A Future Worth Her Name · Katherine Hall · Ware Shoals

An Open Letter to the Town

Dear council members, and friends of Ware Shoals,

In 1913, Benjamin Riegel built a hall in the middle of this town and named it for his only daughter. He could have called it anything. He chose her name because he wanted the building to be loved the way she was loved. The men in his mill called it The People's Amusement Hall before they ever called it Katherine Hall, and for half a century that's exactly what she was — the people's. A theater, a library, a Masonic room, a teen canteen, a pool hall, the showers and dressing rooms for the swimming pool out back. Roy Rogers played there. Tex Ritter played there. Lash LaRue brought his horse onto the stage, if you can believe the story, and I do.

Katherine Hall turned 112 this year. The town throws her a party every year in the form of the Catfish Feastvial — 20,000 vendors, artists, musicians, neighbors who hadn't seen each other in years all show up, and behind it all in the middle, Katherine Hall stands with her windows boarded, her roof half-collapsed, her brickwork loose, her porches patched against falling in. I graduated high school in 2006 and have never known anything different.

She has been waiting a long time. We are now the lowest funded district in the state in terms of business funding, the dam is failing, and the school population is second lowest in the state. In climbing, when disaster is near, we call it the Swiss cheese effect. One hole opens, then another, then another, and before you know it — it's game over. We are near that stage, and we have to act.

The good news: the Capital Project Sales Tax has put $3.4 million toward her renewal. Preservation South is on the job. The shell will be saved. But a saved building is not the same as a living one. We can spend $3.4 million and end up with a beautiful, empty shell — the way so many small Southern towns have ended up with a beautiful, empty courthouse, a beautiful, empty depot, a beautiful, empty mill.

What follows is my proposal for what Katherine Hall could be on the inside — modeled on something that already works, and built to serve the 1,701 people who call Ware Shoals home.

Respectfully,
Cameron S. Dorn Third-generation Hornet · Ware Shoals High, Class of 2006

Section One

What Katherine Hall Is

1913

Year Built

15,637

Square Feet

Stories

112

Years Standing

Katherine Hall is a three-story, 15,637-square-foot Beaux-Arts building in the center of Ware Shoals. Beaux-Arts is rare in the South Carolina Piedmont — most of our historic buildings are simpler, more vernacular. Katherine is grand the way a small-town opera house is grand. She was built to make working people feel that the things they did after their shift were as worthy as anything happening in Charleston or Columbia.

Inside, she contains spaces that were each their own world:

A two-story theater that hosted vaudeville, film, and live music
A ballroom on the upper floor
A Masonic lodge room
A pool hall for the men
A library used by the whole community
A canteen for the town's teenagers in the postwar decades
Showers and dressing rooms for the swimming pool that once sat outside her back wall

The 2015 conditions report found that, despite her appearance, the building is in good structural condition. The roof collapse, the loose brick, the rotting timbers — these are the symptoms of neglect, not of fundamental failure. She is repairable. She is a candidate.

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Section Two

Why a Saved Shell Is Not Enough

A saved building without a sustainable use is a building that loses funding, loses tenants, loses interest, and eventually loses the case to be saved again.

— The preservation lesson learned the hard way, across the South

Across the South, there are hundreds of beautifully restored historic buildings sitting empty or half-used because the people who saved them didn't have a plan for what would happen on a Tuesday in February at 3 p.m. They had a plan for the ribbon cutting. They didn't have a plan for the long, ordinary years that come after.

The danger for Katherine Hall is real: the renovation finishes, she opens for occasional events, the lights are on a few nights a month, the maintenance bills keep coming, and ten years from now the conversation in council is whether the town can afford to keep her. That is not a hypothetical. That is the path of most restored mill-town landmarks in the South.

We need a daily destination, not a one-off event hall. Sustainability is the key.

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Section Three

A Model That Already Works: McMenamins

In 1983, two brothers in Portland, Oregon — Mike and Brian McMenamin — opened a small pub. Today their company operates 56 properties across Oregon and Washington and brings in over $200 million a year. They have never franchised, never expanded outside the Pacific Northwest, and never built a new building when they could rescue an old one. Twenty of their properties are on the National Register of Historic Places.

Their formula is simple and repeatable:

Find a historic building the community loves that nobody has figured out how to use
Restore it with respect — original art on the walls, the building's history baked into every room
Put many small businesses inside: pub, small hotel, coffee shop, theater, brewery, event space — each one supports the others
Let it become a destination people drive one to two hours to see, eat, sleep in, and tell their friends about

Comparable Project: Edgefield, Troutdale, Oregon

McMenamins bought this former county poor farm in 1987 for $560,000 and spent $2.5 million bringing it back. Today Edgefield contains a hotel, multiple restaurants, a brewery, a winery, a distillery, a movie theater, an outdoor concert venue, a spa, gardens, and a golf course. It is one of the largest hospitality employers in its county. Troutdale, before Edgefield, was a town of 5,000 people that no one drove to.

Anderson School, Bothell, Washington

A former elementary school the community had tried for years to find a use for. McMenamins turned it into a 73-room hotel with restaurants, a brewery, a movie theater, a day spa, and a soaking pool. The Bothell city manager said publicly the project "animates downtown" and is key to the town's transformation.

The reason this model matters for Ware Shoals: it does not require the town to grow. It requires the town to be itself, beautifully, in one building, in a way that gives people three hours away a reason to come.

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Section Four

What Katherine Hall Could Hold

Adapted to Katherine's actual rooms and our actual town, here is what 15,637 square feet could become:

Space	What It Would Be	What It Means for Ware Shoals
Ground Floor, Front	A neighborhood pub and restaurant called The People's Hall — serving lunch through dinner, with the names of original Hall regulars and Riegel mill workers on the walls	A place to eat in town. A place to take your in-laws when they visit. A place for the football team after Friday games.
Ground Floor, Back	A small craft brewery making beer named for Ware Shoals people and places — a "Big Friendly" lager, a "Lash LaRue" stout, a "Saluda" pale ale	Year-round jobs. A reason for beer enthusiasts across the Upstate to drive down. SC craft brewery tourism has grown for fifteen years.
Ground Floor, Corner	A coffee shop open from 6 a.m. for early shift workers and remote workers	Somewhere to go in the morning. Somewhere for the high schoolers to study. Somewhere visitors find first.
Second Floor	The restored 250-seat theater — film series, live music, comedy, school recitals, church performances, community theater	Roy Rogers played here once. Others can again. The theater hosts town events at no cost — a written commitment in the operating agreement.
Second Floor Flanks	Eight boutique hotel rooms in the former Masonic lodge and flanking spaces — themed to Ware Shoals history	Out-of-town guests stay in Ware Shoals instead of Greenwood. Wedding parties have somewhere to put their families. Pageant judges have a place to stay.
Third Floor	The restored ballroom — weddings, anniversaries, corporate retreats, reunions, 50th-anniversary parties	A wedding venue Ware Shoals does not currently have. Catering and lodging revenue stays in the building, not in Greenville.
Lower Level	A small spa or quiet bar in the old bathhouse — the plumbing is still there	Something unexpected. The thing visitors didn't know was inside.

Original art on every available surface, commissioned from Ware Shoals and Upstate artists. The history of the building — Riegel, Katherine, the swimming pool, the canteen, the cowboys, the horse on the stage — written into the walls and the menus and the room names. Katherine Hall would not be a hotel with a restaurant in it. She would be Katherine Hall.

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Section Five

What This Would Do for Ware Shoals

5.1 Jobs

A McMenamins-style multi-program property of Katherine's size would employ, at stabilization, 25 to 35 working-age people, paid year-round — in a town where the median household income is $33,650 and one in three families lives below the poverty line. These are not seasonal tourism jobs that disappear in winter.

8–12 full-time food and beverage staff (cooks, servers, baristas)
4–6 full-time hotel staff (front desk, housekeeping, maintenance)
2–3 brewery staff (head brewer, brewing assistants)
3–5 event and theater staff (coordinator, AV, box office)
4–6 part-time positions (bussers, ushers, weekend event support)

5.2 Money That Stays Here

Right now, when a Ware Shoals family wants to take grandparents to a nice dinner, they drive to Greenwood or Greenville. When someone in town gets married, they rent a venue in Abbeville or further. A renewed Katherine Hall captures that revenue. A dollar spent at a locally-owned business recirculates in the community two to three times before leaving. A dollar spent at a chain leaves in days.

5.3 A Reason to Come Home

Every small town in the South is losing its young people. Ware Shoals has lost roughly 20 percent of its population since 2010. Katherine Hall, alive again, is the building that says Ware Shoals is somewhere worth being. The towns that have stabilized in the rural South — Travelers Rest, Greer, parts of Anderson — have done it with exactly this: one place that everyone agrees is theirs, and that brings outsiders in to see it.

5.4 Tax Base

Right now, Katherine Hall is town-owned and tax-exempt. An operating Katherine Hall — at the modeled revenue of roughly $2.4 million a year — generates meaningful new revenue for the town:

State sales tax on roughly $1.8M of taxable food, beverage, and lodging revenue
Local hospitality and accommodations taxes flowing directly to the town
Business license revenue
Property tax on the leasehold improvements
Payroll taxes supporting state and local services

Conservatively, the town's direct annual revenue from a stabilized Katherine Hall is in the range of $40,000 to $70,000 per year — money the town does not currently receive.

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Section Six

How This Could Be Structured

6.1 The Town Retains Ownership

The strongest version of this proposal has the Town of Ware Shoals retain title to Katherine Hall in perpetuity. The town does not sell the building. The town leases it — for a long term (50 to 99 years) — to a private operator who is responsible for the interior renovation and ongoing operation. This is exactly how Edgefield, Anderson School, Kennedy School, and the Elks Temple in Tacoma are structured.

6.2 Protections in the Lease

Preservation covenants tying any future modification to SHPO review
A right of public access to the ground-floor public space — always the People's Hall
A commitment to host a minimum number of town and school events per year at no charge or at cost
A performance default clause — if the operator fails, the lease unwinds and the building returns to the town
A right of first refusal for the town to buy out the leasehold
Local hiring preference — a documented commitment to hire from Ware Shoals and Greenwood County first
Annual reporting to council on revenue, employment, and community programming

6.3 Who Operates: Three Paths

Path A — Local Operator: Someone from Greenwood County or the Upstate with hospitality experience willing to invest their own capital. Most aligned with the town.
Path B — Out-of-Area Operator with Local Ties: Regional ties, strong lease protections. McMenamins themselves have been visited; a call is possible.
Path C — RFP with Structured Criteria (Recommended): The town issues a request for proposals with explicit weighting on local benefit, preservation commitment, financial capacity, and operating experience. Most transparent, most defensible.

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Section Seven

What It Would Cost — and Who Pays

The total project cost — shell plus interior — is in the range of $6 million. Here is how it could be funded:

Source of Funds	Amount	Who Pays
CPST Shell Renovation (already committed)	$3,400,000	Greenwood County penny sales tax — already approved by voters in 2016. No additional public ask.
Private Operator Equity	~$1,000,000	Private operator — their own capital at risk
Construction-to-Permanent Loan	~$1,300,000	Private operator — secured by leasehold improvements, not the building itself
Federal & State Historic Tax Credits	~$400,000–$600,000	Federal and state tax credit investors — not Ware Shoals taxpayers
What the town pays beyond what is already committed: ZERO. This proposal does not ask Ware Shoals taxpayers for any additional dollar.

Properly structured, the town receives ongoing revenue from the project — lease payments, hospitality taxes, business license fees, sales tax flow-through — rather than paying anything additional.

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Section Eight

The Hard Questions Council Should Ask

What happens if the operator fails?

With proper lease provisions, the building reverts to the town. The operator's $1 million of equity is gone. The bank's collateral is the leasehold improvements — not the building itself. The town owns a building that is fully renovated, fully ADA-compliant, and ready for a new operator. The risk to Ware Shoals taxpayers is limited to opportunity cost — not financial loss.

What if no one comes?

This is the real risk. But the model still works at reduced scale: the pub serves local lunch business, the brewery wholesales to Upstate accounts, the hotel runs at lower occupancy. The downside scenario still produces a functioning, employing, community-anchoring property.

Does this gentrify Ware Shoals?

Gentrification in the displacement sense requires a tight housing market that Ware Shoals does not currently have. The town has 977 households and a soft rental market. One hospitality property will not create displacement pressure. What it might do over a decade is increase property values — good for homeowners, something to watch for renters. Council has tools to manage that if it emerges.

What's the council's exposure if this is contentious politically?

Both political risks — being seen as "selling" the building to outsiders, or picking favorites among operators — are mitigated by Path C: a public RFP, transparent criteria, public hearings, and a structure where the town retains ownership in perpetuity. The phrase to use, repeatedly and accurately: "The town is not selling Katherine Hall. The town is hiring someone to bring her back to life, under terms the town sets."

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Section Nine

What This Proposal Asks Council to Do

I am not asking the council to approve a project tonight. I am not asking for money. I am asking for five things, in order:

Recognize the Question Place on the council agenda, within the next 60 days, a discussion item: "What use will Katherine Hall be put to after the CPST renovation is complete?" Having it now — while the shell work is ongoing — saves money and prevents missed opportunities (electrical capacity for a kitchen, plumbing rough-ins for hotel rooms, etc.).
Form a Katherine Hall Future Use Committee A small group — three to five members — drawn from council, the Preservation Committee, and the broader community. Their charge: study possible use models, conduct community listening sessions, and report back with a recommended use framework within six months.
Engage Preservation South in the Conversation Kyle Campbell and Preservation South are already in the building doing the shell work. They have expertise in historic property reuse and access to the Greenville and Upstate development community. They should be a resource to the Future Use Committee, not just contractors for the shell renovation.
Authorize Informal Outreach to Potential Operators The Future Use Committee, with town staff support, should be authorized to have informal conversations with regional hospitality operators, craft brewers, boutique hotel groups, and historic property developers about their interest. No commitments. No RFPs yet. Just listening and gauging whether the demand side of this model exists.
Hold a Community Listening Session Before any decision is made, the people of Ware Shoals deserve to be asked: what do you want Katherine Hall to be? The answer will be richer for the asking.

None of these steps cost meaningful money. All of them protect council's downside while building toward a decision that can be made with confidence.

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Katherine Hall has stood in the middle of this town for 112 years. She has outlasted the mill, Riegel Textile, and two generations of plans to fix her. What is not settled is whether the next chapter of her life is a slow fade into a beautiful, empty room — or whether it is the noisiest, most-loved, most-visited, most-photographed building in the Upstate. Both futures are possible. The difference between them is whether council and citizens decide, in the next twelve months, that they want the second one.

Cameron Dorn · May 2026 · Ware Shoals, South Carolina

A Future Worth
Her Name