Spartanburg Journal Discussion

[Spartan]

Well I know they have been working on this for some time now. Its just a feasability analysis if I'm not mistaken. I think that they should go ahead and invest in one of those mag-lev trains that they have running in China or something like the TGV in France. Anything that does not use the existing rail lines. These things need to go faster than you can on the interstate or they won't be very well used.

[hub-city]

There wasn't a TBA section in this week's journal.

[GSP Tiger]

There wasn't a TBA section in this week's journal.

I noticed the same thing with Greenville Journal. Perhaps there was hardly anything to report on or there was no room for it because of a feature arcticle.

[hub-city]

Fron this week's Journal:

An article about the county's desire to clean up and enforce codes and back taxes on mobile homes.

A story about the hospitality tax funds. One interesting note is that in 2003 the tax brought in 2.4 million. this year they are on track to receive around 3.4 million - a sign of growing economic activity in the city.

TBA's

Look for an announcement about a new six acre park coming to Spartanburg

Bronco's mexican is moving into the Steffano's building on Union Street

Starbucks will open a coffee shop in a vacant bank building at the Hillcrest Shopping Center (the new store is almost finished)

Spartanburg's first Jamacan food restaurant is open near the intersection of Magnolia and Cleveland Street

[Spartan]

I wonder if its the new Westside Park?

I'm glad starbucks is expanding in the area, but I hope it does not hurt our local coffee shops in the area like Hub-City Coffee (in Hillcrest)

Where is Cleveland St? Is that the little strip of vacant shops near Wofford? I'm interested to know what Jamaican food is like, and if this restaurant will be reasonably priced.

[roads-scholar]

Fron this week's Journal:

An article about the county's desire to clean up and enforce codes and back taxes on mobile homes.

A story about the hospitality tax funds. One interesting note is that in 2003 the tax brought in 2.4 million. this year they are on track to receive around 3.4 million - a sign of growing economic activity in the city.

TBA's

Look for an announcement about a new six acre park coming to Spartanburg

Bronco's mexican is moving into the Steffano's building on Union Street

Bronco's should be a good fit here. They are currently located just down the road in a rather small building.

Starbucks will open a coffee shop in a vacant bank building at the Hillcrest Shopping Center (the new store is almost finished)

Spartanburg's first Jamacan food restaurant is open near the intersection of Magnolia and Cleveland Street

[hub-city]

It looks like the 6 acre park mentioned might be at USC Upstate. The paper has an article showing the new park announced at the campus including a pond with a bordwalk over it, ampitheater, walking trails and outdoor classroom. There is a picture in the hard copy, but I didn't see one online. Maybe they will post that later. Check the Herald Journal story.

[Spartan]

Oh ok, this is definitely new. That land was owned by Milliken and there is a small pond already there. The amphitheater you are thinking about is a different one, and it is already in existance over near Lawson's Fork behind the CLC.

[Spartan]

No TBA this week. What is up with that?

[emo]

yeah there were no tba's the other week too. that's always disappointing.

anyway, it sounds like this new peace park is going to be really great.

[Spartan]

I guess the TBA's ahve moved to a monthy schedule for printing. At anyrate, here is this week's TBA:

-Smith's fine Jewelry is moving to a new location on Kennedy Street behind the Piedmont Club

-Nextel is opening a new store at Evins and N Church (near Wofford)

-Eastside Nursery is leaving Hillcrest and moving to a new, larger site on Drayton Road near the Lawson's Fork.

-There are rumors that Fuddruckers is looking for a site in the Hillcrest area.

-New owners for the Radisson.

[GSP Tiger]

-There are rumors that Fuddruckers is looking for a site in the Hillcrest area.

[hub-city]

From this week's Journal:

An article about the master plan. It is being made into a 12 page document that can be circulated, so let's look for that in the coming weeks. This plan is exciting because unlike other plans, it doesn't hinge on a major attraction. It seems to focus a lot on connectivity and infill.

There is another article on the explosion of Kennedy Street. We've discussed that in other threads, but one thing that caught my eye was the possibility of a "high end restaurant" maybe coming to the Hardee's site.

TBA's:

Look for more info coming soon for the office/condo project at the corner of Liberty/Broad

More discussion on what to do with the Dupree house

A major part of the downtown plan is figuring out what to do with the Beaumont Mills site

Spartanburg will host Upstate leaders on Nov. 2 to look at enviromental issues

Many of those same leaders will be back that night for a look at how globalization has affected the region

[Spartan]

Thanks for the update!

I may have to get a copy of this weeks Journal. Kennedy St is exploding to be sure, but it needs a makeover badly... if we could get the powerlines buried and the sidewalks fixed, it coudl be a cool place. It proabbly could only be an office district at best, but the idea of a nice restaurant in the original Hardee's site is exciting

Beaumont Mills should be high density mixed use housing. The Beaumont Mills neighborhood association decided that they wanted to incorporate that site into the community before, but they decided the best way to do that was a wall of trees, which confuses me to no end. That site has way too much parking on it for such a grand building on the entrance to downtown. It needs to be developed in a way that reflects the history of that mill community and Spartanburg.

[Spartan]

Lots of interesting things in the Journal this week:

TBA:

• Expect to hear news about a strong Southside growcery store tenant

• Snyder Electric has purchased the final pieces of the old grain mill downtown... no plans yet.

• Inman Mills will be converted to lofts {if you read UP you already know this!}

• the City wants to see houses in Hampton Heights turned into live/work units

The City is promoting the first Art Hop. It is an "arts crawl" that is designed to get people out to local businesses and art galleries around town. You may be familiar with First Friday's in Greenville, which has been successful in getting people into the West End. The first one will be Dec 15, the evening before the Shrine Bowl. People will be able to walk, bike, drive, or take the trolley between downtown businesses and Hampton Heights. Businesses and galleries will stay open later (until 9pm) in a coordinated effort to draw in more business. The success of this even will determine the future of it.

http://www.sparthop.com

Sounds like a good idea to me. I hope this will start the ball rolling on keeping businesses in downtown Spartanburg open later!

[krazeeboi]

Spartanburg should have had something like this in place already, but it's good to see it's getting underway. I'm assuming its something like Artista Vista in Columbia?

Concerning Kennedy St., help us non-locals out; what exactly is on that street? From your description, it sounds like it needs a good ol' streetscaping.

[goodbye]

Lots of interesting things in the Journal this week:

TBA:

• Expect to hear news about a strong Southside growcery store tenant

• Snyder Electric has purchased the final pieces of the old grain mill downtown... no plans yet.

• Inman Mills will be converted to lofts {if you read UP you already know this!}

• the City wants to see houses in Hampton Heights turned into live/work units

The City is promoting the first Art Hop. It is an "arts crawl" that is designed to get people out to local businesses and art galleries around town. You may be familiar with First Friday's in Greenville, which has been successful in getting people into the West End. The first one will be Dec 15, the evening before the Shrine Bowl. People will be able to walk, bike, drive, or take the trolley between downtown businesses and Hampton Heights. Businesses and galleries will stay open later (until 9pm) in a coordinated effort to draw in more business. The success of this even will determine the future of it.

http://www.sparthop.com

Sounds like a good idea to me. I hope this will start the ball rolling on keeping businesses in downtown Spartanburg open later!

[Spartan]

Spartanburg should have had something like this in place already, but it's good to see it's getting underway. I'm assuming its something like Artista Vista in Columbia?

Concerning Kennedy St., help us non-locals out; what exactly is on that street? From your description, it sounds like it needs a good ol' streetscaping.

[hub-city]

I've misplaced my Journal, but I do remember that there is talk of a row of shops coming behind Starbucks and the city is still talking about wayfinding signs for downtown.

[Spartan]

How will they put any stores behing starbucks? That is a massive hill they would have to cut down. Or is it that old used car lot?

I remember there being talk of a Starbucks coming to Hillcrest Speacialty Row.... is that what you mean?

[hub-city]

I was alos confused by the "behind" but I wanted to put what the paper mentioned. There is room for shops beside Starbuck in those empty lots along Pine Street so maybe thats what they mean.

[hub-city]

It looks like "beside" Starbucks is the right choice of words. They have graded the vacant parking lot there and a survey crew is on site. Don't know any other details yet.

[Spartan]

I highly recommend picking up a copy of this week's Journal:

TBA's:

• Despite the increase in white-collar jobs in the last few years, Spartanburg County has the fourth highest pay rate in the Upstate. It trails Greenville, Anderson, and Pickens. [it doesn't say what the rates are though, and I suspect Pickens gets a major boost from Clemson]

• The future of High Speed Rail should be comin gout sometime after the first of the year.

• Interest is heating up in the Beaumont Mill site. The company marketing the former mill has gotten contacts from as far away as Los Angeles. The hope is to turn the entire property into a mixed use site [VERY EXCITING!]

• While people seem to always talk about the housing market, the number of commercial/industrial construction permits rivals the number of housing permits so far this year. Actually, the number of industrial permits doubled the number of residential permits in the second quarter of this year... [does say inf thats the county, the Upstate, or SC though... I assume Spartanburg County]

Other articles...

Downtown Plan gains steam: this discusses the master planning efforts. They hopew to have the plan out be early 2007. Its basicly a review of what we already knew about the plan, but I will go over some of the attractions and detractions about downtown that the Lawrence Group listed. I always enjoy other's perspectives on what we have to offer in Spartanburg. Major overall goals are to make downtown more pedestrian friendly and add housing and retail to the area (infill).

Attractions:

Colleges

Private investment (eg ESA, QS/1)

A large downtown

Church development

Large Public library

Detractions:

City Hall has outlived its usefulness

5 lane Church St

Main St isn't conductive to driving [i thought that was a good thing?]

Too many passive parks [ABSOLUTELY!!]

Little downtown housing

I am glad that they mention the passive parks thing. That is my #1 pet peeve with downtown Spartanburg! We have to many of these useless greenspaces like in front of the Library or infront of the Marriott. Yeah it looks nice to the driver, but its bad for the pedestrian environment we "say" want to encourage. If you want a large greenspace in a downtown setting, make it awesome and call it a park. put a path with benches through the area, and connect it with something else.

The space in front of the library should be connected with the courtyard in the "back" of the library, and that should be made into a second main entrance that flows out onto Church St. so that people could actually walk to the library from downtown and would actually want to do it! Its so simple. That place is all of 1 block away physically but you have to walk the length of 2 to get there, including a rather intimidating set of stairs, or walk the lenght of 3 past the service entrances to get to the back entrace (which most people use) at the parking lot. Or you could do like most people would do and drive from Morgan Square to the library.

[Spartan]

Lots of interesting things in the Journal this week:

TBA:

• Expect to hear news about a strong Southside growcery store tenant

• Snyder Electric has purchased the final pieces of the old grain mill downtown... no plans yet.

• Inman Mills will be converted to lofts {if you read UP you already know this!}

• the City wants to see houses in Hampton Heights turned into live/work units

The City is promoting the first Art Hop. It is an "arts crawl" that is designed to get people out to local businesses and art galleries around town. You may be familiar with First Friday's in Greenville, which has been successful in getting people into the West End. The first one will be Dec 15, the evening before the Shrine Bowl. People will be able to walk, bike, drive, or take the trolley between downtown businesses and Hampton Heights. Businesses and galleries will stay open later (until 9pm) in a coordinated effort to draw in more business. The success of this even will determine the future of it.

http://www.sparthop.com

Sounds like a good idea to me. I hope this will start the ball rolling on keeping businesses in downtown Spartanburg open later!

[krazeeboi]

Well, the good thing about the detractions is that they are all easily fixable.

Spartan, do you think the point about "passive parks" was referring to the "mini lawns" downtown (eg, county library HQ, Extended Stay HQ), or spaces that are actually designed to be parks, but aren't really engaging?