Reason number 1050 why Greenville is such an amazing place to live. The creativity here amongst the business owners, developers and city planners really is outstanding. Check out this pickleball complex that has started construction in Greenville near Unity Park. The actual address is 78 Mayberry St., Greenville. The owners already have a website up for PKL Park GVL.
The developers and owners are Nick Gilley of BASE 360 General Contractors and John Sharkey of Greenville Sports Leagues. BTW, they are calling for local artists to make submissions to be able to paint murals on the walls of one of the buildings.
According to the article in Upstate Business Journal, the cost for the project will be about $3,000,000. This is going to be a fabulous attraction for the city and add tremendous value to community life. Congrats to Nick Gilley and John Sharkey on what looks to be an outstanding asset!
Greenville mst have a phenomenal public relations team and/or word just keeps getting out there about the area. Men’s Journal published the Top 50 places to vacation in the U.S. I’m always a little suspect of these lists but this was fun to look through.
Greenville, South Carolina was the “textile capital of the world” back in the day before everything closed down and moved to China. In its wake has been left abandoned mills scattered throughout the Upstate. Many of these have been converted and renovated back to life and Judson Mill is no exception. But this redevelopment or reuse of the mill has delivered a spectacular adaptation of mixed-use.
If you want to read more about this amazing project, be sure to read the in-depth article published about Judson Mill by the Commercial Real Estate Development Association.
Be sure to check out the Judson Mill District website.
The consolidation in everything continues and we see it in the home building arena. A local favorite, Rosewood Communities, was just acquired by United Homes Group which is a publicly traded company headquatered just out of Columbia, SC. Rosewood Communities builds a gorgeous cottage home in several communities throughout the Upstate of South Carolina. They are a high quality builder that will help $UHG continue to grow in the high growth market of the Upstate.
Here’s the press release announcing the purchase. Congratulations to Rosewood’s owner, Mark Nyblom on the exit. He developed Rosewood Communities into a top notch home building company that delivered a product people really enjoyed. Hopefully United Homes Group will continue with this excellent in quality, design and style. According to the press release, Mark Nyblom will stay on as division manager which should be a good thing.
“Acquiring Rosewood Communities is a great opportunity to expand our existing footprint in the Upstate area,” said UHG Chief Executive Officer Michael Nieri. “With a world-class university in Clemson and a booming industrial base in Greenville with employers like BMW, Upstate South Carolina is a fast growing, attractive new home market. Rosewood’s innovative home designs will also allow us to diversify our product offering in the Upstate, and we plan on using their designs in our other markets.”
There was no mention of the price paid. It sure seems to me to be a brilliant acquisition as I would think these types of plans and communities will be well received throughout the markets where UHG is established as well as those they will move into in the future. Congrats to all involved!
There isn’t a week that goes by it seems without Greenville, SC being named to some list of top places to live, work, vacation and invest. This past week, Greenville, SC was named a Top 10 Most Beautiful and Affordable Places to Live by Travel & Leisure Magazine. Those of us who live here have known this for quite some time but it’s still nice to see the recognition.
People all over the country are evaluating where there are living like never before. The Covid-19 Pandemic allowed people to work from home which means they could live anywhere. Why continue to live in an area that has winter for 4-6 months out of the year when you could live elsewhere? Why live in a over regulated blue state with the heavy hand of government when you could live in a state with better weather, access to beaches and mountains and where the government doesn’t try to control every aspect of your life? South Carolina is a great option and tens of thousands of people have discovered it.
If you’re thinking of moving from some cold, blue state in the north, Midwest or NE, feel free to give me a call and I’d be happy to tell you about Greenville and the Upstate. Call me at 864-276-1448. I’m a licensed real estate broker with eXp Realty in both SC and MN. SC License #113522.
We’ve all seen the video clips of the ongoing debate across the country regarding what kinds of reading material should be accessible to America’s children and youth. We’d like to think that Greenville County would be immune to having to battle this but the fight is here. Yesterday both sides stood their ground at the month meeting of the Greenville County Library Board.
I had the opportunity to be there to hear some of the speakers but I was standing at the threshold to the room so it was hard for me to judge the size of the crowd. I’m guessing there was somewhere between 100-150 people in there and it seemed pretty balance to me but one of the women I spoke with thought the balance may have been slightly infavor of the LGBTQ+ crowd. However, that said, there had been a meeting just a couple of weeks ago and there were perhaps 3 people on the side of conservatism and tradition values and 30+ on the LGBTQ+ side.
The group fighting against the proliferation of LGBTQ+ materials in our public libraries is asking the library board to remove the sexually explicit books from the children’s and youth section and put them in the adult section is my understanding. We don’t want to see our children exposed to this material. In a normal world, which of couse we do not live in, but if we did, this kind of material would be grounds for some kind of charges…it’s sexual exploitation and is corrupting America’s children and youth. We’ve heard about this going on in our public schools across the U.S. buried in DEI and BLM materials. Of course it’s also in the public libraries. Many of us don’t want it here in Greenville County. I would submit that the vast majority trying to protect our children from this assault on their innocence are Christians. We all have heard the following Bible verse read from the pulpit many times over from Mark 9:42…Jesus tells his Disciples….“whoever causes one of these little ones who believe [in me] to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.” To most of us it’s just common sense that you would not expose and encourage sexual activity or exploration in children and youth. At a minimum these discussions should occur with the full knowledge and consent of the child’s parents and not something they might randomly discover in a public library.
What I don’t get is it would seem to me to be pro-LGBTQ+ one must believe in sexualizing children and youth as early in life as possible. Is this what they believe? It exposes children and youth to something they are not ready for and it may become very confusing for them. But of course the LGBTQ+ community and the medical establishment that support their efforts count on children being confused. And of course, they are the “experts”…the doctors, counselors and librarians…they are all certified and educated and have way more knowledge than the average parent…right? They may have more education than the average parent but this does not mean they know what’s best for the child. It’s the parent’s role to make these decisions.
Conservatives in South Carolina have been lulled asleep and it’s time to wake up. Because so much of the state is conservative and votes strongly in favor of traditional values, we figure that our elected Republican officials will have our backs. But you would be wrong. The Left is organized and the act as one big pressure group. That’s not the way conservatives operate but we must get more active and show up. Just have the body count at meetings and events will go a long ways. We don’t have to be nasty but we should be vocal and let our voices be heard making sure our elected representatives know where we stand.
It’s one thing for consenting adults to choose what they do, but it’s another when you start messing with the kids as they have been doing for some time given the explosion in gender dysphoria across the country. Many of us have had the attitude of “live and let live” but again, that’s when it’s consenting adults. It’s a different deal when our children are involved. Oh and for those saying we want to ban books…that’s not true. We just think some of this explicitly sexual material should not be readily accessible to our children is all. Can’t we all agree on that?
BTW, the next meeting for the Greenville County Library Board of Trustees is scheduled for noon on April 24th at the same place – Hughes Library downtown Greenville.
The Greenville County Republican Party will hold their precinct reorg meetings tonight. This is done every other year and is part of the organizing of the precincts. Each precinct will elect an Executive Committeeman, a President, a Treasurer and perhaps a Secretary. The EC represents the precinct at the monthly Greenville County Republican meetings and votes on behalf of the precinct. There is information on the Greenville County GOP site found here.
While South Carolina has a reputation for being conservative, the fact of the matter is that most of the elected representatives at the state and federal level are pretty watered down when it comes to voting for conservative principles. There has been a movement afoot to try to turn the tide but it has been slower than most expected. In South Carolina, the Republicans hold a super majority in the house and senate but often times will have difficulty getting conservative bills through to the Governor’s desk. We are generally way behind states like Florida and Texas when it comes to enacting conservative legislation.
There’s a good opinion piece in FitsNews about the Republican Reorg meetings tonight. It’s written by Olga Lisinska, wife of Jeff Davis the current Greenville County Republican Party Chairman.
And so…we carry on and must go to our precinct reorg meetings tonight. One of South Carolina’s two official mottos is, “While I breathe, I hope.” There are many who want to make sure we continue to defend the southern conservatism found here in the beautiful state of South Carolina…but that doesn’t happen on its own accord. We must participate, engage and let our voices be heard.
Will Greenville County and the Upstate remain a bastion of conservative values? It’s hard to say. My experience tells me that the people here tend to be more conservative than the elected officials and certainly more conservative than those who drive the front facing economic development groups. It seems that Greenville / Upstate business and economic development leaders and have embraced ESG, Black Lives Matter, DEI and LGBTQ+ initiatives. These initiatives must be promoted until the population embraces the movement…especially in conservative Greenville…right?
Recently I attended the annual meeting for the Upstate SC Alliance at the Greenville Convention Center. There had to be between 500-750 people in attendance. The Upstate SC Alliance does a great job of promoting the Upstate and tries to recruit companies to establish themselves here. That’s great. But I was caught off guard a bit when one of the leaders said from the stage that the Alliance supports Black Lives Matter. They then went on to play a promotional video that also had some BLM messaging in it. I understand that if they are trying to recruit companies from around the world that they have to demonstrate that Greenville, SC and the Upstate are not home to Southern hicks…but I don’t see that that is necessary. Greenville has a phenomenally diverse employer and employee base already without having to try to overly promote how “progressive” the New South has become. The fact is, Greenville and the Upstate is not progressive nor do I think most of the people want to be progressive. And yet, our elected officials, company execs and economic development leaders and groups continue to promote this. Now of course there is the big push for LGBTQ+ initiatives. Really? Must the Upstate demonstrate it’s commitment to LGBTQ+ in order to have a company move to South Carolina? Is this the way our leaders think? Is this how the executives and growth and development teams at the target companies think? Is this just how BIG business thinks? Does the company that runs a $50 million manufacturing business require that the Upstate have progressive initiatives when it comes to these matters?
I had a chuckle a bit when I read that economic development groups state how important ESG is to proper growth and development. As a bystander out here looking from the outside in, it would seem to me that the tide is turning against ESG and yet we are making a bigger commitment to it. I suspect the ESG thing is driven from the very top of the economy and if you want the money, you have to commit to ESG. It will take time to expose the fraud and grift that is ESG investing.
If you want to keep the Upstate the delightful southern conservative place that it has been without the full embrace of big city, big corporation, big government progressive policies, then you’re going to have to get involved and speak up. It’s unlikely we’ll see these kinds of policies and initiatives come from our county councils. It will come from the City of Greenville, the economic development organizations the big companies themselves and the public schools. Here’s the Post and Courier story about the progress being made on LGBTQ matters.