities and festivals. The Town of Coats has also been tar- geted and successful in its beautification efforts, most recently by partnering with artists to turn a basic parking pad into a creative space. There’s a similar story in the Town of Wendell , which unveiled East Campen Row, a downtown alleyway converted into a muralled downtown parking and event space. And in the City of Laurinburg , the city took unused, dilapidated property and rehabbed it into downtown parking. What was blight became a safe, well-lit, and widely used place for citizens to park, gather and charge electric vehicles. Plans are in place, too, to convert this area soon to greenspace. The massive projects are eye-catching and exciting. More often, though, it’s the small, incremental projects that make a city what it is. By targeting an area of need and quickly improving it, Laurinburg has made one of many small steps forward. There are then the large-scale projects. In recent years, the Town of Surf City replaced its iconic ‘swing bridge’ with a much-needed upgrade. The ‘swing bridge’ is a piece of Surf City history. The new bridge, though, brings the town into the future, and is a critical project for Surf City’s development strategy. It opened up true pedestrian use and connectivity, and enhanced town service operations, like police, fire, and emer- gency response. The increased traffic has provided economic development opportunities, and the infrastructure, as a whole, has furthered the strategy for additional bike/pedestrian planning as the town grows. The City of Greenville recently com- pleted the largest infrastructure project in the history of the city: the Town Creek Culvert project. The $33 million project was an undertaking to address drainage issues for about 300 acres of the City’s Uptown District and adjacent areas. The City began the study and design phase of the project in 2013, and the project began in 2018. It includes many green infrastructure components, and was funded by the City’s Storm Water Utility Fund and a combination of other financ- ing sources. As leaders note, this one was “on time and under budget.”