It has nothing to do with the old name, it is the fact they are renaming with a contrived name. Contrived is never good. The young hip crowd I meet in my travels (at least the ones with taste), eschew anything contrived. I guess the best way I can explain it, is that West End just became young and fun without being contrived. NOMA is simply trying to hard. If many of you are OK with contrived in downtown Greenville then enjoy it. It certainly is not what has made Greenville great these past several years.

The name was changed for a simple reason. It was old and outdated, just like the plaza. Just because you liked the name doesn't mean that everyone did and honestly I didn't even know it had a name. The new name, along with the new plaza and the One development, will attract the younger crowd that has moved on towards the West End. Names are changed all the time and unless you have some way to influence the developers ($), you probably won't get a say it the choice of name. Noma is short, distinct and makes it seem like a new place instead of the plain old plaza in front of the ugly Hyatt.

Not following your analogy.
Both the Drive and the Road Warriors are great names as they tie into the automotive nature of the area. Additionally, both teams were new, not existing and had to be named.
Hyatt Plaza existed, and for whatever silly, small town, reason, was changed to NOMA. A silly change for no legit reason.

Just like with minor league team names in this area, I am sure people will get used to the NoMa name after a while.

Everyone can call it whatever they prefer, but "NoMa" sounds pretentious (out of place) and silly in my opinion. I plan to call it the "North Main Street plaza at the Hyatt," or simply, "the Hyatt plaza."

This is different because it is not designating a part of town NOMA, only the plaza.

Did you know that you can catch baseball at Fluor Field beginning in only five days:

Because Pine Street is also SC Highway 9, SCDOT owns that road. As a result, the State could buy the parcels on the northeast and southeast corners and the intersections could be widened. At first that sounds like a bad idea- making the distance that people have to walk to get across the intersection even longer. However, a slight widening would give you the ability to create a needed, dedicated left turn lane for southbound traffic and install a large, planted median which would allow for pedestrian refuge and actually improve that area for pedestrians. By breaking up a wide intersection in to smaller chunks, it can actually be quite comfortable for pedestrians to negotiate an intersection.

I haven't seen the new and improved Brown Street in person, but I'm sure it looks a lot different than last time I saw it.

As for other streets to use for a live music district, I think Augusta Street has a lot of potential and also has the advantage of being in the West End (which, to me, currently has a somewhat livelier vibe than city center). Several offshoots of Main, such as Broad Street and Washington, have potential too. Even Laurens Street, with the things going on there, could be fun.

I guess my biggest problem with Brown Street is the fact that, other than the surface lot, the short block is made even shorter by the wasted space taken up by the back of one building and an office building across the street with no available street frontage either.