NewlyUpstate

Pretty sure all the high end retail will flock to County Square. I have a feeling it will feel more akin to an outdoor mall than a city downtown, which is fine with me as long as there's good density and mixed uses.

Wow had no idea the timeline was so accelerated. What are the major items that will be missing by the grand opening? Especially with other venues like the Simpsonville Amphitheater publically talking trash about how they were raising money on social media.

Here's the site plans for the Whataburger as part of their zoning application to operate 24/7 https://greenvillesc.gov/DocumentCenter/View/25169/23-0616-S-23-616-Public-Notice-Posting

Yes, that's the site on the corner across Atwood from the History Museum. A Comfort Inn sounds kind of lame for this site. Are there any published site plans or renderings? Comfort Inn just screams suburb sprawl 2 star hotel/motel to me. Maybe they will use their Rise and Shine design which reminds me more of the more recent Courtyard Marriott designs - https://choicehotelsdevelopment.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/COMFORT-RISE-SHINE™-PROTOTYPE-GUIDE_20211.pdf?_sm_nck=1

Bricktops is officially open. They were having a soft opening the past several days. Inside looks quite nice, looking forward to trying this one even though its a "chain"

I would only support a parking garage as part of a mixed use concept along Mayberry Street. Anywhere else would be awful. That being said, so many people complain about parking at Unity Park, but every time I've been to Unity Park, it's incredible easy to find parking in one of the alternate lots. I've literally never seen them full. The lot on Meadow and the lot on Mayberry are almost always less than 25% full. People really need to just stop blindly going to the main parking lot. It would actually be a good idea for the city to put a meter that monitors cars coming in vs out to display when that lot is full, because people just keep going there and getting annoyed when its really only their fault.

AVL continues to have fantastic non-stop destinations. I certainly fly through there several times a year. At GSP you can (now) grab a beer from RJ Rockers and walk the terminal, or go to the Escape Lounge for some above airport average food/drinks. Until AVL has the new terminal, GSP will always provide the better flight experience.

Gman is like the Wall Street Journal to me. The fact-based posts are top-tier, the op-ed/opinion pieces are bottom of the barrel and ignorant if not all together completely fabricated. LOL

Those aren't true community meetings, just meetings where the public can attend and comment if they want. They are way too formal for the kind of back and forth discussion that needs to be able to happen at an actual one. There's plenty of resources on the importance of public/community meetings in city planning alongside tips on how to make them more effective. Solid community meetings are a foundation of a successfully developing city. https://www.planning.org/planning/2019/mar/6tipspublicmeetings/ https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/8/27/who-is-the-public-at-public-meetings https://tcf.org/content/commentary/better-community-meeting-possible/ I think one of the reasons for centralizing and consolidating the meetings at Unity Park is because a ton of the community is there on a daily basis. Projects are more likely to get a good cross section of the general public instead of the angry voices that want to show up at a random strip mall office or church on a weekday night to air their grievances

The monthly project preview meeting satisfies the requirement for a public meeting for projects requiring one., so should actually simplify the process. The requirements for all those things you list in the first paragraph are much more transparent now with the new development code, there should be no reason why a competent developer would not be able to read and satisfy the requirements outlined.

https://www.greenvillesc.gov/civicalerts.aspx?AID=3252 Here's the first month's: https://www.greenvillesc.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_08222023-3533

Interesting article regarding the Sabor closure https://www.postandcourier.com/greenville/why-did-greenvilles-sabor-latin-street-grill-close-so-suddenly/article_1055930a-382f-11ee-8534-b7542e75d2a6.html Sabor owner was looking to transfer ownership to a local operator / franchisee and apparently missed a required date for lease renewal and the landlord leased it out under him. Sounds like the owner had several other issues understanding/following Greenville's processes for restaurants

I certainly like the emphasis on making the townhomes all exterior road facing. Maybe many years from now this area will see true pedestrian traffic

Yes after seeing the map again I'm good with this. Places like Pins tend to locate themselves in mid-sized cities with a lot of young professionals - places like Charlotte, Nashville, Atlanta, Columbus. It's awesome that they found an appeal for their product in our market. I've been to a couple of them and they are usually night-life hot spots. Stand-alone is fine in small doses as long as they remain destinations for pedestrian traffic and aren't a park and visit type spot.

My same thoughts. These are all solid gets, but the individual lots absolutely need to be mixed use with office or residential above every building for this to work and become an urban area. Or else it's just a woodruff road replicate closer to downtown. Edit: one thing I'm thinking about.. it would be interesting to create a running spreadsheet of all the projects to see how we're tracking towards the "3.5 million sqft of mixed use space". These 3 projects only total 40k square feet, which if there truly is no height above them, means the rest of the property is going to have to do a lot to stay on track.

If anything, green energy bills the democrats have been passing were propping up horribly mismanaged companies like Proterra. People I know who worked there said the environment was very chaotic. I almost took a mid level strategic management position there and was told in no uncertain terms to run.

Don't tell me I told you so. Proterra filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy today. Great concept unfortunately ruined by poor management and an inability to navigate through the supply chain challenges of the last 4ish years. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/ev-firm-proterra-files-chapter-11-bankruptcy-2023-08-07/

Gas prices are double than what they were 3 years ago because 3 years ago everybody stopped driving anywhere because this thing called Covid-19 happened and demand completely evaporated globally. Oil prices actually went negative for awhile because producers would rather give oil away then to pay to store it. Some of y'all really don't understand economics.

Gas prices are around $3.70/gal average nationally right now. From 2011-2014, gas prices were right in the same range. $3.71 in 2011 has the same buying power as $5.14 today going off CPI indicies. Meaning gas prices are actually almost 30% cheaper today than they were 10 years ago on a real dollar basis. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=emm_epm0_pte_nus_dpg&f=m

Why do gas prices matter at all? After factoring in inflation, prices are actually relatively low and for the most part stay fairly consistent. Not sure why you keep mentioning it.

The key to this being successful is the very typical mixed-use philosophy - Live, Work, Play. All 3 components need to be strong. It can't just be a destination. You need people walking around weekdays and weekends, nights and afternoons. Shopping, working, living, exploring and having fun. The reason areas like this can fail is because they specialize too much in one aspect, which leads to people leaving during one of those periods.

It's interesting to me that this project is being presented under the legacy RDV zoning instead of the newly enacted zoning. (mix of MX-3 and MX-2) Anyone know when the hard cut off is for all projects to abide by the new zoning? At what point do in-progress projects not benefit from being grandfathered?

At the DRB tomorrow:

Planning Commission sign is for Phase 2. Seems they're not wasting any time with this one.

Oh my god, I can't stop laughing. Guys we're better than Niagara Falls!