Lauderdale: Odd plaza that gave Hilton Head a heart turns 60

Hilton Head Island has always been accused of not having a downtown.

The implication is that without Dick and Jane chasing Spot down Elm Street to the corner grocery, why the place could not possibly have a heart.

Well, actually it does.

Downtown is the Coligny Circle area and Pope Avenue.

And Coligny Plaza, where it all began with the Forest Beach Market, will celebrate its 60th anniversary this Saturday.

It was a crazy thing for Norris Richardson to do in 1955: plunk down $50,000 for a lot deep in the woods on an island with no bridge. For another $25,000, he and his brother, J.A. "Junior" Richardson, built a 50-by-50-foot cinderblock market set back off the road. It was ready for business in June 1956, a couple of months after the first toll bridge linked the island to the world.

Richardson came with his wife, Lois, and three young children: Mary Katherine, who had just finished junior high in Thomasville, Ga.; Jimmy, 11; and Collins, 4. Junior sold Norris an oceanfront lot on Bayberry Lane for $1,500, and they built a house with no heater and painted it flamingo pink.

That's about as close to the make-believe land of Dick and Jane as we get.

Our corner grocery wasn't on a corner at all, but on a circle. Norris and his partners, Junior and architect Pete McGinty, even had the odd corporate name of Circle Square Co.

And our kids were more apt to chase wild hogs than dogs named Spot.

'When will it end, Norris?'

In the early going, the man who sold a chain of five groceries to go all-in on Hilton Head would get home from his side job installing septic tanks for builder Bobby Woods and be told by Lois that his new empire raked in all of $3 that day.

But Norris Richardson was an entrepreneur's entrepreneur, a wiry man with big glasses who would recycle anything, from broken pots to stuff that washed up on the beach.

His second venture was a laundromat, with a beauty shop and barbershop attached. He fixed the machines, he mowed the grass, he rolled the quarters and by 1973 an Island Packet headline blared: "Million $ Project for '73 -- When Will It End, Norris?"

Coligny Plaza is where Packet staffers used to tamp down the high pressure of putting out a newspaper twice a week by relaxing at the Earle of Sandwich Pub.

It's where Porter Thompson founded the 2nd Sunday Film Festival to bring thoughty movies to Coligny Theatre.

It's where Joseph Urato and his wife, Concetta, came to help out family members for a few weeks and stayed 35 years. Urato's Plaza Pizza was our first pizzeria in 1974, but Joseph's banter was as good as the pizza.

It's where my son earned a lot of college money waiting tables at the Frosty Frog.

It's where Gene Martin, who owned the Red & White, which was the former Forest Beach Market and is now David Martin's Piggly Wiggly, signed the first major advertising contract to help a community newspaper with the funny name of The Island Packet actually set sail in 1970.

It's what brought community builders like Joe and Joann Capin and Charles Perry to town to open a business, or buy one.

Island spirit

It's where strangers were forced to sit next to each other at the laundromat on Norris' old church pew and learn what they had in common: usually a dream to live free from the rat race.

It's where the county Bookmobile eased into the yard once a week, about where Don O'Fee would later open the Bookmark.

It's where the first post office on the south end was a window in the grocery store, now covered by a freezer.

It's where Rick Hubbard and his Kazoo Band entertained tourists who might also want to eat at Peddler's Steakhouse, Perkins Pancake House or the Ice Cream Cone.

It's where a Western Auto store still hides out, offering an elusive slice of actual South Carolina in a Lowcountry full of newcomers.

It's where a barber once told me while cutting my hair that he threw down his snow shovel in Detroit, flew to Hilton Head and never went back.

Lois Richardson is still here, still hosting a weekly Bible study in her home.

First Baptist Church was founded in the Richardsons beach home up on stilts.

The woman who was Charles Fraser's first employee of Sea Pines will help cut the birthday cake Saturday.

Jimmy, known as "JR" Richardson, grew up to run the plaza and some businesses of his own. Mary Katherine married Billy Toomer, a local boy. Collins died young of kidney failure.

When Norris Richardson died in 2001, Fraser spoke of his hard work and said he helped establish the family-focused tone of the island.

"Norris Richardson will forever hold a key spot among the handful of people whose work and entrepreneurial spirit built modern Hilton Head," Fraser said.

That spirit will be honored Saturday at a funky, beachy corner of a circle that gave an unusual place an unusual downtown, and with it, a heart.

Follow columnist and senior editor David Lauderdale at twitter.com/ThatsLauderdale and facebook.com/david.lauderdale.16.

This story was originally published September 8, 2015 at 4:55 PM with the headline "Lauderdale: Odd plaza that gave Hilton Head a heart turns 60."