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Greenville has been a runaway success. But how will those left behind by progress cope?

Greenville will spend the next 20 years fixing what the past 20 have wrought.

Boom-time development led to a lively downtown, big population gains and new amenities like a renowned walking trail and city parks.

But what’s left behind are an increasingly less diverse population with neighborhoods under pressure from commercial creep and property values beyond what some long-time residents can afford.

“Greenville is a good city. It is not a great city,” said S.T. Peden, who came of age in segregated Greenville and now runs a nonprofit created to improve economic life for Black residents.

Greenville leaders know they need more affordable housing and to increase diversity. Their comprehensive plan for 2040, adopted in February, says, among many recommendations, leaders need to listen to the voices they haven’t listened to before.

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“We need to take a deep breath. What do we have here?” Mayor Knox White said.

Greenville has benefited greatly from growth, but it also has learned some lessons from the effect Greenville’s signature downtown Falls Park had on the surrounding area, White said. The city did not imagine the large number of apartments and condominiums that would be built nearby and the rapid increase in the value of the land. And that, in turn, caused development to spread outward from downtown.

Consider:

  • Almost 8,000 housing units were built in the past 10 years throughout the city. Many are multifamily units with a median rental price of $1,400 a month and condominiums selling for six figures or more.

  • Hundreds more units are either approved or in the pipeline, including a large complex inside the boundaries of under-construction Unity Park. Development around Unity, the city’s largest park by far at 60 acres, will be a test for city leaders in applying what they learned from the creation of Falls Park.

  • The median home valuation is $273,100 in 2021, compared to $112,500 20 years ago.

  • The city’s residents are more highly educated, with 20% holding graduate degrees, 27% bachelors and 8% associates. Nearly 70% of residents in this former textile mill city work in a white-collar job.

  • In 2000, Black residents made up 33% of Greenville’s population. The 2020 recently released U.S. Census puts that number at 23%.

Falls Creek, Liberty Bridge, Deca Apartments, Camperdown development, Reedy River, Peace Center
Falls Creek, Liberty Bridge, Deca Apartments, Camperdown development, Reedy River, Peace Center

Numbers are just part of what has come to be known as The Greenville Story, a tale heralded across the nation as a blueprint for downtown revitalization. It began with a city-paid landscaping plan and a convention center-hotel, followed by New South cuisine restaurants, most of them locally owned, and destination stores like Mast General. Then, new offices and hotels. And tourists.

As downtown apartments and condominiums have been built, many on unoccupied or under-used tracts, the inner core grew denser, the complexes pushed closer to — and sometimes into — long-time neighborhoods. This means some people are getting pushed out, or squeezed in, or seeing their community change in ways they don’t necessarily want.

Suzanne Woolf, an artist and resident of the West End, said, “This is a fast-growing city. We’re going to love it to death.”

Greenville neighborhoods need protecting

Woolf and her husband moved from Boston six years ago. She said they wanted to get out of the snow. Greenville attracted them because of the many different neighborhoods, each with a style of their own.

They settled on the West End because, as one of the closest neighborhoods to the central city, it was easily walkable to restaurants and other attractions. They bought a house Woolf describes as being “sad, sad,” with rotting floors and leaking roofs. After seven months in a hotel, they moved into the restored home on Perry Avenue.

Ever since, she and her neighbors have fought one project after another, an example of the battle many neighborhoods are fighting as development creeps in and threatens the neighborhood they originally sought.

Woolf’s neighborhood claimed at least one victory against unwanted development, fighting off a storage facility wrapped around townhomes. But they’ve been dealt many losses. A Burger King, an office building, and a housing complex have all moved in. One of Woolf’s neighbors no longer gets sunshine in the afternoon because their home is blocked by the multi-storied complex.

Now they are battling a potential large apartment building on a long-empty lot that essentially would be across the street from Woolf’s house. As originally proposed, a five-story garage and commercial garbage bins would have been next door to a neighbor who bought her house six months ago.

Woolf’s neighborhood group has been working with the developer to try to make the complex less imposing.

City Councilmember Dorothy Dowe has encouraged such communication between residents and developers as a way for the city to continue to grow and not at the expense of the neighborhoods.

She said that many times people say residents should be aware that they are buying a house beside property zoned commercial. But the reverse is true as well: Buyers of commercial properties should be cognizant of their close neighbors, Dowe said.

The same situation has occurred in neighborhood after neighborhood, and not only with residential developments. Dowe has a series of photos that show commercial creep such as a gym that opens at 5 a.m. and stages workouts outside, right beside someone’s home.

Behind Iron Tribe Fitness, Augusta Road
Behind Iron Tribe Fitness, Augusta Road

Or large garbage bins behind a development that are adjacent to a yard. There’s also a photo of an apartment complex patio with a view straight into someone’s bedroom.

Augusta Commons
Augusta Commons

This is why, Dowe said, the city has contracted with a national firm to rewrite its land use ordinance. And why the city’s 20-year comprehensive plan calls for new areas called “nodes” to be developed on underused property outside the core city that would group commercial, office and multi-family residences.

The only area that could be described as a node that exists today is downtown.

The plan envisions 12 areas around existing neighborhoods where such developments could be built. Some could be built along areas that are underused such as Laurens Road, where big-box stores once existed and are now large parking lots abutting the road. This area is across the street from what’s called Motor Mile, the site of a dozen or more car dealers.

The idea would be to encourage a nicer streetscape where buildings would be a story or two and increase in height the farther back from the road the building went. Because offices, commercial and retail development would be mixed among housing — including affordable units — it would encourage walking and reduce the need for cars.

It also keeps such development away from existing single-family neighborhoods.

In Woolf’s case, the closest proposed node would be around the huge planned development where County Square, headquarters for Greenville County government since the 1980s, is located.

It is a $1 billion project with 3 million square feet of office, retail, hotel, residential and public space, including a multi-story building for county government, which is under construction and expected to be complete by the end of next year.

She sees the major streets around the West End as connectors to the nodes, where there will be commercial development but smaller in scale. Her neighborhood is being called the Cottage District, and she see opportunities ahead to protect that designation

Changes to traditionally Black neighborhoods

Another challenge to Greenville’s neighborhoods stems from gentrification. To anyone who thinks otherwise, Black residents can testify that gentrification is alive and well in Greenville.

One of them is City Council Mayor Pro Tem Lillian Brock Flemming, who this year marked 40 years on the council. She initially ran for a seat to fight against a highway that would have taken out more than 1,100 homes in the Southernside neighborhood, where she grew up.

Home in the Southernside neighborhood in Greenville, South Carolina on Saturday, September 18, 2021. This neighborhood near downtown is experiencing a transformation, with new homes being built across the neighborhood.
Home in the Southernside neighborhood in Greenville, South Carolina on Saturday, September 18, 2021. This neighborhood near downtown is experiencing a transformation, with new homes being built across the neighborhood.

Her mother, Lila Mae Brock, also fought the highway and worked for civil rights until she died in 1996.

The highway was never built in full, but the neighborhood lost about 500 houses and, with them, the people who lived there.

The real challenge, Flemming said, came in 2007-2008 with the recession when people from outside Greenville came to buy what to them was cheap land and to the original owners a windfall. Some residents were tricked out of their property, told the company owned the land so they might as well sign the house over, too, she said.

In most cases, when land was improved, the original owners could not afford to live in the neighborhood.

“They can’t afford $1,800 or $1,200, which is stupid,” Flemming said.

Flemming said she still gets phone calls from developers outside the area wanting to buy her house or the senior citizens complex named for her mother, which she does not own.

“I say, ‘Who invited you to come here?’” she said.

One bright spot is, increasingly, developers are including affordable housing in their projects, Flemming said. One project at the edge of Nicholtown, where many Black leaders lived, will be made up entirely of affordable units.

New construction in the Southernside neighborhood in Greenville, South Carolina on Saturday, September 18, 2021.
New construction in the Southernside neighborhood in Greenville, South Carolina on Saturday, September 18, 2021.

Diversity and lack of opportunity

The decrease in the number of Black residents in Greenville is not only a result of gentrification, Peden said.

It is also economic.

He is a member of the Racial Equity and Economic Mobility (REEM) Commission that was formed last summer to address social injustice and racial inequity. It came after the United Way completed an extensive examination of racial disparities in Greenville County.

“Greenville County, and especially the city of Greenville, is thriving — but not for all residents,” the commission said on its website. “In fact, Greenville County is worse than almost every county in the nation for helping poor and minority children out of poverty and up the economic mobility ladder.”

The United Way found that in just about every way you can measure economic health, Black residents were far below their white counterparts. Per capita income, household income, employment, house ownership, infant mortality, hunger, education.

When Peden joined REEM, he wanted assurance that it was not another study but a way to make lasting change. The board is made up of a lawyer, a banker, United Way members, a chamber of commerce executive and a pastor and draws on the expertise of dozens of experts for committee assignments dealing with education, income and wealth, criminal justice, health and wellness and community-wide learning.

Falls Creek, Liberty Bridge, Deca Apartments, Camperdown development, Reedy River, Peace Center
Falls Creek, Liberty Bridge, Deca Apartments, Camperdown development, Reedy River, Peace Center

The idea is sometime next year for the group to have specific steps that need to be taken to lessen the hold systemic racism has on Greenville.

Peden said as head of the Minority Economic Development Institute he often talks with Black business owners who say they cannot find work in Greenville, but instead take on projects in Charleston and Charlotte. Some say 85% to 90% of their business comes from outside Greenville, Peden said.

He said the recent construction of Fountain Inn High School by Greenville County Schools employed no Black contractors. Tim Waller, spokesman for Greenville County Schools, said the minority firms that worked on that project were owned by women and one Hispanic person.

Peden’s daughter, Ashley Peden Clinkscale, left Greenville, as did several of her friends, because they could not find suitable work, he said. After stints in Dallas, Oklahoma City and Atlanta, Clinkscale is senior vice president of communications for the Portland Trail Blazers.

Peden said he knows of several Black doctors who moved from Greenville to find work in Atlanta and a chemical company that sells its products overseas but cannot get its products in local businesses.

“Seems Greenville culture does not value Black culture and expertise,” he said.

The key, he and Flemming said, is education, beginning as young as possible. Greenville has so many opportunities for young people who grow up with the mindset that anything is attainable: Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research, BMW, Michelin, Lockheed Martin.

Instead, children as young as third grade are not on grade level for subjects like math and reading.

Peden called for a new way of thinking about what’s important as a society.

“Be bold; don’t be inhibited by what we’ve done in the past,” he said.

And most importantly, he said, inclusion is essential.

“Greenville wants to be a community admired nationwide,” he said. “That’s not everybody. That’s for attracting business. We want Greenville to be for everybody.”

Fleming said, “People need to understand racism and excluding people hurts everybody. If you don’t live together and work together, then you have a problem.”

Falls Creek, Liberty Bridge, Deca Apartments, Camperdown development, Reedy River, Peace Center
Falls Creek, Liberty Bridge, Deca Apartments, Camperdown development, Reedy River, Peace Center

The future of Greenville

Knox White will mark 26 years as mayor of Greenville in December. He served on Greenville City Council for 13 years before that. He says his tenure has been guided by planning that resulted in transformation.

Three photos adorn his office walls: the Westin Poinsett Hotel, Liberty Bridge and Fluor Field. Each, in its own way, transformed the city.

Unused for 25 years, the once elegant Poinsett Hotel regained its luster and brought lodging to the south end of Main Street. Liberty Bridge stretching over downtown’s Reedy River in Falls Park gave Greenville its touchstone, White likes to say. And Fluor Field brought baseball to downtown and jumpstarted development in the West End, just south of the central business district. From there, development has spread.

Each was intentional. And that’s what White said the city will do for the next 20 years as it uses the extensive 2040 comprehensive plan as a guide. White said such plans are not fancy paper to put on a shelf. He points to the 2020 comprehensive plan, crafted back in 2009, as proof. In all, most of that plan came to be, and in fact, exceeded it.

In other words, when Greenville puts its mind to get something done, it has a track record of following through.

White said the city learned from the construction of Falls Park in the early 2000s that green space is important and that it brings about growth, especially high-priced residential, that must be planned.

The Grand Bohemian Hotel is taking shape on the banks of the Reedy River in downtown Greenville.
The Grand Bohemian Hotel is taking shape on the banks of the Reedy River in downtown Greenville.

The 60-acre Unity Park, now under construction, offers a new key opportunity, White said. It will be by far the city’s largest park. He sees it as making good on a century-old promise of a park near Southernside, a Black community, on property long used for less-than-desirable operations such as a stockade, incinerator and maintenance shed.

The city is just now beginning to talk about an overall plan for the area around Unity Park, but it is certain affordable housing will be a part. The city donated what White called “beachfront property” to the Greenville Housing Fund for such projects. The first will be for senior citizens.

“People being allowed to stay in the neighborhood,” White said.

One of the statements in the 2040 plan is that city leaders need to listen to people they have not listened to in the past. Peden, Fleming and other leaders in the Black community stand ready to show the way.