mallguy

There were only a few Publix stores then, though, and not until the mid/late 1990s: McAlister Square and maybe a handful of others. HT spent a lot of effort expanding in northern Virginia and in SC and towards Atlanta during the '90s and early 2000s, and it had some really nice stores in Atlanta and invested a lot in those stores; I shopped at one of them then. HT had some nice stores in Greenville, too, such as the one at I-385 and Roper Mountain Road. HT pulled out; it's true that Bi-Lo bought the stores in SC and Kroger bought the stores in GA, but HT pulled out of basically everything in the I-85 corridor south of the NC state line, and it also pulled out of Columbia. It gave up. Separately, HT and Lowe's recently did a store swap. HT pulled out of lower-income areas and traded those stores to Lowe's.

Your insult fails as a logical argument because HT did extensive market research when it came to Greenville (and elsewhere in SC and GA) the first time. It pulled out of Georgia and most of South Carolina, in some cases pretty soon after opening new stores there.

More convenient? The Augusta Road HT is about the same distance from a typical Alta Vista house as the downtown Publix. The Stone Avenue HT has never been a prime retail location, even when Sears was there.

Am I the only one thinking that HT returning to Greenville may be a misfire? When Harris Teeter was in Greenville before (1990s), the only other grocery stores around were Bi-Lo and Winn-Dixie and maybe an Ingles or two, plus one Fresh Market. HT was the only upscale grocery store chain in town. The only other upscale grocery store around was one Fresh Market on East North Street. Even with that, HT pulled out of the market. Now, upscale Publix has already taken root, and I love that store. There are now two Fresh Markets and a Whole Foods, so the higher-end segment is already occupied. HT will, I'd guess, split the market with Publix, but Publix has stores all over town and has a loyal following. I'm staying put with the downtown Publix, as it's a great store with such friendly employees. What am I missing?

Thanks. Not only do I find it astounding that I-85 was allowed to deteriorate so much in the first place, but I find management of effects on drivers very poor. The SCDOT webpage should have a list of times and places of upcoming lane closures, but unless I'm missing something, it does not. I've started using Roadnow.com, which helps, though. Road signs should give detailed information about lane closures and alternate routes, but they do not. I was stuck along I-85 in Spartanburg for an hour due to lane closures, despite business 85 being an easy-to-use, parallel route, because the road signs just said, "Heavy Traffic Ahead" and "Prepare to Stop". I appreciate the head's up, but the signs should have said, "Avoid I-85; Hourlong Construction Delays; Use Business 85 (Take Exit XX)". Further, since I read that stopped traffic due to merging lanes can be eliminated (and traffic will continue at good rates of speed) if even a few people keep spaces in front of their cars to allow others to merge in front of them. Why not put up signs saying the following near where lanes merge on I-85: "KEEP 2 CAR SPACES CLEAR IN FRONT OF YOU SO OTHERS CAN MERGE; OTHERWISE $200 FINE.", or have a few police cars drive back and forth on I-85, spaced at intervals and keeping large spaces in front of them so that lanes can merge in front of them? (See http://www.smartmotorist.com/traffic-and-safety-guideline/traffic-jams.html) Finally, the DOT should have an alternate method of transportation; additional train service is one way that other metropolitan areas handle long-term highway construction. Connecticut started the Shore Line East trains during a highway construction project, for example. In short: a critical economic lifeline for the Upstate cannot and should not just be effectively shut down at unannounced times; people need to be given information and alternatives to mitigate the shutdowns, and better traffic enforcement can help.

Thanks- will do. Separately, how long will these unannounced lane closures be going on along I-85? I go between Greenville and Charlotte regularly and will not drive on I-85 as long as they are.

Thanks to unannounced lane closings on I-85 last weekend, a trip from Greenville to Charlotte last weekend took 3 hours. The SCDOT should consider doing a temporary extension of some of the Raleigh-Charlotte trains, all the way to Greenville or even Atlanta, while this construction is going on.

I'm glad to see Chick-fil-A downtown, but a real one is what we need. The "express" versions, with food under heat lamps, aren't my preference. If downtown could attract a Chick-fil-A 25 or so years ago, when it was so much smaller and lower-traffic than it is now, why can't CFA proceed with a real location?

Everything in the old US Airways terminal at LGA and in CLT is once you go through security, and the security lines at GSP are atrocious, so seems like a good move to me. Is GSP getting a real TSA pre-check security line back? Will there be a shorter ID-check line for frequent fliers? And surely the airport is getting check-in kiosks back? It's a great looking airport, and the rental car location is terrific, but the lack of standard things for frequent fliers, such as a real TSA pre-check line, and no kiosks, is an incentive to head to CLT.

The PRT system looks great. It would be nice to have some type of public transportation to the airport, and just have it continue around the airport grounds (like the Airtrain to JFK), perhaps as a next phase (although that would be unlikely).

Apology accepted.

ausrutherford should not have made a libelous statement (that I "do not understand" something, when in fact I do, and very well). He has a habit of constantly accusing people of not understanding things, when the issue is that his posts do not reflect well-thought and informative statements. His habit is called "projection": reflecting your own issues on others. There is already plenty of "affordable" (aka "low-income") housing around the County Square site, and we should be thrilled that finally we have non-low-income housing being built downtown in the past 10-15 years, perhaps for the first time since around 1900.

Again, you don't understand. Both the Greenville News and I clearly and repeatedly stated that the area could be "in part" affordable housing. So simply repeating back to me what the Greenville News and I clearly stated serves no purpose. So what is the purpose of your post then, other than to show that your reading comprehension skills are poor? Further, no reputable proponent of affordable housing has ever stated that the goal is to give people more disposable income; the goal is almost always to ensure that people with low incomes have access to jobs in high-rent areas. Again, again, again: you don't understand.

Excuse you? I most certainly understand affordable housing. The Greenville News article clearly stated that the goal would be to have people who work downtown be able to live near downtown. I've lived in an apartment building before that, as per government requirements, was 80/20 (80% market-rate, where I lived, and 20% below-market rate, which was the affordable housing component). Have you? You're the one with the comprehension issue, so don't project your own lack of understanding on others. Having a high density of residents with disposable incomes nearby is key to any commercial area's success. Greenville's downtown has that on its east side, but not on its west side, and so downtown Greenville has done well recently despite being in an iffy demographic area. It is critical for the future growth of downtown to continue to expand its population base of people with disposable incomes. If it does, then additional attractive stores and restaurants will come downtown, and employers will continue to locate there. If it does not, then they will not. Greenville is small enough that for the government to insist that a large block of developable land downtown be used for affordable housing (in part or in whole) on the basis of providing access to downtown is silly, anyhow; if County Square is developed to add affordable housing, what would be a 10-minute commute downtown (which is minimal) for people who live in low-income areas near downtown already would be maybe 5 minutes. The minimal time savings for affordable housing residents' commutes to downtown would have little if any impact on their access to downtown. A better approach would be to let the market decide what gets built at County Square, without any government interference whatsoever, and if accessibility for low-income people to downtown is deemed insufficient, the government could actually invest in public transportation. We've seen the mess that Charlotte has made at the Eastland Mall site due to idiotic government social engineering and lack of business sense. Greenville must not make that same mistake.

Today's Greenville News reports that the county is hiring a consultant to evaluate space needs at the County Square site, and that portions of the site that won't be needed due to a more compact government building being developed can be sold for at least $18MM. That's good, but the government is also saying that the site should be used for low-income housing. That's exactly what the site should NOT be used for (since downtown needs lots of people with incomes to thrive, not lots of people without incomes), and the government should not squander taxpayers' money by offloading the site at less than fair market value.

Like how- requiring landlords to rent spaces at below-market rents to mom & pop retailers, perhaps? Those are all very good locations and are likely having turnover in part because rents are rising so much, which indicates a lot of demand. I have confidence that private-sector landlords and private-sector tenants will be able to handle filling retail spaces in good locations much better than government bureaucrats can.

I'd say that with a Cheesecake Factory and an Apple Store, Haywood is certainly prolonging its viability. Both should more than offset at least one underperforming anchor, Sears, and the emergence of retail clusters downtown and elsewhere.

I was thinking that the first block of South Main (immediately south of Brooks Brothers, down to McBee) hasn't really seen the influx of higher-end stores that the rest of downtown has; it's more like downtown was in 1992. I wonder if higher rents will result in changes there (in addition to one or two restaurants closing lately), or if the buildings on that block are too old for national chain retailers (which seem to go to new spaces downtown, not old ones)?

I see that the Charleston Cooks owner is retiring. Why don't owners sell their stores instead of just closing them, unless they aren't performing well? I've never been into Charleston Cooks but it must have done fine in order to become a chain, and it has a great location and good reviews, so there must be something there.

$50 million for the expansion is $250 per square foot of new space. Isn't that kind of high? Seems odd that no tenants were announced for the expansion. If tenants were already lined up, wouldn't they be named? Maybe this is a gamble by the mall's owners that an expansion will be a shot in the arm for a struggling mall, like Greenville Mall in Greenville, SC was?

Lady Celeste, nice to see some positive things from you for a change.

I've posted about this building before-the yellow former hotel that is across the street from First Presbyterian and diagonally across from the Aloft hotel. I've always been intrigued by it. Why hasn't it been renovated like the Poinsett Hotel was? Is its interior just nothing to be excited about, and too costly to fix up? Are there are any plans or rumors about it? It's certainly a good location now. I assume that there are so many new hotels coming downtown that it would be a while before such a large block of hotel space would be needed. I also remember going to the Poinsett Hotel in the '80s when it was senior housing. The main restaurant (overlooking Main Street) was open then, even though the rest of the building was a retirement center. I wonder if the main restaurant space in the Greenville Summit could be fixed up and open to the public in that way? I remember when it was a dumpy hotel in the '70s, then closed, and then derelict, and then fixed up in the '80s, but it's looking pretty ragged again (not as bad as it was, though). Couldn't it be turned into better housing than it is now-perhaps a small hotel and condos? While I'd be reluctant to move its current residents, such a prime piece of real estate surely hasn't found its best use as low-income housing.

Any updates on this mall? It lost its Sears in a recent round of store closings (to be expected) and apparently its Hollister closed, and Chick-fil-A (wow!) has been gone for a few years, but its remaining anchors still seem to be hanging on. I'd expect the Dillard's to become a clearance center one of these days. I still don't see what went wrong here. Gaston County hasn't exactly boomed- look at downtown Gastonia- but it hasn't spiraled downhill like East Charlotte, as far as I know, and surely the same demographic that supported Eastridge for 20+ years is still around.

The apartment building is UGLY. Faddish architecture isn't usually a good idea, and the boxy architecture fad since the '90s won't last forever.

How can you buy tickets for P&N trains, and where are they advertised? I checked its site on the Iowa Pacific main site and there was a mention of the Christmas trains, but nothing more. I'd have jumped at the chance to take one of these trains!