EDPro

As a slight aside, the Children's Garden originally had a 'water feature' planned for the middle of the garden, but it was discovered that the water feature would also be classified as a pool. Potential maintenance/water treatment costs completely blew the original budget ($15k/year?), so expect some type of statue/sculpture to be placed there. Just thinking out loud, but this may have played a role in canceling the Main Street/Riverplace fountain.

While not disagreeing with you on the reuse aspect of County Square, I have often heard people joke that it is tough for our county government to have vision when they all work in a building with no windows.

Looks really good, but those renderings make it look like its in the middle of nowhere, just surrounded by fields and trees. (Just sorta made me laugh)

Somebody sent me this today: Go to www.googlefight.com and battle Greenville, SC vs. almost any comparable SE city and we lose most battles.

A little wonky on my part, but I'm looking forward to this: Clemson/Bank of America Global Forum Dinner http://business.clemson.edu/CIT/RegisterGlobalForum.html

In my experience, they tend to do a real good job for lunch, but struggle some at dinner. I, too, had a couple of bad experiences, but the food drew me back. Bar area very cool, too.

Great topic! Going back to Sushi, I'm a pretty big fan of Sushi Masa and Irashai's (and Tsunamai's). And how about BBQ? My favorites are Smokin' Stokes and Henry's Smokehouse. Others maybe not mentioned above: Sarah's Kitchen, the Blockhouse, Blue Ridge Brew Pub, Barleys (technically a chain, but a chain of only 3), Pita House, and Lattitudes.

Michael Del Priore: currently has a studio in Moonville. Has consulted with City and developers on proper lighting, etc.

The Charles Townes statue will be on Main Street near Camperdown, in front of Riverplace. Should be unveiled sometime in March/April. The statue depicts him seated on the same bench that Dr. Townes was sitting on in Washington DC (?) when he originally theorized the laser. Did you know that Dr. Townes is only the second person to ever win both a Nobel Prize and a Templeton Prize (www.templetonprize.org)? The first being Mother Teresa.

Good points. One quick correction: County increased funding for economic development. Prior to 2001, County funded Chamber at $350k per year. Currently they fund their own efforts (GADC) at around $600k per year (plus dues to Upstate Alliance, plus private funds raised to support GADC, plus funds for The Matrix Business Park). Good news is that just in the last few months County has resumed some funding of the Chamber (around $100k per year) for efforts in workforce development, entrepreneurial support, existing industry services. Edit: Sorry Vicupstate. I misread. You are correct. Chamber has stayed active in economic development without funding from COunty. (When I first read it, I thought you were implying County funded Econ. Dev. at a lower level when they set up their own agency). My fault.

"Go Preston" is for Preston Reid. He has been a very active figure in Greenville High School for 20+ years and now has cancer. He is particularly associated with basically running the GHS Booster Club for many, many years. He and his wife Susan sent 5 boys through GHS.

Vacancy Rate is in the 12-14% rage for the CBD. That's a relatively healthy rate and has very slowly declined from a high of about 20% in 1995 (while overall Class A space has increased by roughly 40%). I believe the concern is that most of the absorption of new office space has been tenants moving from Class B up to Class A space, or Class A to less expensive Class A space. A lot of shuffling around and very little "new" office tenants moving to downtown or exisitng companies growing into new space downtown. In addition, office rental rates downtown have historically been and remain to be inexpensive ($18 sf, the same as they were in 1999). This is good for the tenants, but not the developers. Greenville developers have always built downtown for margins that most developers in other cities would not be interested in. So, if we have multiple 14-20 story buildings being constructed, this sends a very inaccurate message to developers that our downtown office market is booming when it is actually quite healthy, but not fully robust. And I'll just throw out there that I personally believe that a 14 or 20 story tower downtown would not really fit the wonderful scale of downtown. I believe one of the greatest attributes of downtown is the 'feel' of livability. In this I mean, Main Street (and the side streets) are outdoor rooms with the facades of buildings as their walls and there are no towers that interrupt that scale. The Daniel building is the tallest building downtown (right?) and it pretty much demarcates the end of the 'walkable/vibrant' area of Main Street. When Mr. Daniel built that building it was an incredible gift to Greenville when very little was going on downtown, but now that it is the showpiece of a metro of 1,000,000, the city and developers should consider the impact of towers on downtown and not just build up to 20 stories tall b/c they can. (Sorry, will hop off my tee-tiny soapbox, really enjoy this discussion board)

http://www.registercitizen.com/site/news.c..._id=12530&rfi=6 gotta love Google

Premier of ICAR Master Plan scheduled for June 28th. Another cool quote: Darla Moore, president of Rainwater, Inc. and founder of the Palmetto Institute speaking about the project on the day of groundbreaking,