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John Murphy
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.
The Greenville Journal has some wonderful St. Patrick’s Day parade pictures in downtown Greenville, SC from this past weekend. Be sure to check them out!
Verizon has announced that it will be making investments in the Upstate to expand its coverage. As people move here to Greenville, I often get asked, which is the best service to have here in the Upstate. I don’t have a great answer for you. I had been with Sprint for nearly 20 years but switched to Verizon about 3 years ago. Part of my issue was that I was spending a lot of time in gyms throughout the Upstate and my Sprint service was non-existent. Verizon seemed to be better.
Here’s the information about Verizon’s technology upgrade coming to the Upstate of South Carolina. Here’s an explanation from Verizon about 5G.
The little airport that could….things just keep getting better for the Upstate of South Carolina and the airline service out of Greenville-Spartanburg International. This week, Avelo Airlines has announced that it will start providing non-stop flights out of Greenville to Orlando, FL and New Haven, CT. They seem to be advertising flights for $49 one way.
There’s an embedded video in the Upstate Business Journal article about Avelo where GSP makes the announcement of the new air service available.
We have a great airport here but we do need additional flight service. It is a tremendous airport for air freight. Passenger service is getting more attention as well. This past week, United Airlines announced that it will be using bigger planes for service in and out of Greenville. This will bring much needed seat capacity for key cities that United serves.
Greenville Business Magazine is out with its annual 50 Most Influential Leaders this year. It offers a good mix of leadership from business, real estate, health care, banking, education, public activism etc.
GSP, otherwise known as Greenville-Spartanburg Airport will begin an $18 million road improvement project in front of the main terminal building to try to help deal with the increase in traffic. We’ve been reading for a numbrer of years now about the growing shipping and passenger traffic coming in and out of GSP. Well that’s finally catching up and there is a need to make some improvements.
The project is expected to last for about the next two years. GSP is one of those really pleasant surprises so many people have when they come down here. It’s a lovely small airport that packs a pretty big punch. Yes, we do often have to make connections, but more and more there are direct flights in and out of here. Often the short hops are just to Charlotte or Atlanta which take no more than about 20 minutes in the air. You can get to just about anywhere in the country from either of those airports if you can’t reach your destination directly form GSP.
Gas stoves are under attack. It’s no longer limited to multi-family developments in certain states that can’t use gas stoves, but now the Biden Administration is looking to outlaw their use across the country. I’m not sure exactly how this will be implemented. Perhaps they will come up with a plan whereby a homeowner would register his/her gas stove with the government and the government would then have a crew come out and install a new electric stove. It’s not clear how many gas stoves are in operation but it could easily be 15-20 million. If the average new electric stove costs $1,000 then the U.S. government might get this done for a mere $20 billion or so. That does not include the cost to take away and destroy 20,000,000 stoves. It also doesn’t take into account if electrical upgrades need to be made to accomodate the new electric stoves in U.S. homes. I’m not sure what that might cost so maybe that’s another $5 billion? Perhaps the U.S. could do this for $25 billion? Just a drop in the bucket. Maybe they can get the manufacturers onboard if they convince them that there will be $15-$20 billion in sales staring them in the face. But that said, the supply chain and manufacturing capacity would never allow this. So, if they do this, it most likely will be a slow conversion that would take place over the next 20 years or so.
Downtown Greenville, SC just continues to boom! It’s not quite like Raleigh, NC or Nashville, TN but it is now holding its own when it comes to new development of commercial and multi-family property within the city itself.
United Community Bank announced last year that they were leaving Blairsville, Georgia and relocating headquarters in downtown Greenville. They are currently building a gorgeous, state-of-the-art office building in downtown next to the newly built Grand Bohemian Lodge.
The companies involved in the design and construction of this building include Harper General Contractors, McMillan Pazdan Smith Architecture, BPA Engineering, and RMF Engineering.
The building is targeted for completion at some point in 2024. It will be four stories with 118,000 SF. It right down the street from the Camperdown development in downtown Greenville. United Community Bank will be the largest bank headquartered in South Carolina. They will have about 300 employees downtown once this is completed.
I wonder how they feel about work from home :). Any, it’s great to see the continued investment happening in Greenville, SC.
This article caught my attention today in the Post and Courier about a group of people that is looking to restore many of the forgotten cemeteries scattered throughout the Upstate.
If you are reading this from far away and haven’t spend much time here in the Upstate of South Carolina, one of the things that may catch your attention when you come to visit is how many cemetaries there are. It’s a testiment to the long history of the state and how many people were here long before us. It also often seems like they are found in random locations but that’s because they were here first and development sprung up all around these cemetaries.
Prior to coming to South Carolina nearly four years ago, I had lived in Minnesota and prior to that we were in California. As a kid I also lived in North Dakota, Wisconsin, Illinois and North Carolina. I don’t ever recall seeing so many cemeteries. In the upper midwest things are planned out and cemeteries tend to occupy large plots of land. But in South Carolina, cemeteries might just be an acre or two of ground where the early settlers decided that’s where they wanted to bury their dead.
I don’t know about you, but I like cemeteries. I’m always amazed at thinking about how many people were here before we were and wondering about their lives and how challenging their lives must have been. History runs deep here in South Carolina and it’s one of the things I really love about the area.
There are some amazing cemeteries to visit here in South Carolina if you’re in to that kind of thing or maybe a history buff. Here’s some information on the historic cemeteries in Greenville. The Springwood Cemetery in downtown Greenville is incredible and worthy of a visit. There’s also quite the cemetery in downtown Simpsonville, SC as well.
One of the things that I have really come to love about the state of South Carolina is that it is a very business-friendly state. Every day there seems to be news of a new company relocating to South Carolina or news of an existing firm here in the state making some kind of expansion. $5 million, $10 million, $20 million etc. Some stories show much higher investments like Bosch committing $200+ million in South Carolina.
Then there was the BMW battery news that they have plans to spend $1.7B for their EV business. I know I’m missing the other battery announcements but I do want to call this next one out. It is the largest ever economic development announcement in South Carolina. A company called Redwood Materials announced that they plan to invest $3.5B into Berkeley County to build their battery manufacturing facility.
I had reached out last week to the South Carolina Department of Commerce on one of their LinkedIn posts. I had asked to see if they had data on what investment was looking like across the state by region. They kindly sent me this information. It’s accurate through 12-12-22 so it does not include this massive news about Redwood Materials spending $3.5B. That number will swing the results in favor of Low Country for sure.
South Carolina continues to be one of the leaders when it comes to the resurgence in U.S. manufacturing. It sure seems like the state is going to benefit greatly when it comes to the reshoring of manufacturing and tighting up of supply chains. It’s a business-friendly state. The people are hospitable. The population really is from all over the country and all over the world. They generally like limited goverment. The weather isn’t bad. We have access to the mountain and the ocean. We have the Port of Charleston with direct access to the Upstate with the Inland Port of Greer. We have some worldclass universities with Clemson and the University of South Carolina. Most of the state is within an 8-12 hour drive to all the major metros along the east coast as well as up through the midwest. From a transportation, supply chain and distribution location, there aren’t much better. Oh…and the prices of our real estate is substantially lower than nearby Charlotte and Atlanta.