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I haven't thought the whole thing through. I guess I would mean doing what Greenville did decades ago and choosing to make Main St. a "destination" for people and not just a functional street. I walked up and down Main St. the other day--there are some vacant street-level properties that I would love to see new businesses open up in. As for ambitious "redevelopment" I would consider offering buyouts of some of the older stores on Main St. that may not be frequented that often but are able to stay because they've been there for decades don't have the same overhead as other stores. I would just like to see more restaurants, more popular shopping options, coffee houses, bars, eateries, public spaces, etc. There are some areas on Main St. that can be made into small public parks too.

I have not studied the Downtown Master Plan--this may address some of what I have described. But I generally feal that there is a reluctance by folks on the Eastside/the "old money" community to move Spartanburg's downtown into looking more like a downtown Greenville. I say this as someone who has lived on the Westside for 20 years and also think of downtown as part of my city.

Decades ago??? I was working & living in Greenville in the early 90's and there was barely anything downtown other than the Hyatt Hotel and the Peace Center. The main restaurant was Dempseys or Charlie's Steak House and that was about it. I think they really got their act together when the BMW plant went up (94-95). They saw the coming expansion and decided as a city to take advantage of it by opening their downtown to investment while Spartanburg stood stodgily by (as always) and refused any type of development.

Sure folks on the east side own some of the properties downtown but if Spartans as a whole are not going to support new development, I don't see how you can hang it on them as being their fault for not moving downtown forward. George Dean is an east sider and he is doing all he can to move Sptbg forward although not all is good, but it outweighs the bad.

As we have discussed many times in the past on these boards, I am just not sure that Sptbg has the drive or desire to have a downtown like Greenville. We may say we want it but are we going to really support it? Heck we can't even keep 1 coffee house open.

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Decades ago??? I was working & living in Greenville in the early 90's and there was barely anything downtown other than the Hyatt Hotel and the Peace Center. The main restaurant was Dempseys or Charlie's Steak House and that was about it. I think they really got their act together when the BMW plant went up (94-95). They saw the coming expansion and decided as a city to take advantage of it by opening their downtown to investment while Spartanburg stood stodgily by (as always) and refused any type of development.

Sure folks on the east side own some of the properties downtown but if Spartans as a whole are not going to support new development, I don't see how you can hang it on them as being their fault for not moving downtown forward. George Dean is an east sider and he is doing all he can to move Sptbg forward although not all is good, but it outweighs the bad.

As we have discussed many times in the past on these boards, I am just not sure that Sptbg has the drive or desire to have a downtown like Greenville. We may say we want it but are we going to really support it? Heck we can't even keep 1 coffee house open.

REBUTTAL

Wild Wing WAS supported but the owner couldn't make his payroll (new owners are reopening the restaurant later this month). Abby's WAS supported but the owner bailed when their 10-year tax break ended (another restaurant will soon open in this location). Java Jive failed NOT from a lack of support but poor management. Lime Leaf and Justin's may not be booming but at least they're open. Not sure why Rock Water failed but it's hard for me to believe it was from lack of support (the restaurant is reopening). Mellow Mushroom and Sonny's Pizza seem to be thriving. Haven't been to Hub Bub yet but have heard good things about it.

I do believe Spartans want and will support their downtown. Gosh, we've seen so much progress in downtown Spartanburg the last few years. With these openings / re-openings plus the colleges and new office buildings maybe the critical mass downtown needs can take hold and we'll see more and more downtown establishments open and thrive.

Edited by roads-scholar
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I'm for all you say Rhodes, what I am saying is that our downtown will have to have its own character on a smaller scale than Greenville. There is no way we can support 30+ restaurants/bars over a 8-10 square block area as much as I would like it to be. Now maybe when the 2 college campuses arrive downtown things will change. Greenville's downtown has grown to the point of there being bars on sidestreets of sidestreets.

All I'm really saying is that our restaurant scene does not have to copy Greenville's and it shouldn't. I will be more than happy with a nice tight downtown scene (bars, restaurants, ice cream, coffee, etc.) with St John and Henry St being the borders on 1 side and Main and Daniel Morgan as the other.

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I'm for all you say Rhodes, what I am saying is that our downtown will have to have its own character on a smaller scale than Greenville. There is no way we can support 30+ restaurants/bars over a 8-10 square block area as much as I would like it to be. Now maybe when the 2 college campuses arrive downtown things will change. Greenville's downtown has grown to the point of there being bars on sidestreets of sidestreets.

All I'm really saying is that our restaurant scene does not have to copy Greenville's and it shouldn't. I will be more than happy with a nice tight downtown scene (bars, restaurants, ice cream, coffee, etc.) with St John and Henry St being the borders on 1 side and Main and Daniel Morgan as the other.

Since Spartanburg is the smaller city (for now) I don't expect our downtown to have the quantity of restaurants Greenville has. And, I agree with you, I'd be happy with a nice tight but thriving restaurant / bar scene.

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Decades ago??? I was working & living in Greenville in the early 90's and there was barely anything downtown other than the Hyatt Hotel and the Peace Center. The main restaurant was Dempseys or Charlie's Steak House and that was about it. I think they really got their act together when the BMW plant went up (94-95). They saw the coming expansion and decided as a city to take advantage of it by opening their downtown to investment while Spartanburg stood stodgily by (as always) and refused any type of development.

One thing about Greenville- the first revitalization effort there was in the 1970s. That's when they narrowed the street, planted their trees and fixed up the sidewalks. Downtown Greenville itself really took off about 7 or 8 years ago. They have had about 30 years of continuous effort to get where they are today. It's not like they just flipped a switch and people showed up. It was a struggle for them too, but they were persistent and now have results to show for it.

Spartanburg is about 20 years or so behind Greenville. It is entirely possible for us to have an equally thriving downtown. Its not all about population either. There are towns smaller than Spartanburg that have more thriving downtowns (eg: Madison, GA and Thomasville, GA). We're on the right track, but we all have to keep in mind that successful redevelopment does not happen over night. Its just a matter of the right businesses showing up, and the right destinations to be established too. Greenville had the Hyatt and the Peace Center working together to generate foot traffic. We don't have that same synergy, and there is no point in duplicating it. Spartanburg is different and it will take different things to make us successful. The Upstate and SCC downtown campuses will help. The Cultural Center was done pretty well too. Think of all of this as laying the foundation for the future. It may seem disjointed now, but overtime it will come together.

The redevelopment of the Square is by far the best first step towards creating a better downtown that Spartanburg could have taken. The #1 key to a better downtown is to design it for PEDESTRIANS. To be blunt: screw the cars. If anything makes it inconvenient for them, WHO CARES! If we make it a great palce to walk and hang out, people will show up. It's a proven fact. Part of that is to not design monolithic buildings with no street fronting businesses (like ESA).

The people of Spartanburg will support good businesses if they are properly located. Look at Java Jive. It was not in a prime location, but the street was low volume and there was plenty of room just to hang around, which was in part why it was so popular. Abbey's was always my favorite example. They had a great location on the Square, and no parking what so ever. People went there because it was a good place to eat.

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One thing about Greenville- the first revitalization effort there was in the 1970s. That's when they narrowed the street, planted their trees and fixed up the sidewalks. Downtown Greenville itself really took off about 7 or 8 years ago. They have had about 30 years of continuous effort to get where they are today. It's not like they just flipped a switch and people showed up. It was a struggle for them too, but they were persistent and now have results to show for it.

Spartanburg is about 20 years or so behind Greenville. It is entirely possible for us to have an equally thriving downtown. Its not all about population either. There are towns smaller than Spartanburg that have more thriving downtowns (eg: Madison, GA and Thomasville, GA). We're on the right track, but we all have to keep in mind that successful redevelopment does not happen over night. Its just a matter of the right businesses showing up, and the right destinations to be established too. Greenville had the Hyatt and the Peace Center working together to generate foot traffic. We don't have that same synergy, and there is no point in duplicating it. Spartanburg is different and it will take different things to make us successful. The Upstate and SCC downtown campuses will help. The Cultural Center was done pretty well too. Think of all of this as laying the foundation for the future. It may seem disjointed now, but overtime it will come together.

The redevelopment of the Square is by far the best first step towards creating a better downtown that Spartanburg could have taken. The #1 key to a better downtown is to design it for PEDESTRIANS. To be blunt: screw the cars. If anything makes it inconvenient for them, WHO CARES! If we make it a great palce to walk and hang out, people will show up. It's a proven fact. Part of that is to not design monolithic buildings with no street fronting businesses (like ESA).

The people of Spartanburg will support good businesses if they are properly located. Look at Java Jive. It was not in a prime location, but the street was low volume and there was plenty of room just to hang around, which was in part why it was so popular. Abbey's was always my favorite example. They had a great location on the Square, and no parking what so ever. People went there because it was a good place to eat.

As usual - well said Spartan.

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"Part of that is to not design monolithic buildings with no street fronting businesses (like ESA)."

What do you mean by this?

Buildings that do not generate street level activity. That building is all about the parking deck behind it. Anything build within a few blocks of Morgan Square should be made to have street fronting retail space. Just look at the north side of the square and compare it to the ESA side. Visualize the old pictures of the Andrews/Chapman Building before it collapsed, and the row of shops that was destroyed to create the Opportunity Block. This is the type of development we must see to succeed. ESA is architecturally pleasing if you are driving by on Church St, but if you walk past it you get to look at some well manicured bushes and grassy areas that you can't even use. They serve no purpose at all. Now, imagine the sidewalk continued up to the base of the building and instead of a wall/windows there were a couple of shops or restaurants on either side of the main stairway. It would ) be 1 awesome, and 2) encourage people to walk on the south side of Morgan Square.

Come up to Tryon Street in Charlotte on a weekend and you'll see dozens of great office buildings and virtually no people walking around unless there is an event. Why? Because there isn't anything to go to. Charlotte has failed to design buildings for pedestrians and it shows. Charlotte is doing an excellent job of making a city that looks great in pictures, but is not great up close. The "stuff" is here, but it's all kinds of messed up. We have dozens of threads about this in the Charlotte section if you want more info. I just don't want to see Spartanburg follow in Charlotte's footsteps any more than it already has.

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Buildings that do not generate street level activity. That building is all about the parking deck behind it. Anything build within a few blocks of Morgan Square should be made to have street fronting retail space. Just look at the north side of the square and compare it to the ESA side. Visualize the old pictures of the Andrews/Chapman Building before it collapsed, and the row of shops that was destroyed to create the Opportunity Block. This is the type of development we must see to succeed. ESA is architecturally pleasing if you are driving by on Church St, but if you walk past it you get to look at some well manicured bushes and grassy areas that you can't even use. They serve no purpose at all. Now, imagine the sidewalk continued up to the base of the building and instead of a wall/windows there were a couple of shops or restaurants on either side of the main stairway. It would ) be 1 awesome, and 2) encourage people to walk on the south side of Morgan Square.

Well it may not be that pleasing to your eye (I think its pretty cool looking), but it does offer something downtown Sptbg is terribly short of and that is white collar jobs that are downtown. There are 250+ folks that work in that building just for ESH (they dropped the "A") and another 100 that work for other firms in the building and they all go out for lunch or drinks after work so I would not be too hard on the looks of the building. Heck if you ever get a chance go inside. My wife works there and GDJ (when he had it built) spared no expense to make sure the employees were confortable.

As long as downtown functions, I could really give a rats a$$ what it looks like unless things just get too extreme (which I do not see happening). We need folks downtown and if they happen to work downtown, that makes it that much easier to support downtown. I can't tell you the number of times I have met my wife downtown at various venues for a drink as she just has to walk over to wherever we choose to go. Without that building you probably have empty retails shops right now and for the forseeable future given the economic climate. I would have no problem at all if someone wanted to move a company downtown, bring in 100-200+ white/blue collar jobs, and erect a new building wherever. Downtown Spartanburg will NEVER look like Charlotte so 1 more semi high rise will only help downtown not hurt it or the visuals.

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I'm not saying the building is ugly. It's a great piece of architecture, and the jobs located there are great too.

Don't misunderstand my comparison to Charlotte to mean 'highrises.' If you come here and walk around everyday like I do, you begin to notice that a lot of the tall buildings have nothing on the street. To illustrate my point, I think that Main Street in Greenville is better than Tryon St in Charlotte in terms of an urban environment. Greenville has lots of retail operations below the commercial highrises (well, on Main Street).

Having the jobs is great, but again, the point is that at the end of the day its still single use building. The failure to mix uses on that site was a big mistake. What if the building had been one floor higher and had restaurant space on the ground floor?

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There's a new Indian restaurant that's opened on 221 across from the Hospital, next to Coggin's Floral Shop. It's called Pachranga Authentic Indian Cuisine. It's a buffet/menu style restaurant and is not bad. I'm so glad to have a buffet-style Indian Restaurant. The food is a little hotter (spicy) than I'm used to but that's just fine with me. I've only been once, but they had naan, onion chutney, mint chutney, bhaji, chicken saag, chicken korma, curried veggies, salad, etc... when we went. They've been open for a couple of weeks but didn't seem busy when my wife and I went. I hope they stay in business. I LOVE 5 Spice, but I like having buffet as an option too. To be honest, I can't give it more than a 7 out of 10, but to be fair I went at 3pm, which is not the best time to go to a buffet.

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There's a new Indian restaurant that's opened on 221 across from the Hospital, next to Coggin's Floral Shop. It's called Pachranga Authentic Indian Cuisine. It's a buffet/menu style restaurant and is not bad. I'm so glad to have a buffet-style Indian Restaurant. The food is a little hotter (spicy) than I'm used to but that's just fine with me. I've only been once, but they had naan, onion chutney, mint chutney, bhaji, chicken saag, chicken korma, curried veggies, salad, etc... when we went. They've been open for a couple of weeks but didn't seem busy when my wife and I went. I hope they stay in business. I LOVE 5 Spice, but I like having buffet as an option too. To be honest, I can't give it more than a 7 out of 10, but to be fair I went at 3pm, which is not the best time to go to a buffet.

I noticed this when I was driving around earlier today. I'll have to check it out soon.

Five Spices switched their lunch format to a buffet a few months ago. It was a quasi-buffet before that where you could eat all you wanted but they would serve it to you.

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So today is the big day... Wild Wing is open again! While I'm a Delaney's man myself, I'm glad to see this business return to downtown. This, along with Cornbread to Caviar, should return a fair amount of activity downtown. The article in the HJ is mainly an ad for Wild Wings and soem background if you don't keep up with these things.

HJ Article

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So today is the big day... Wild Wing is open again! While I'm a Delaney's man myself, I'm glad to see this business return to downtown. This, along with Cornbread to Caviar, should return a fair amount of activity downtown. The article in the HJ is mainly an ad for Wild Wings and soem background if you don't keep up with these things.

HJ Article

Wild Wing is not my favorite place either but it is "destination" restaurant. The more people we have downtown the better, especially at night.

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Ok, so I went tonight. I'm not proud of it. But the 2309578203912342 other people who were there seemed to enjoy it. Its EXACTLY THE SAME. The modifications, from what I understand, are mainly in the kitchen along with some minor things in the dining area on the first floor. FWIW there was a 2.5 hour wait for food at one point. I've never seen downtown like it was tonight. I actually had trouble parking... I had had to go to the second level of the Magnolia garage. I saw people from out of town, which was coincidental... not related to Wild Wing, but still. Rediculousness.

I spent more time at Delaney's, which has added some sweet bicycles to their miscellaneous wall decorations.

I sincerely hope downtown is back to what it used to be. We just need some more stuff within walking distance of Delaney's and Wild Wing.

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In retrospect, I may have over exaggerated somewhat about the amount of people. However, there WERE a lot of people. More than I have seen downtown in quite sometime. I did have trouble parking (which is fantastic). It speaks volumes to what this one restaurant does for the activity in Spartanburg. We still have a long way to go, but things are looking up.

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Two facts struck after reading your report from last evening.

  1. It speaks volumes that one relatively mediocre restaurant can make such an impact on pedestrian activity.
  2. It speaks volumes about Spartanburg's potential, given a better selection of amenities located in downtown.

Hopefully the "novelty" of the appeal will not wear off after a few months.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Aha! I knew there was a sports bar going somewhere! I think that as a Sports Bar, RWT will do much better. Spartanburg desperately needs sports bars.

What does that mean to you? Can you elaborate? I'm always interested in what other people mean by "redevelopment" in this sense.

Well aparently the guy does not have a liquor license yet as I went by for a brew last night before heading over to Hub Bub and they were closed. I had to settle for the BE which is not bad, but how long does it take for a liquor license?

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  • 2 weeks later...

How about a potential interesting tidbit.

A buddy of mine is in the counter and cabinet business and I was asking how much of his business was commercial and how much was residential in the current economic climate. On the commercial side he said he was working on a 60' bar for a building downtown that Dunbar Contractors was working on. He told me that is was the building right next to the new Rockers Brewery. If anyone knows where Jones Electronics used to be, its that building (I think its 252 W Main). I have driven by several times and seen a building permit but have not stopped to see what it said. When I went by today, things have been bricked in to create a porch type setting. I can't wait to see what actually goes there, but the fact that someone is actually ahead of the curve here in putting a place beside the new brewery is amazing.

Also, I was in Dudley's last night (the old Captain Tonys) on the east side last night. They took their time and gutted the entire building. Now its a lot more open and accessible. The kitchen is still inside the bar and hot as hell if you sit around it (which is fine in winter, but not August), but the rest of the joint is quite open and cool. Heiniken was on tap (a first for Sptbg) and cold. It was a very good first experience and it was crowded. Folks were even sitting outside in the heat. I hope they do well.

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Two different sources have told me that Terry's Tap Room is moving beside RJ Rockers. Could be true.

If Terry's is relocating to the place mentioned.... the owner of that building is GD Johnson and being developed by Longleaf Developers along with THe RJ rockers COmplex. Where are they going to park assuming the side parking lot will be reserved for the 6,500 sq foot Restaurant space advertised on the side facing Daniel Morgan?

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Solutions to parking in the vicinity of the new RJ Rockers Brewery and the new Terry's Taproom location:

  1. Park at the RJ Rockers Brewery
  2. Park at the lWarrior Duck building lot
  3. Park on Ezell St
  4. Park around the Square
  5. Park on Main Street in front of the HJ and Mayor Barnet's new place.
  6. Park at the building across the street
  7. Park in the city lot across from QS/1 on Daniel Morgan Ave
  8. Park on Magnolia Street
  9. Park on Spring Street
  10. Park on Broad Street
  11. Park in the Magnolia Street Parking Garage

The culture of having parking immediately in front of your destination absolutely has to change in this town. If you have to walk a couple of blocks, suck it up! If you're complaining about TWO BLOCKS then you probably need the exercise!!

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Solutions to parking in the vicinity of the new RJ Rockers Brewery and the new Terry's Taproom location:

  1. Park at the RJ Rockers Brewery
  2. Park at the lWarrior Duck building lot
  3. Park on Ezell St
  4. Park around the Square
  5. Park on Main Street in front of the HJ and Mayor Barnet's new place.
  6. Park at the building across the street
  7. Park in the city lot across from QS/1 on Daniel Morgan Ave
  8. Park on Magnolia Street
  9. Park on Spring Street
  10. Park on Broad Street
  11. Park in the Magnolia Street Parking Garage

The culture of having parking immediately in front of your destination absolutely has to change in this town. If you have to walk a couple of blocks, suck it up! If you're complaining about TWO BLOCKS then you probably need the exercise!!

+1. LOL!!

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