Allendale County eyes former CV Bing High School as community center

The former CV Bing High School has moved from a long-vacant landmark to a real redevelopment test for Allendale County: can a fenced-off, 22-acre campus on the Allendale-Fairfax highway become a working community center after decades of abandonment?

State Rep. Lonnie Hosey secured $4.5 million in earmarked money in South Carolina’s FY2022-23 budget to renovate the Town of Allendale school site, and Allendale County Council agenda materials in 2024 included a CV Bing project update. Since 2021, 1st & Main Development says it has worked with Allendale County on turning the historic building into the Allendale Community Center.

The plan now on the table is broader than a simple renovation. 1st & Main says the center could house Parks & Recreation, Clemson University, First Steps of Allendale County, a business innovation center, event space, healthcare services, and the county’s first community pool and splash pad. That mix would give Allendale a single site for youth programming, public meetings, family services and recreation, all in a county where long drives and limited facilities can make basic access a challenge.

The location matters as much as the building itself. CV Bing sits near the county seat, where US 278 and US 301 intersect in the town of Allendale, and the site covers 22 acres along one of the county’s most visible corridors. Reusing that footprint would do more than preserve a piece of property. It would replace a vacant, fenced campus that has collected dust for decades with a place that could draw people in and keep them there.

The economic case for that kind of reuse is strong. Allendale County’s population fell from 8,039 in the 2020 Census to an estimated 7,551 in July 2024 and 7,355 in July 2025. The county’s median household income is $32,328, the bachelor’s degree attainment rate is 14.3%, and the employment rate is 39.9%. With only 125 employer establishments across 408.1 square miles, county leaders have little room for large new construction projects that do not already have land, infrastructure and a program plan behind them.

CV Bing also carries the weight of local history. The People Sentinel described it as a school that served Black students during Jim Crow and was left vacant after integration. That history gives the project a different kind of value in Allendale, where repurposing an abandoned school is as much about civic memory as it is about economics. Allendale Training School’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 2022 under the African-American Primary and Secondary School Buildings and Equalization Schools in South Carolina context shows how closely school buildings are tied to the county’s Black educational past.

If the funding holds, the partners stay aligned and the county can turn the old campus into a service hub, CV Bing could shift from a symbol of vacancy into one of Allendale County’s most visible public investments.