When my fair city of Aiken was first laid out back in the late 1800’s they started by naming the few streets after South Carolina Counties. As the city grew north and west they eventually ran out of county names, so they started adding US state names. Before the Bomb Plant development just blew-up the size of town to the south it went east a bit and they used some SC city names.
A dozen or so years ago the Aiken Corporation1 built a 30,0000 sq.ft. spec building on the northeast side of town on Beaufort Street across from where Hampton Avenue ended. The city provided the services, water, sewer and paved in a little road extending Hampton. The building was on one of the two 6 acres lots and they zoned it light industrial and they created a small industrial park. Unfortunately, light industry never came. Over the years there have been inquires about the building and every once in a while there will be a little blurb in the paper about something thinking of moving there, but the monolithic appearing structure still sits empty.
This morning on the way to work, my usual route takes me right by the building, I noticed a new street sign leading into the “industrial park” where our underutilized sits. Instead of keeping it Hampton Ave or naming it Hampton Ave Ext, they gave it a different name. In keeping with the city name naming structure it has a sign that says Prosperity even though Google thinks it is still Hampton Ave NE.
