Wedding & Event Venue Near Rock Hill, SC.

The man was reported to have jumped into the Catawba River on Monday evening near the Rock Hill Highway bridge.

LANCASTER, S.C. — Rescue teams are searching for a man who reportedly jumped into the Catawba River near the Rock Hill Highway bridge in Lancaster.

For the latest breaking news, weather and traffic alerts, download the WCNC Charlotte mobile app and enable push notifications.

Lancaster County Public Safety Communications received a call shortly before 5:30 p.m. on Monday that a man drove a white van onto the bridge from the York County side, abandoned the van and jumped into the river.

Lancaster County Sheriff's Office, York County Sheriff's Office and Lancaster Fire-Rescue are actively searching for the man. They are also using drones and K-9 units in the search.

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The bridge is closed to traffic at this time and officials are asking the public to avoid the area until further notice.

Anyone who has information about this is asked to call the Lancaster County Sheriff's Office at 803-283-3388 or submit a tip here.

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For customers of a certain age, the name Dank Burrito may require a little explanation. But it’s the burrito part that could trip up just about anybody.

“We’re not Mexican at all,” said company founder Clarke Merrell.

Rock Hill’s newest restaurant — it opens Friday — offers jerk chicken, Cajun fried mahi, cheesesteaks, pork belly and soy ginger pork. There’s teriyaki or honey truffle Buffalo, each in chicken or shrimp. Yes, they’re served in burrito wraps. Or in tacos, bowls and salads. The idea is a chef-inspired worldwide palette, with the convenience of a handheld option.

The result is something owners believe is pretty dank, or “ultra fresh,” as store owner Justin Miller described what makes food ‘dank.’ “(Merrell) likes to say it’s ‘fresh to death.’ High quality.”

The only thing more colorful than the Rock Hill-themed graffiti and “flavor bomb” photos bursting from menu screens on the walls may just be the man who brought both to the city.

Merrell knows the insides of a Sunday morning church service and a tattoo parlor. He’s run a white tablecloth restaurant and popular food truck. Merrell wants to keep Dank Burrito edgy and fun, even down to the menu listings.

“We call them flavor bombs, because that’s what they are,” Merrell said.

Merrell playfully explains there aren’t any microwaves. There’s only a small freezer. Produce comes in and is hand-cut daily for ingredients and sauces. All that cutting is tough on employees, but there’s a reason for it — taste.

“It’s 1,000 times better,” Merrell said.

Customers can choose from favorite flavors or modify most dishes, but what makes Dank different from many burrito places are the set pairings. The pork belly matches the sweet Thai chili sauce.

The ranch slaw goes with the honey truffle options. It’s part of Merrell’s flavor, that chefs can build a better burrito even than customers could create themselves.

“It’s not black or pinto beans, chicken or beef,” Miller said.

Dank Burrito sits in a corner spot at 343 Technology Center Way. Across from the Cambria hotel, it’s right beside the Everbowl craft super food site.

Dank is a soft holler away from the Rock Hill Sports & Event Center one side, and the Power House development on the other. Miller mentioned a pizza place that is expected among several brand new storefronts just beside his.

Merrell didn’t know much about Rock Hill until Miller answered a call out in search of the company’s first franchisee. Dank started in 2014 as a food truck and opened a restaurant the next year in Morehead City, North Carolina.

After Rock Hill, Dank will open two locations in North Carolina and another in Florida. Once Merrell visited Rock Hill, he was sold.

“There’s so much going on in Rock Hill, it was hard to just pick one spot,” he said.

The graffiti walls inside the restaurant tell the story.

There are Football City, USA and Winthrop University logos. An image of the iconic Civitas statue at Dave Lyle and Gateway boulevards joins images of the University Center smoke stacks and White Street train.

Miller lives in Fort Mill but spent time in Rock Hill as an investor in new home projects.

The style, brand and food made him want in on what’s now a 3,400-square-foot restaurant with seating for more than 100 customers. Dank will employ about 25 people. Merrell and Miller agree the University Center site made sense with its proximity to a sports arena, hotel, university and new apartment buildings.

“We knew that there was going to be a lot of energy,” Merrell said.

Dank will be open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. Food will be available on DoorDash, Uber Eats, the Dank Burrito website or its app. There’s a rewards program and a secret menu available on the app.

The company and new store owners know it may take a little time for customers to understand what Dank Burrito is about, but with each trip to the new restaurant they’ll get it.

“They can see the inside and realize it’s fresh and hip, just like our food,” Miller said.

This story was originally published February 6, 2024, 5:50 AM.

ROCK HILL, S.C. (CN2 NEWS) – We want to update you on a story that has touched so many in the Rock Hill community and beyond. Ciara Dierking, a Rock Hill mom of two and a wife who became very sick while visiting family in Pennsylvania, is now close to home at a Charlotte hospital. She was transported Friday morning. This is according to family members.

Ciara still has a long road of recovery ahead. The Go Fund Me account created has now raised more than 100,000 dollars. The family says they are very grateful for all of the support so far and will miss the doctors and nurses in Pennsylvania who they say saved Ciara’s life.

A recap of Ciara’s story:

Back in December of 2023 Ciara, her husband, David, and their two sons, Colton and Jackson were visiting family in Pennsylvania for Christmas when she and her youngest became very sick.

Colton, who was 3 at the time started to complain of pain in his neck. Ciara took him to a nearby urgent care.

He was sent to a hospital on December 26th and doctors there said he had Coronavirus and Strep. They also found two abscesses in his neck. He would soon have two surgeries and is now recovering well.

David says Ciara also wasn’t feeling well but was focused on her son. Two days later she was rushed to the hospital.

Ciara had Influenza b, group a Strep, and Pneumonia. David says toxins got into her blood stream which sent her into septic shock.

Her organs were failing, and Ciara was put on life support. Doctors told them to pray for a miracle.

According to the family’s Go Fund Me account a defibrillator was used on Ciara. Her heart stopped beating.

Family says thankfully they had already put her on Ecmo, meaning, they could still keep her alive even with her heart not beating.

David says because of the high level of blood pressure medicine she was given to save her life, doctors told them there’s was a very high chance she would lose her arms and legs.

David says that’s because the medicine narrows the blood vessels in order to increase pressure. Sadly Ciara had to have her arms and legs amputated but David is thankful she’s alive.

Go Fund Me Link: https://www.gofundme.com/f/david-and-ciara-dierking-medical-expenses?utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link_all&utm_source=customer

Folks who want to try some of the best-known Rock Hill and Fort Mill restaurants can do it on a deal, with the arrival of two restaurant weeks.

South Carolina and Charlotte each have restaurant weeks where eateries set fixed-price menus. They overlap this month. Most options include appetizers, an entree and dessert, and many restaurants encourage reservations.

Last year, York County launched its own restaurant week with the YoCo Taste Trail Week. That event happens in the summer.

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Restaurant Week South Carolina began Thursday, and runs through Jan. 21. Six York County restaurants are participating:

? Carolina Ale House in Kingsley has a three-course lunch or dinner for $24.99. Entrees are a Buffalo zinger wrap and sourdough patty melt.

? Flipside Restaurant Group’s Salmeri’s Italian Kitchen, The Flipside Cafe and The Flipside Restaurant have three-course dinners for $32 or $35. Entrees at Salmeri’s include lobster and shrimp ravioli, Cajun shrimp fettuccine, pumpkin ravioli. Flipside sites have almost their full entree menus participating.

? FM Eatery, also part of the Flipside group, offers four courses for $40. Small plate choices include Cheerwine braised beef short ribs, buttermilk fried Argentinian red shrimp and braised lamb gnocchi.

? Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken is on the list, but a menu isn’t posted yet.

All of the York County locations are in Fort Mill or Rock Hill.

Four more Fort Mill and Rock Hill restaurants have deals on the menu with the return of Queen’s Feast in Charlotte. Charlotte Restaurant Week brings eateries together for prix fixe menus at $30-$50 per person. Reservations are recommended, and the dinner-only event runs from Jan. 19-28.

More than 100 restaurants will participate. The ones in York County are:

? Fish Market Bar and Grill in Baxter has $35 and $45 options, with entrees lobster mac and cheese, fig-glazed salmon, petit filet and Chilean sea bass.

? Napa at Kingsley is $40 per person with entrees like mushroom ravioli, pan-roasted salmon and braised short rib.

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January 04, 2024 1:05 PM

? Old Town Kitchen & Cocktails in Rock Hill lists a $40 menu with entrees country fried steak, Creole chicken linguine and autumn succotash.

? The Pump House, also in Rock Hill, also has a $40 menu, with entrees like shrimp and Anson Mills grits, mushroom pot pie, chicken and dumplings, slow braised short rib and grilled pork chop.

For some York and Lancaster county residents, the nearest participating restaurants may be across the state line. Communities like Ballantyne and Union County border the Lancaster County panhandle.

Steele Creek and Gaston County bump up against Lake Wylie, Clover and Tega Cay, while Pineville is connected to Fort Mill and Indian Land.

Those North Carolina communities have a combined 16 restaurants listed.

This story was originally published January 11, 2024, 12:05 PM.

ROCK HILL — City leaders are planning what will become Rock Hill’s largest regional park, spanning 140 acres, and they need the public’s help in designing it.

“We’ve known for a while we’ve needed to do a regional park in the south side of town,” said John Taylor, director of Parks, Recreation and Tourism for Rock Hill. “The city has property that used to be the landfill, so we can’t put a building on top of it, and it’s near some neighborhood parks that need to be renovated.”

The proposed park would stretch from the 500 block of Heckle Boulevard east to East Black Street in the downtown area.

MOA Architecture of Greenville is leading the master plan development for the park, and the city is soliciting public input through an online survey. No deadline has been set for residents to submit their surveys, and there’s no timeline yet for construction of the park.

City leaders also held a public meeting Nov. 28 to get resident feedback.

“You are now a part of our design team,” MOA CEO Michael Allen told the audience. “We have design expertise in knowing the elements that can go into a park, but we want to take your ideas and insert them in the proper way. How do you see this park being used 15, 20 years from now? You have a chance to build a legacy for your community.”

Mayor John Gettys said that, in keeping with Rock Hill’s success with sports tourism, the design for the new park needs to include some methods for generating revenue, which could be through building the types of athletic fields that would attract travel teams. There are also some retail opportunities.

“Maybe there’s even a hotel or a restaurant tucked in at the front,” architect Marie Frier said at the public meeting. “A real destination that is focused on activities that will (generate) revenue and pay for this project.”

Frier said concerns about traffic, environmental factors and nearby neighborhoods need to be taken into account.

ROCK HILL — When high school athletes filled gyms in Rock Hill last year and sank 3-pointers, they helped lift the tourism numbers for the area, giving it the best April for hotel occupancy in the last five years.

“We had Under Armour hold a tournament here for the first time in April,” said Andrew Clinton, president and CEO of Visit York County. “This was their Live Period Circuit, which brought players from all over the country. We have basketball tournaments that mostly draw from the region or the state, where 50 percent of the participants are staying overnight. For Under Armour, it was 97 percent.”

Rock Hill and York County hotels reached nearly 70 percent occupancy in April, the best for 2023. For the year occupancy rates were 60.4 percent at the county’s 42 hotels, which hold 4,000 rooms. That was down slightly from 2022, by about a percentage both.

In other metrics for the year, the hotels posted improvements. Revenue per available room was up 1.8 percent to $59, and revenue overall reached more than $97 million, a 2.6 percent improvement from 2022.

The Rock Hill Sports & Event Center, central to the area’s sports tourism push, hosted the Under Armour Basketball Live Period Circuit for the first time last year. The three-day basketball tournament returns there April 26-28.

Shortly on the heels of that event, the UCI BMX Racing World Championships will be held at the Rock Hill BMX Supercross Track, May 12-18. It will be the second time BMX holds the event in Rock Hill, which has been the only U.S. host the past two decades.

The weeklong competition is expected to have a $20 million economic impact for Rock Hill, Clinton said.