Store’s exodus from downtown not entirely inevitable

In the words of someone in position to know, the acquisition of “two little buildings” nearly 40 years ago could have spared a major store from leaving Seneca’s downtown for a new shopping center.  And if the owners of those buildings were willing to make the deal, Gallant Belk Department Store might never have left the downtown, creating a hole the city has been trying to fill ever since.  101.7/WGOG NEWS learned this during an interview with the man who managed Seneca’s Belk Store 42 years, from 1939 until 1981.  Garland Smith today is 99 years old, a couple of months shy of his 100th birthday.  And he has detailed memories of Belk’s presence in Seneca.  He retired in 1981, a pivotal time for the downtown.  Only one year before the Gallant-Belk, as it was known then, purchased farm property west of Seneca.  Store honcho Robert Gallant of Anderson eventually developed the property into what today is Applewood Shopping Center, home today of Seneca’s Belk Store.  The departure of the store for what then was farm property beyond the city’s corporate limits sent shock waves through the city, but Smith said the move was typical of other major store moves from downtowns to outlying shopping centers.  But he admits that his heart lay in the downtown, and he tried to persuade the chain’s hierarchy to remodel and expand downtown.  Plans were drawn and those plans, Smith recalled on Saturday, would have given Seneca’s downtown of department store of Shangri-La proportions—including escalators and elevators.  The store occupied much of a city block, bounded by North First and Main streets between Depot and Townville streets.  Smith said Belk tried to buy two storefronts, one of which was Lunney’s Drug Store on Main Street.  Smith is philosophical over what happened.  He recalls with pride that the store did well every year downtown and has since done well as an anchor to the shopping center.