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.
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.
One of the things I’ve noticed here in the Upstate is just how many different organizations there are when it comes to economic development and growth. Of course with economic growth comes more businesses locating here with the additional housing to accommodate the growth in employees. It’s a terrific place for business – particularly those in manufacturing, distribution and logistics. It seems a bit light when it comes to IT tech and med tech but there are movements afoot to try to bring more of those companies and or divisions to the Upstate. The Upstate Business Journal has an excellent summary of Upstate Economic Development organizations.
The City of Greenville has a new Economic Director – Merle Johnson. Mr. Johnson comes to Greenville most recently from being the Economic Director for Charleston County, SC. He is replacing Nancy Whitworth who has been doing the work for the past 40 years. The Upstate Business Journal has an excellent story on our new Economic Director. Welcome Mr. Johnson!