sc smitty

Yep, that pretty much sums it up. Take the dated looking style of the old Greenville News building, which was once considered modern and trendy, and trade it for the new trendy and soon to be dated style of everything being built today. In another 20 years, people will be looking at it and wanting to get rid of that outdated eyesore.

DSC_4780 by scsmitty, on Flickr DSC_4774 by scsmitty, on Flickr DSC_4651 by scsmitty, on Flickr DSC_4637 by scsmitty, on Flickr

I don't see too much difference in the look between this and the Link building. Both are just the same trendy design with stacks of boring boxes that are ugly and out of scale with the historic district. I had been hoping this version of the project was dead.

Ironic that they market the property as being in the "Historic West End" at the same time as they destroy the thing that makes the area historic.

Viewing the eclipse at Fluor Field

Between tearing down for new construction, and the horrible remodeling some house flippers are doing, it's disappointing to see the historic architecture of the West End neighborhoods slowly disappearing house by house. The city needs to have some new historic districts established before there's not much left to preserve. This great house on Ware St was recently stripped of all it's original architectural detail and now looks pretty boring compared to what it once was.

Wide enough right of way already exists. A lot of it has just been paved over and used for parking by businesses along the road. The same condition exists along Wade Hampton in the city of Greenville, where whole rows of parking are actually in the right of way. No plans for doing anything about the power lines now, which will limit any decent size trees from being planted. Unfortunately, plans for a planted median down the center of the road were axed due to complaints from a few of the business. That would have made a significant impact on breaking up the wide roadway and getting some good size trees in.

The old metal grate bridge is finally gone.

City Parks & Fire maintenance facility

Unveiling of the new sculpture "Water Blessing" at Greenville Water

Concrete was poured today on the new bridge deck

It is already planned for Rewa to do work on their lines in the area to fix that.

DOT is finally doing some long deferred repairs on the Church St Bridge (between Camperdown and McBee), including resurfacing the bridge deck. Work is expected to go from April to July of 2017.

First piece of the bridge steel and formwork being lifted in.

Abutments under construction for the new bridge across the Reedy.

Well, here's the proposed plan: http://www.greenvillesc.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item/3095?fileID=8654 I'm not opposed to a Chick-fil-a somewhere on Augusta, it just seems forced on this site, and taking up 3/4 of the street frontage to see nothing but drive through lanes and parking doesn't do much for creating a very nice streetscape. A drive through on a restaurant like Panera or Zoe's blends in a lot better when it's part of a larger shopping center. It would be perfectly reasonable to make a exception for a drive through that's discreetly hidden, but here it's very obviously front and center. Not exactly the neighborhood oriented, pedestrian friendly development the city has supposed planned for this corridor, and I think they would have a hard time justifying the need for a special exception.

Absolutely nothing wrong with Harris Teeter coming to Augusta St. A nice grocery store would be a great addition to the area. The plan that is going in could have been done a lot better though. The main thing that bothers me is the scale of the project. It's basically a big box store set all the way at the back of a big parking lot, which is more of what you see on roods like Woodruff, Pleasantburg, or any of the other boring roads with generic development of the same fast food chains and big box stores behind a sea of parking. What makes Augusta St different from the others is it's scale, with smaller shopping centers that have local or independent shops mixed together in the same building with the restaurant chains. There are no big box stores on Augusta, but a properly sized grocery store could have fit in a lot better. Bringing the store closer to the road, something like Publix at McBee (30,000 sf vs the 53,000 sf Harris Teeter) would give a better streetscape, and hide some of the parking in back. There was nothing "crappy" about the original Lewis Plaza that couldn't have been improved with some updating. The old layout had a great pedestrian feel to it, and the old post office looked way better than what's replacing it. I hope we don't end up trashing what everybody likes about living off Augusta.

Plans for the Augusta St Chick-fil-A are going before the city, first to the Board of Zoning Appeals to get a special exemption for their drive thru. Hard to comment without seeing a plan posted yet, but I would be hesitant to make exceptions for more suburban sprawl type development coming to Augusta St. I hope this isn't the typical stand alone fast food restaurant. We've already got the big box grocery store going in. Don't need to turn this into Woodruff Rd. http://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/local/greenville/downtown/2016/08/20/residents-challenge-augusta-road-fast-food-plan/88997480/ There is already a petition up asking the city to deny the drive thru special exception: https://www.change.org/p/board-of-zoning-appeals-stop-chick-fil-a-from-locating-on-augusta-street

Seems like that much demand on Main Street should help to encourage more development onto some of the side streets. While prices on Main are understandably at a premium, I would think some of the currently underdeveloped areas just a block or two away would be able to offer more affordable rents for smaller startup and local businesses. I would hate to see too many of the independent shops and restaurants replaced by national chains.

I've heard from someone that has been inside just this week that the contents of the building are currently being cleaned out and sold off.

There is a public meeting on the updated bicycle master plan for the city of Greenville this week on Thursday the 19th. Drop in style meeting from 4-7 at city hall. Hope this will kick start some new bike lane/ trail projects.