128 replies to this topic

[hub-city]

Coca-Cola has partnered with United Resource Recovery Group to build a 60 million dollar bottle to bottle recycling plant in Spartanburg.  It will be expanding it's current facility by 30 acres and hopes to be fully operational by 09 adding 100 more jobs to it's current 40.

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Edited by hub-city, 05 September 2007 - 04:33 PM.

[Spartan]

I think its time we had one of these threads in the Spartanburg section. There sure are enough job announcements around these days....

Anyone else notice any trends with these jobs?

[hub-city]

Hopefully this will help spur more development....  Spartanburg Community college and ICAR have partnered to help encourage companies to set up shop in Spartanburg county.  The college will offer temporary start-up space as well as administrative advice and ICAR will help promote the college and it's tyger river facility.  Great partnership....

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[Spartan]

I like the concept. This is an excellent example of the regional cooperation thing that comes up on here from time to time.

[krazeeboi]

Sounds a lot like the partnership between Midlands Tech and USC's research campus in Columbia.

[hub-city]

More detailed ARTICLE today.

[Hemlock86]

Spartan, on Sep 5 2007, 08:39 PM, said:

I think its time we had one of these threads in the Spartanburg section. There sure are enough job announcements around these days....

Anyone else notice any trends with these jobs?

Johnson Developement has purchased the Bank of America building on East Main St, as well as the Broadwalk building on Broad St.  and plans to redevelope both properties with a blend of offices, street retail and resturants.  Sounds great to me.

[Spartan]

This article is about developments in the county, but it does tie into Spartanburg too.

Its mostly about Woodruff, and how they want economic development. They can't draw in big companies like Spartanburg can, so they are looking for retail and a service based economy to sustain itself, even if its Tier 2 retail. The article also mentions Pacolet, which needs to build a sewer line in order to get any new commercial development and jobs in what is more or less its commercial center on S Pine St between Church St and Hwy 150. The outlying communities have different problems generating jobs on their own as they transform into bedroom communities for the larger centers like Spartanburg and Greenville.

The most interesting part of the article is where Spartanburg and the SCEDC are mentioned. Assuming the article is in fact correct, SCEDC primarily courts major manufacturing, distribution, and large office projects. I find this interesting because I haven't noticed any large office projects going up lately except for what is being done by local efforts. It seems to me that their efforts have been more geared towards the first two.

Top Employers in Spartanburg County

• Spartanburg Regional Medical Center
  
• BMW Manufacturing Co.
  
• Cryovac Division of Sealed Air Corp.
  
• Michelin
  
• Kohler Co.
  
• Tietex International

What I think you should take from this article is that any development is considered good development in Spartanburg County. There isn't any apparent push for higher paying, non-manufacturing/distribution, white collar jobs. I think in the future we can expect continued economic success along the same lines that we are seeing today. There appears to be little effort to improve the quality of development except within the core of the city.

[Spartan]

The SCEDC has merged with the Chamber of Commerce to create a unified economic development voice for Spartanburg. They have an ambitious plan that seeks to correct many shortcomings and wrongs in terms of what the area has been doing to seek new investment. The Economic Futures Group has been created is essentially a retooled SCEDC under the umbrella of the Chamber of Commerce. This will supposedly give more resources and depth to what each group is trying to do, which is ultimately a good thing.

Spartanburg has indeed seen its share of job growth in recent years, but the economy could be more diverse in terms of employers and job types. Spartanburg also needs to do a better job of recruiting and retaining an educated workforce.

• Check out the article in the HJ here.
  
• Check out the Economic Futures Group presentation here. [pdf]

If you only read one, read the presentation from the Economic Futures Group. The article just doesn't do this justice. There is a lot of work to be done to make Spartanburg more competitive. Basically the plan consists of what I would consider a normal operating plan for an economic development group (like identifying target sectors of the economy, diversifying workforce, etc). I won't go through the entire list and plans, but a few key items from my perspective are as follows:

• Develop a brand & marketing
  
• Create a new, unified economic development website
  
• Recruit & retain talent
  
• Launch a business retention program
  
• Develop a business incubation program
  
• Improve Quality of Life & build awareness of Spartanburg

[Spartan]

One more article on the Path to Prosperity and the consolidation of the SCEDC into the Chamber of Commerce. The article reinforces thee fact that Spartanburg's economy is growing significantly slower than most other cities out there. We need to diversity our base and create a higher quality of life.


The big question I have is this: will developers start creating better, less-sprawly projects as part of the national trend to build better, high quality neighborhoods/subdivisions that DONT rely on one entrance?

[Spartan]

Good news for Chesnee:

"Dave Steel Co., an Asheville, N.C.-based fabricator of steel for industrial and commercial projects, announced Thursday that it will open a new plant in Chesnee, creating up to 85 new jobs."

Its good to see some of these smaller towns get jobs. Especially Chesnee, because there aren't many jobs up in that corner of the county as it is.

Article

[Spartan]

A Chattanooga company called The Forex Project will be relocating its headquarters to Downtown Spartanburg. They will locate at the site of the old County Library HQ on Pine Street at Otis Blvd which has been vacant since February. They are a trading firm in the off-exchange foreign currency market. That means white collar jobs. They are going to hire 40 people to work in the office. According to the article in the Herald-Journal this is the largest company to move downtown since ESA a few years ago. Apparantly the executives had a seminar in Greenville, and came over to visit Spartanburg and liked what they saw.

www.theforexproject.com

This is great news for Spartanburg

Article

The only caveat here is that the old library is on the very edge of what I would consider downtown.

[GvilleSC]

That's great news for downtown Spartanburg! 40 white collar jobs isn't bad!

[krazeeboi]

Spartan, on Nov 29 2007, 09:50 AM, said:

A Chattanooga company called The Forex Project will be relocating its headquarters to Downtown Spartanburg. They will locate at the site of the old County Library HQ on Pine Street at Otis Blvd which has been vacant since February. They are a trading firm in the off-exchange foreign currency market. That means white collar jobs. They are going to hire 40 people to work in the office. According to the article in the Herald-Journal this is the largest company to move downtown since ESA a few years ago. Apparantly the executives had a seminar in Greenville, and came over to visit Spartanburg and liked what they saw.

www.theforexproject.com

This is great news for Spartanburg

Article

The only caveat here is that the old library is on the very edge of what I would consider downtown.

Great news! The good thing about the location is that it could possibly cause development to extend out further downtown sooner than expected.

[Spartan]

Thats true, but at this point we still need development IN downtown too.

[krazeeboi]

True; it doesn't have to be a mutually exclusive situation. The good thing here is that they are reusing an existing building (if I'm reading it correctly), and the location is still in-town.

[Spartan]

Absolutely. I am certainly not discounting their location choice. As y'all are aware, I am an advocate for revitalizeing the heart of downtown first, and the other areas later. We have a very large core area and a very small part of that has been developed. Vacant buildings like this one are very important to fill up too. This one is unique in that it is an adaptive reuse of a 40 or 50 year old building. 40 white collar jobs are absolutely great for the city, and overall downtown will benefit by having additional workers there. I hope workers will choose to locate in the city too, and help to revitalize some of our neighborhoods.

[krazeeboi]

Hopefully the new workers will be presented with the benefits of living in the city and see that living in-town can be a very viable choice.

[Spartan]

Yikes, this is a bad way to start off the year. Mrs. Smith's is closing and 525 people will loose their jobs.

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[roads-scholar]

Spartan, on Jan 17 2008, 11:21 PM, said:

Yikes, this is a bad way to start off the year. Mrs. Smith's is closing and 525 people will loose their jobs.

Article

Proof that tax and other economic incentives don't always work.  Governor Sanford may be right.