Wedding & Event Venue near Rock Hill, SC

Due to pressure from state laws he likens to modern-day prohibition, Bryan O’Neal just closed Lancaster County’s only brewery.

Benford Brewing is now temporarily closed for on-premise beer consumption until the state changes its liquor liability insurance laws, he told The Herald on Wednesday. The sawmill, woodworking, beef sales and raw milk distribution operations on O’Neal’s Boxcar Road property will continue.

Benford Brewing began as Boxcar Brewing in 2012, just north of the city of Lancaster. It’s craft beer brands include Carolina Blackout, Southern Tater and World’s Problem Solver.

“I’m tired of the government telling me what I can and can’t do,” O’Neal said. “These politicians created this law requiring every restaurant, bar and brewery to have a million-dollar liquor liability policy. Through COVID and lawsuits, it’s just now getting caught up to us.”

About the SC liquor liability law

South Carolina passed the liability law last year, and potentially, it could still be revised. It’s a foundation but not a finished product, according to the South Carolina Restaurant & Lodging Association.

The bill was approved 41-1 in the state Senate after passing in the state House.

Last year, Gov. Henry McMaster called the new law a common-sense liquor liability rule requiring anyone selling alcohol after 5 p.m. for on-premise consumption to have an insurance policy at $1 million or more.

Businesses could reduce that coverage requirement if they stopped selling at midnight or if alcohol was less than 40% of total sales. The coverage could be cut in half for nonprofits hosting events with a special licence.

The goal of the law, which took effect this year, was to reduce liability businesses face for DUI or damages caused by customers after they were served. Legislators hailed the law change as a business-friendly move to protect alcohol sellers.

“At no time should the actions of government put businesses out of business,” S.C. Senate President Thomas Alexander in announcing the new law last spring.

But that’s exactly what happened at Benford Brewing, O’Neal said.

His farm, which transformed into an events venue when COVID hit and has since hosted bands and food trucks, has to close by 5 p.m. Since his insurance policy expired last fall, no company will quote him coverage because 40% of his revenue doesn’t come from food sales, O’Neal said.

He’s heard of places being quoted $30,000 to $100,000 per year for coverage, he said.

Deciding to shut down and ‘get loud’

The amount of craft beer O’Neal would have to sell, while closing before many people get off work, just isn’t feasible. “Why do I even have a brewery?” hel asked.

He’ll keep his equipment on site and will start back up if state laws become more favorable. He’s also spoken to other brewers and state legislators about the issue.

Meanwhile, O’Neal will continue making epoxy tables, sawing lumber and processing cattle, in hopes that those business don’t dry up over the brewery issue.

“Usually it happens over a beer,” he said of the handshake deals that keep him in business. “We’ve always said that beer sells wood. It sells beef.”

With candidate filing ongoing for state and local elections this fall, O’Neal plans to use his extra time to lobby for his business, his passion.

“I just made a decision to shut it down,” he said, “and get loud.”

The chance of tornadoes and other violent storms grew for Charlotte, Rock Hill and Hickory this weekend, with those cities having the “highest chance of severe hazards” in the Western Carolinas on Monday, National Weather Service meteorologists said.

The cities are under an “enhanced risk” of “numerous severe thunderstorms” between 6 and 10 a.m., NWS forecasters said on social media.

“While a few isolated storms could occur ahead of a line of thunderstorms Sunday evening, the main concern is for Monday morning,” NWS meteorologists said.

“Confidence is higher for severe hazards like tornadoes in areas east of the mountains, especially along and east of I-77 and south of I-85,” according to the NWS office in Greer, S.C.

Damaging winds are likely, NWS forecasters said.

“Remember, straight line winds can snap trees, down power lines and cause damage to homes and cars,” the NWS said. “Know where your safe place is and avoid seeking shelter in a mobile home.”

“Our main concern is the line of thunderstorms anywhere from 6 to 10 a.m. Monday,” meteorologist Christiaan Patterson of the Greer office told The Charlotte Observer.

School buses and commuters will be on the roads, she said. It’s important for everyone to know in advance a “safe place” to go during storms and have a way of receiving weather alerts, she said.

Saturday afternoon, the S.C. State Climatology office issued a similar severe weather warning.

“We remain on track for an outbreak of severe thunderstorms on Monday, capable of causing widespread damaging wind, large hail, and tornadoes,” Frank Strait, severe weather liaison for the office said in a statement.

“It still looks like the timing will be early in the day over the Upstate, possibly even before daybreak in the far west, through midday,” Strait said. “The rest of the state will see the storms hit from midday through early evening.”

Thursday, five tornadoes ripped through parts of three Eastern North Carolina counties, injuring a person in a home, tearing roofs, slicing trees and overturning campers, the National Weather Service reported late Friday.

Charlotte forecast

Charlotte has a 100% chance of showers Monday, the NWS forecast on Sunday showed. Sunny skies are forecast on Tuesday and mostly sunny skies through Saturday.

After an expected high of 72 on Sunday, Charlotte could see highs near 66 on Monday, 48 on Tuesday, 50 on Wednesday, 62 on Thursday, 70 on Friday and 75 on Saturday, according to the forecast.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

ROCK HILL, S.C. (WBTV) - Indigenous people with roots in York County will be sharing their culture with the community in Rock Hill all weekend.

Winthrop University in Rock Hill will host the Catawba Nation Powwow starting Friday, March 13, through Sunday, March 15. The event will take place at the Winthrop Coliseum.

A Native American Powwow is a gathering of the community that includes Indigenous dancing, singing, music, food, crafts, intricate regalia and more.

The Catawba Nation sees the event as a way to connect with their ancestors, and with the community.

“It’s a time when we come together as a community, honor our elders and veterans, and celebrate who we are through song, dance, food, and fellowship,” Laney Buckley, community engagement director for the Catawba Nation, told Visit York County.

Tribal nations from across the U.S. were expected to be present at the event. Everyone is welcome to attend the powwow, event organizers say.

The powwow will include various dancing and music “specials,” in which winners for each event will take home cash prizes.

The powwow will take place on Friday, March 13; Saturday, March 14; and Sunday, March 15. Start times vary each day.

Doors will open two hours before each Grand Entry, according to event organizers.

The event will be hosted at Winthrop Coliseum on Winthrop University’s campus in Rock Hill, South Carolina.

Tickets cost $5 for children aged 6-17, for adults 55 and older, and for military members (with ID). Tickets cost $10 for adults aged 18-54.

Children 5 years old and younger can attend for free. A weekend pass costs $25.

Catawba Nation tribal members can get in for half price with their ID.

---> Other news:

A flood of public comments washed through the Rock Hill region last week after two reports of chemical spills at the Silfab Solar plant in Fort Mill.

Many people asked a pair of questions that already were a common refrain in three years of intense public debate: How could a manufacturing company using industrial chemicals be allowed to operate beside an elementary school? And why did the school district decide to put two schools near there?

This comment was typical following a 300-gallon potassium hydroxide solution spill on March 3: “Never should have been built beside schools and homes,” Carole Flynn commented on a Fort Mill School District Facebook post. “What idiots decided that?”

Flint Hill Elementary School is adjacent to Silfab and Flint Hill Middle School is under construction.

Two days after the potassium hydroxide spill, York County reported a leak that Silfab found in February from a hydrofluoric acid holding tank. That second report prompted the S.C. Department of Environmental Services to issue a stop work order for Silfab until the agency could investigate.

That review happened Monday, and Silfab resumed its solar panel assembly operations Monday night. It has yet to begin manufacturing that involves chemicals.

Many residents blamed York County for allowing Silfab to open next to a school. Some blamed the school district for building next to Silfab.

So, who is actually responsible for how Silfab and the schools wound up being neighbors? To untangle the issue, The Herald reviewed county, court and property records dating back nearly a decade, as well as school district documents, county public statements, zoning decisions and the paper’s archive coverage to determine what happened, and how.

Who owned their property first in Fort Mill?

Like many aspects of the Silfab controversy, the question of whether the Fort Mill School District or Silfab got to Gold Hill Road first isn’t a simple one.

Both sites belonged to The Eubanks Family Partnership, in a spot between Interstate 77 and U.S. 21 that was zoned for light industrial uses in 1992.

In 2017, the school district acquired 40 acres from the Eubanks partnership for $10. That was the first part of the now 88-acre district site where Flint Hill Elementary is, and where Flint Hill Middle School is under construction.

The district got the rest of the property in the summer for 2020, through three deals with Eubanks family members combining for $4.5 million, land records show.

In between those deals, work began that eventually would bring Silfab to Fort Mill. In 2019, York County planners approved a traffic analysis for three new commercial buildings at 7149 Logistics Lane.

That fall, The Eubanks partnership sold two properties beside the school site, at nearly 70 acres combined, for $8.5 million. Properties would be subdivided in 2020 for those new buildings, including the one where Silfab is.

So, the school district owned some property on Gold Hill Road first — but commercial building development was underway before the district owned its entire site.

Who planned to build first, Silfab or schools?

Economic developers are typically tight-lipped about big deals before they’re complete, but it’s clear Silfab was in the picture by summer 2021.

That’s when York County Economic Development asked county planners if solar panel manufacturing was allowed in light industrial areas. County staff indicated it was. The Silfab building was completed in 2022.

An early 2022 county code update that disallowed schools in light industrial areas prompted the Fort Mill school district to rezone its 88 acres. The school district applied for rezoning in October 2022, telling county planners to expect an elementary and middle school.

The district had some conversations about putting schools there since 2016, school officials told the county.

In late December 2022, while the school rezoning request was still under consideration, York County planners sent a letter to Silfab stating solar panel manufacturing would be allowed at 7149 Logistics Lane.

At that point, the possibility of neighboring properties with manufacturing chemicals and school children began its collision course.

Should York County and Fort Mill schools have seen the conflict coming?

In February 2023, The Herald named Silfab as the company negotiating with York County for a Fort Mill site. Two weeks later, on On March 6, 2023, the school and Silfab projects both reached a key decision point.

Rezoning for the schools would finish right as Silfab’s incentive approval began.

York County Council voted unanimously that night to finalize the school site rezoning to a zoning class that allows for schools. Later at that meeting, Council voted 5-2 for a tax incentive agreement for Project Mountie, then the codename for Silfab, a Canadian company.

The tax incentives were finalized in September 2023. It projected 800 jobs and a $150 million investment from Silfab.

Early on, though, there were concerns.

Council deferred a vote on the Silfab incentive package when it first came up on Feb. 20, 2023. Councilwoman Debi Cloninger, who represents the district that includes the Silfab and school sites, brought up environmental issues with new schools going beside manufacturing.

As for whether someone in authority should have seen the chemical and school issue coming, some people did. Most of the pushback came from residents, however.

They began speaking out about those concerns in early 2023, and kept doing so through September 2023 when Council approved the Silfab incentive deal by a 4-3 vote.

Split votes on large incentive deals aren’t common in York County. But they happened throughout the more than six-month approval process for Silfab.

Along with traffic, environmental concerns due to chemicals were a major reason why some Council members voted against the Silfab deal. Board members even amended the deal the night they finalized it, requiring Silfab and the property owner to maintain $1 million in environmental insurance for the duration of the tax incentive deal.

That policy would also insure the county, according to the Sept. 18, 2023, vote.

A $50,000 letter of credit was required in the event property owners or tenants had to address an issue requiring “clean up in order to allow a business to occupy the site,” according to the deal.

When residents brought concerns to the school board, board members told them Silfab zoning questions were a York County issue. The school district did address environmental testing plans at Flint Hill Elementary, contracting with environmental monitoring consultant Citadel EHS in May 2025.

The school board never openly discussed any plans to stop construction at either of the new schools once the Silfab project became publicly known.

The school district owned land in the area first, but Silfab’s building was completed before either school opened. Both projects were too far along to back out on account of the other.

Was the Silfab and school conflict inevitable?

Once Silfab and the school district had their county approvals, the groups followed similar timelines.

Two weeks after York County finalized the Silfab incentives, the Fort Mill school board approved a construction contract on Oct. 3, 2023, to build the $56.3 million Flint Hill Elementary. The next day, RG Baxter Lane sold what is now the Silfab property to Pennsylvania-based Exeter 7149 Logistics for $106 million.

In early December 2023, the school board voted to hold a $204 million bond referendum the following spring that included money to build Flint Hill Middle right beside Flint Hill Elementary.

But by early 2024, the Silfab project faced mounting questions from residents.

Neighbor Wally Buchanan asked the county for a zoning interpretation in February on why Silfab was allowed in a light industrial spot. Dissatisfied with the response, Buchanan appealed his request in March 2024 to the county Zoning Board of Appeals.

That same month, school district voters approved the bond referendum that allowed for construction of Flint Hill Middle.

Should the courts have intervened over Silfab?

Public debate turned feverish by the time Buchanan’s case made it to the Zoning Board of Appeals. On May 9, 2024, a packed crowd at the government center in York heard the appeals board vote against county planning staff’s prior decision.

The appeals board ruled solar panel manufacturing, previously unlisted by name in the county code, should only be allowed in heavy industrial areas.

Silfab opponents thought they’d finally won. They thought wrong, and learned a month later that York County didn’t intend to stop Silfab. The county took the position that the zoning board’s decision impacted future projects, but not Silfab since it was ongoing.

Still, Silfab appealed the appeals board decision in June 2024.

In November 2024, Silfab announced it had closed on $100 million of new funding to scale its solar cell manufacturing site in Fort Mill. The company intended to be operational by the end of that year, about eight months before Flint Hill Elementary’s planned opening.

In July and December 2025, the Supreme Court of South Carolina declined to hear two cases related to Silfab. In between, Flint Hill Elementary opened on Aug. 4, 2025.

As several state court cases progressed, the school board continuously called Silfab zoning questions a legal issue outside its control.

In January, a state Circuit Court ruling dismissed a case challenging York County’s actions in support of Silfab. The county issued a statement urging citizens to “be respectful in their disagreement and to avoid publicly advancing allegations or accusations” impugning the county’s character or conduct.

Two months later, York County posted the first report of Silfab’s initial spill. And residents erupted again.

Not just because schools were built beside a factory and a factory was built beside a school. But because both pushed forward with parallel plans without breaking stride, regardless of how they’d be impacted by the properties beside them.

Use the timeline below for more details on school and Silfab decisions:

Reality Check reflects the Rock Hill Herald’s commitment to holding those in power to account, shining a light on public issues that affect our local readers and illuminating the stories that set the Rock Hill region apart. Email realitycheck@heraldonline.com

ROCK HILL, S.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — The future is now at a Rock Hill coffee shop, where the customers consuming caffeine aren’t the only ones wired.

Folks can also get a taste of something modern, thanks to a plugged-in power couple at Techno Café inside the historic Lowenstein Building.

“Adam and Eve, they’re getting to work,” customer Tim Griffin said.

Yes, it’s true, their names are Adam and Eve.

“This is different,” said co-owner Keith Ingalls, describing the reaction of some customers.

They’re called robaristas. Adam handles hot and iced coffee drinks, while Eve does only hot drinks.

“They were made for each other!” Griffin said.

After you order on your phone, you watch the robotic process, waiting for a voice and dramatic drink delivery, when the coffee is lowered into a compartment.

Cheryl Stambaugh is partial to Adam. Just don’t call him, Mr. Coffee.

“He never talks back to me, he’s always kind to me, he says my name,” said Stambaugh.

Co-owners Keith and Chauntel Ingalls say Swiss-engineered technology tells Adam and Eve what to do to provide a high-end coffee experience.

“The robot doesn’t make anything. The robot is moving a cup from point A to point B,” Ingalls told Queen City News.

The robotic arm is kind of spellbinding, especially at first. The Ingalls and the Techno Cafe staff are on hand to help or to chat.

“We greet people, especially the ones that don’t know what’s going on,” Keith said.

“We wanted it to be special and build a coffee shop around these kiosks and a community,” said Chauntel.

Their pivot to a futuristic-looking business model began after COVID-19.

“We owned a deli and a convenience store in a hospital,” Keith said.

The pandemic took its toll on their ability to have 24/7 staffing at the deli.

“So we went on the hunt trying to find ideas that we could offer on the overnights while we were closed that was automated,” he said. “That was the conception of Techno Café.”

The drawback might be that there’s no barista to talk to, but there’s also no barista to spell your name wrong on the cup.

“Ha-ha and he always gets my name right, it’s great,” Stambaugh said.

Techno Café has kiosks in Maine and New Hampshire, and they hope to deploy them in more Carolinas locations.

Even if robaristas did someday become the wave of the future, Keith says humans will always be key.

“There are people behind the scenes that have to reset these, have to manage those things. They’re just not done on an eight-hour basis,” he said.

Griffin works remotely and says automated service has its perks.

“There’s not a lot of loud noise going on,” said Griffin. “You don’t hear a lot of noise going on from baristas yelling. You don’t hear the clanging of the frother.”

“I mean most of the time you think about a coffee shop they’re pounding [coffee drinks] through any way, you don’t get a lot of interaction. But this coffee is so good,” Stambaugh said.

It’s not your average cup of Joe, served by a boxy barista with quite an arm.

“I might be a little bit smitten. Him and I are bros now,” Stambaugh said.