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Spartanburg Area Economic Developments


hub-city

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Some major bad news for Spartanburg... the Steadman Hawkins Clinic- a world-class orthopedic center that focuses on research and education might by leaving. The reason is because Mary Black Memorial was purchased by a new corporate hospital management company with completely different ideals than the previous owner. This new company is purely profit driven, and apparently has no use for education and research. Not only will they be bad corporate citizens for Spartanburg, they are running off one of our most significant white collar investments in the past few years. Nothing has been made "official" yet, but the article makes the situation seem pretty dire. They operate a surgery clinic at Mary Black in Spartanburg as well as GHS's Patewood Campus in Greenville.

I sincerely hope that they find a way to stay in Spartanburg, but in all honesty I can see this one been gobbled up by Greenville, because the Greenville Hospital System has a relationship with the USC School of Medicine, and has a much more dedicated research priority than Mary Black. Perhaps Spartanburg Regional will step up and help this group stay in town. Their loss would be a huge blow to Spartanburg. Not in terms of jobs, but in terms of reputation. Do we really want to be known as a community that can't retain research jobs?

Herald-Journal Article

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This news is terribly depressing since big things were envisioned when Steadman Hawkins and Mary Black announced their partnership four years ago.

Spartanburg lost Hubbell Lighting to Greenville and now might lose Steadman Hawkins too. I'm not angry with Greenville and not really blaming Spartanburg. Greedy corporate executives are only interested in their earnings statements and don't give a damn about Spartanburg. Sadly this is happening all over the country, not just here. Personally, I'm happy to see foreign ownership of American companies. CEO's overseas are more interested in building relationships (with suppliers, customers, employees, and their communities) rather than short term financial goals.

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Personally, I'm happy to see foreign ownership of American companies. CEO's overseas are more interested in building relationships (with suppliers, customers, employees, and their communities) rather than short term financial goals.

Oh, like Ahold?

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This news is terribly depressing since big things were envisioned when Steadman Hawkins and Mary Black announced their partnership four years ago.

Spartanburg lost Hubbell Lighting to Greenville and now might lose Steadman Hawkins too. I'm not angry with Greenville and not really blaming Spartanburg. Greedy corporate executives are only interested in their earnings statements and don't give a damn about Spartanburg. Sadly this is happening all over the country, not just here. Personally, I'm happy to see foreign ownership of American companies. CEO's overseas are more interested in building relationships (with suppliers, customers, employees, and their communities) rather than short term financial goals.

Yeah they said that it would play a role in reinventing the Eastside. I was under the perception that much of the commercial growth that has occurred there was in anticipation of this supposed Eastside residential boom. I could be wrong about that though because there has been some moderate residential growth on Zion Hill Rd and off of Fernwood-Glendale Rd.

Its certainly not Spartanburg's fault this time around, but it doesn't help our cause IF they move to Greenville. And that is a MAJOR assumption on my part. They could just leave SC altogether. Its simply unfortunate that we got a bad corporate partner to invest in Mary Black. I think its pretty well proven that hospitals associated with research universities have a better reputation. Good hospitals are not exclusively tied to universities (Regional is one of the best in the state, and it has no research affiliation that I'm aware of).

Also, I don't have a problem with hospitals making a profit (I'm all for that) but those that are purely profit based would have more of a reason to scam patients. Bad management can ruin a hospital.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Spartanburg is one of three places in the country that has seen a double digit gains in "the percentage of existing homes under contract during May." It shows that our economy is doing pretty well for itself considering national trends...

HJ Article

This is good news as I bought my house last year and was beginning to think I might have over paid.

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SC is planing an impact study concerning our railroad systems and their potential fo new economic development. The article mentions the possibility of connecting our ports to "mega" sites in the Upstate. With the rail infrastructure that we have in place, could this be the rebirth of our "hub city"

LINK from HJ

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While I would like to keep most of the general discussion about passenger rail in the topic located here: SC Passenger Rail ... I think a discussion about this development as it relates to Spartanburg specifically is ok.

In general, I would like to see a larger, more "official" looking train station. It would be awesome if this means that I could take the train down from Charlotte in a few years and be able to arrive in Spartanburg at a reasonable hour.

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In the article about downtown businesses, they get into the discussion of Spartanburg's economy. They state that we are fortunate to have a diverse economy and that we are a smaller market in times like these because we will be less dramatically affected by global economic downturns.

They also have this little blurb:

"And several companies will have "exciting" announcements in the next few weeks."

Any thoughts on that one?

Article

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Spartanburg is on the short list to be the site of Carbon Motors, a company that manufactures specialty police cars. They would invest around 350 mil and hire 1000 workers. They list it as Greenville and Spartanburg, so if the Upstate wins it would still be great for the entire area. They did visit ICAR and were impressed with what the area is doing for auto manufacturing and education.

LINK from HJ

Edited by hub-city
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Leave it to the Herald Journal to leave off a zero.

Its going to be up to 10,000 jobs over 10 years according to their website.

Carbon Motors Corporation announced today that 5 US States have made the short list for the location of the Carbon Campus, which will house the entirety of the company’s operations. Carbon Motors is a bold, new homeland security company that has developed the Carbon E7, the world’s first purpose-built law enforcement patrol vehicle. Independent projections forecast that 10,000 new sustainable direct and indirect American jobs will be created driving a $3 billion positive economic impact over ten years in the selected region. Formal Request for Proposals (RFPs) have been issued to local, state, and federal authorities in:

Georgia (Braselton and Pooler)

Indiana (Connersville)

Michigan (Plymouth)

North Carolina (Charlotte)

South Carolina (Greenville and Spartanburg)

Carbon Motors

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There is a bill in the Senate that would shut down payday lending in SC, if passed. I mention this here because Advance America, one of our larger white-collar employers in downtown, would be directly impacted by this bill. I think this is a dying industry anyway, and deservedly so. Still, I hate to see white collar jobs disappear from downtown.

The State

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I'm not usually one to get excited about mid-sized industrial operations moving into town. Not that they aren't good news, but its usually not anything particularly special. However, this one is a major exception IMO. The HJ reports that a commercial refrigerator operation called Universal Nolin Company is going to move into the old Beverage Air facility on I-85 Business. Not only are they reviving a long-defunct building, they are bringing their 150 jobs to the USA from Mexico.

From my perspective, I'm mainly happy to see some life being put back into an old industrial building. Business 85 is really unattractive except for Milliken and Spartanburg Tech, so anything that reduces the blighty appearance is a good thing.

Article

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