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.
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.
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.
Opportunity Zones are designatured by the federal government as areas where they would like to see new investment to revitalize communities. The benefit is that if you make the investment and improve the property that meet their guidelines and hold the property for at least 10 years, then you won’t have to pay capital gains on the property when you go to sell it.
There are a number of areas here in the Upstate of South Carolina. You can zoom in on the HUD Opportunity Zone map and take a look.
For those of us who live here in the beautiful Upstate of South Carolina, we know it’s a fanstastic place to live. More and more people are discovering the charm, beauty and quality of life that is here in Greenville, SC.
Porch.com recently published results of the hottest housing markets in the U.S. and they say Greenville, SC came out on top.
Greenville, SC is getting so many accolades these days that it’s hard to keep up with them. I see new ones posted seemingly every week on LinkedIn and I keep thinking their duplicate posts but they aren’t. The most recent one was Conde Naste recognizing Greenville, SC as a top place to live.
Don’t believe the hype? Come for a visit. There’s plenty to do and see right here in the Upstate but remember, the mountains are a short 60-90 minute drive and the ocean is just 3.5 hours away if you’re looking to take in more the area.
There’s no doubt South Carolina has become a leading state in the rise again of domestic U.S. manufacturing. The Port of Charleston has played a huge role in the growth of manufacturing, distribution and the overall supplychain. Their Inland Port of Greer essentially extendes the Port of Charleston all the way out to the Upstate. The location of the Upstate being 90 minutes to Charlotte and 2.5 hours to Atlanta makes it a terrific location for all kinds of manufacturers who need to ship product throughout the U.S. as well as the rest of the world. The Upstate Business Journal has an excellent update on the state of industrial real estate here in Greenville. Be sure to read it.
Greenville County boasts more than 600 manufactures have operations here. That’s impressive and it only continues to grow. Greenville County is the largest county in the state of South Carolina with a current population of 514,000. Greenville County is expected to grow by 222,000 people and 86,000 jobs by 2040 as the trend across the America is for people to leave blue states for red states. It’s no wonder companies continue to expand operations here in the Upstate and specifically Greenville County.
Recently I spoke with a business owner who had been operating out of Florida. He was looking for new space for a distribution center in the Southeast. Atlanta was too big, too crowded and very expensive. Charlotte was also very expensive. Someone had told him to check out Greenville, SC and he was pleasantly surprised. He had never heard of it before but it had the infrastructure, access, ease of distribution and transportation – trucking, rail and air cargo with GSP International – and the prices were much, much better here for buildings. So he built a $2.5 million office warehouse here in Greenville.
There are many knowledgeable industrial and commercial real estate brokers in Greenville that can help you with that decision. The Greenville Area Development Corp. is also a very helpful organization for companies evaluating the Upstate.
Just have to run a plug for my Catholic parish here in the Upstate of South Carolina. Prince of Peace was recently named the “Best Place of Worship in the Upstate for 2022.” On the Prince of Peace Facebook page, the church published the following…
“We are deeply moved and profoundly grateful to have learned that Prince of Peace Catholic Church was named the 🏆 2022 Best Place of Worship in the Upstate 🏆 in the annual contest hosted by the Greenville News and representing over 40,000 participants. Our parish was up against solid competition across a diverse group of denominations and non-denominational churches in the area! This award belongs to every member of our parish and school community for the way in which they live their faith pursuing sainthood, welcome and serve others, and spread goodwill as Catholics in the Upstate. Thank you to each one of you who voted!
“Hold your eyes on God and leave the doing to Him. That is all the doing you have to worry about.” – St. Jane Frances de Chantal”
We have found Peace of Peace to be a wonderful community and an event better place to worship!
The Greenville Zoo is about to get some nice improvements. According to the story running in the Post and Courier the Zoo will see the following:
“A giraffe feeding platform. An upgraded, more accessible Africa plaza. A new orangutan enclosure and an renovated siamang exhibit. An expanded farmyard section.
Those capital projects are in the pipeline at the Greenville Zoo, upgrades intended to enhance the experience of visitors and keep the facility in line with Association of Zoos and Aquariums accreditation standards.
Altogether, the improvements are expected to cost more than $5 million, part of which will be covered by a $1 million earmark in the state budget for the current fiscal year and the rest of which will be funded through private donations.”
I was kind of a amazed that Greenville has a Zoo given the size of the Upstate but this is just another sign of the continual improvements being made here and the quality of life is tough to beat!
Check out the Greenville Zoo’s Facebook Page for more information and some fun photos!