Greenville, SC Downtown Development News

[waccamatt]

Originally Posted by g-man430

Hate your signature Appstate97

Me too.

[g-man430]

The woolworth redevelopment site will consist of 200,000 square feet of office space, 20,000-30,000 square feet of retail space, and a hotel. I know I said yesterday that you could expect a story on the gateway site this or next week. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening now. The Greenville News wasn't able to get in contact with Rick Thoennes.

http://www.greenvilleonline.com/apps.../80618018/1003
Recruiter hired to boost downtown

By Rudolph Bell • BUSINESS WRITER • June 18, 2008

A public/private coalition has hired a recruiter to lure corporate headquarters and other large users of office space downtown.

Kym Petrie formerly ran a consultancy that specialized in marketing and economic development services for companies and municipalities, according to information distributed at a press conference at the Greater Greenville Chamber of Commerce. Petrie said she moved to Greenville from Canada nine months ago.

The coalition she'll work for includes the Chamber, the city of Greenville and a group of downtown office property owners called the Downtown Owners' Group.

Members of the coalition argue that office space filled with white-collar employees drives other commercial activity downtown such as shopping, dining and lodging. Recruiting new office tenants would boost city revenue from business licenses, parking fees and taxes on property, restaurant meals and hotel rooms, coalition members argue.

Each member of the coalition is covering a third of the program's cost, expected to be about $300,000 a year.

[g-man430]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/sp...l?ref=baseball
Museum Campaigns for Shoeless Joe Jackson

BY RICHARD SANDOMIR-THE NEW YORK TIMES

Published: June 18, 2008

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Shoeless Joe Jackson died 57 years ago in the tiny, red-brick house on the edge of this city that he shared with his wife, Kate. It was in the 950-square-foot home that he endured the final 10 years of his life and the last of three decades banished from baseball for his role in fixing the 1919 World Series

The home was lifted in 2006 from its foundation on East Wilburn Street, sliced from top to bottom, hauled three miles, and reassembled in a parking lot facing the Class A Greenville Drive’s ballpark.

On Saturday, the house will reopen as the Shoeless Joe Jackson Baseball Museum and Library at 356 Field Street, the number an homage to his career batting average for the Philadelphia A’s, the Cleveland Naps turned Indians and the Chicago White Sox.

He grew up here and played for the baseball team organized by the Brandon Mill, whose cotton lint he swept up as a child.

Although it is expected to attract tourists to the city’s redeveloped downtown and west side, the miniature museum is really the passion of one woman who came to love his story.

“We want the museum to be ground zero for Joe’s election to the Hall of Fame,” said Arlene Marcley, the president of the museum’s foundation, its curator, publicist and, she adds, its painter and housecleaner too.

“We’re not here to argue the case,” she said, standing on the living room’s original pine floors. “We’re here to tell his story. And we don’t know the full story.”

Here, his is not a tale of shame but instead one of civic pride in a local sports hero who always said he had done nothing to rig the 1919 World Series for the $5,000 he admitted receiving from gamblers, and who some say has served enough time in purgatory.

“People here think if he’s guilty of anything, it was of being naïve,” said Craig Brown, a co-owner and president of the Greenville team, which was told by minor league officials not to call the team the Joes in his honor. A bronze statue near the ballpark depicts Jackson swinging toward the nearby Brandon Mill field that bears his name. The statue stands on bricks from old Comiskey Park, where he played from 1915 to 1920.

Raised in Georgia, the 66-year-old Marcley had not heard of Jackson until a local petition began circulating in 1997 to make him eligible for election to the Hall of Fame.

She became more interested when Ted Williams lobbied for Jackson to be removed from the permanently ineligible list. She began assembling exhibits about him at City Hall, where she is executive assistant to Mayor Knox White, and started raising $60,000 for the statue, which was sculpted in the City Hall lobby.

“Whenever I heard the words, ‘Regardless of the verdict of juries,’ ” she said, shuddering slightly as she recited from Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis’s fiat in 1921 that barred Jackson and seven White Sox teammates even after a Chicago jury acquitted them of conspiracy to throw the 1919 World Series won by Cincinnati.

“Landis was a stinker,” she said.

The museum lacks Hall of Fame-quality artifacts, including his storied 48-ounce Black Betsy that a collector, Rob Mitchell of Pottstown, Pa., bought in 2001 for $577,610. But it features the house’s original fireplace, awnings, bathroom tub and mirror. There are vintage photographs, a whistle from the Brandon Mill, a short film, items from the Ty Cobb Museum in Royston, Ga., and 2,000 baseball books shelved on the pine walls of the original screened-in porch.

There is some irony in the baseball library; Jackson could not read or write.

“It’s important that education be central to the museum,” Marcley said.

Admission is free but donations will be appreciated to augment the meager, privately financed budget. Marcley says there are enough Jackson fans to make this personal and passionate campaign succeed.

“I have five men in my life,” she said. “My husband, my son, the mayor, Joel Poinsett,” — an 18th-century South Carolina statesman for whom the poinsettia is named — “and Shoeless Joe Jackson.”

In nearby Simpsonville, Shoeless Joe’s 16-year-old great-great grand nephew, also named Joe Jackson, catches and bats left-handed for the Mauldin High School team.

“I’ve think he was a great man,” Joe Jackson said at his family’s dining room table. “Humble. We don’t think he was guilty.”

In his living room, a photograph of Shoeless Joe, in his left-handed stance, hangs above one of young Joe Jackson, also a left-handed batter. Young Joe’s mother, Linda, pointed to their similarities in the batter’s box, in particular the wide distance between their feet. Her son hit .387 this season swinging a 32-inch, 29-ounce aluminum bat for the varsity squad. “Joe has no real holes in his swing,” said his coach, Todd Robinson. “He adjusts.”

Jackson said he does not brag about his family history.

“My parents tell me, ‘Don’t say anything unless someone asks,’ ” he said. But, he said, his friends “think it’s cool.”

During a recent class discussion of “The Great Gatsby,” which contains a reference to the Black Sox scandal, Jackson said his English teacher asked him to elaborate on the pock mark on early baseball.

“I explained it to her, but she didn’t know I was related,” he said. His teacher, Ida Rainey, confirmed his story, saying: “It’s a common name. I’ve taught a lot of Jacksons.”

The Jackson relatives living in the area seem content to let others argue Shoeless Joe’s case. His widow, Kate, told the family, “Just let it be,” said Linda Jackson.

But local fans continue to believe in him.

“The main thing that keeps him alive is he hit .356 and people intuitively think that someone that great should be recognized by baseball,” said Gene Carney, who wrote “Burying the Black Sox: How Baseball’s Cover-Up of the 1919 World Series Fix Almost Succeeded” (Potomac, 2006).

Last year, the Chicago History Museum acquired an archive of documents about the Black Sox case. Peter T. Alter, a curator who has examined the papers, few of which have been seen publicly, said, “There’s no smoking gun that implicates someone new or exonerates anyone.”

The uncertainty about Jackson’s culpability in the conspiracy, beyond accepting a lot of cash for the era, motivates supporters like Marcley to advocate having the veterans committee of the Baseball Hall of Fame decide if he is worthy of election. “Baseball should just say it no longer has any authority over Joe,” Marcley said in the bedroom he died in, “and let him be on the ballot.”

[Appstate97]

300,000 for a downtown recruiter. Someone give me some insight in how this works. Im speaking with no experience on this matter, but i have a few questions.
1. How do you recruit big business downtown when there are few towers?
2. Does the recruiter have the power to offer incentives for relocation...taxes?
3. Do they target large corporations across the country?

[g-man430]

Originally Posted by Appstate97

300,000 for a downtown recruiter. Someone give me some insight in how this works. Im speaking with no experience on this matter, but i have a few questions.
1. How do you recruit big business downtown when there are few towers?
2. Does the recruiter have the power to offer incentives for relocation...taxes?
3. Do they target large corporations across the country?

1. To fill proposed ones not built yet so they can start construction and to fill current ones with space available.
2. I doubt it. That is up to the governing body like the city and county for if to offer incentives and how much.
3. Yes, but it sounds like they're targeting the ones in Georgia and North Carolina the most.

[Appstate97]

Makes you wonder why Flour hasn't been approached for have a signature Tower downtown. I mean that is what there company does, engineering, construction.

[g-man430]

Originally Posted by Appstate97

Makes you wonder why Flour hasn't been approached for have a signature Tower downtown. I mean that is what there company does, engineering, construction.

They moved from downtown to the suburbs. Why would they want to move back? Also, what would you do with all of that empty office space at their current campus if they did decide to move back downtown?

[Appstate97]

I know this is a long shot, but I would love to see a Target move into downtown. That would go a long way for the residents who live in downtown Greenville. If I had the money, I would purchase that Ghetto Bilo on Main st. and Park ave. and Tear the whole shopping center down. Then I would build a Super Target.

[Appstate97]

You could easily take the flour campus and make it luxury condo's or apartments. Retail is another option. They have the lake, and you could have restaurants that circle the lake with various retail options. Make it a destination place to eat and shop. If you made it pedestrian friendly, people would flock to it as a trendy place to meet.

[g-man430]

Originally Posted by Appstate97

You could easily take the flour campus and make it luxury condo's or apartments. Retail is another option. They have the lake, and you could have restaurants that circle the lake with various retail options. Make it a destination place to eat and shop. If you made it pedestrian friendly, people would flock to it as a trendy place to meet.

Sounds a lot like this project which will be built on part of the Fluor campus: http://www.choldings.com/Marketing%2...nt%20Place.pdf Oh and that ghetto shopping center with the Bi-Lo is for sale and has been for sometime now.

[Appstate97]

I saw a sign that said "Grand Reopening at the Bilo". What did they do?

[g-man430]

Originally Posted by Appstate97

I saw a sign that said "Grand Reopening at the Bilo". What did they do?

Which Bi-Lo? The one downtown?

[Appstate97]

Should have clarified my post. Its the bilo downtown. They have two banners tied to the shrubs in front of the store. I havent had time to go in since I have seen the signs.

[g-man430]

Originally Posted by Appstate97

Should have clarified my post. Its the bilo downtown. They have two banners tied to the shrubs in front of the store. I havent had time to go in since I have seen the signs.

Who knows. Probably added a new cash register or something.

[Appstate97]

LOL.....they probably changed a light bulb. That place is like taking a trip back in time. What a dump.

[Greenville]

I think Fluor could be enticed to move downtown, especially since they are currently spread across several locations in the midtown area. Consolidating into one tower downtown would surely be appealing to them, but is it cost-effective in their minds? Would it require some sort of incentives from the city and/or county (and if so, is it worth it)?

I would love to see that happen though! Wouldn't it be a great way to break in our new corporate HQ recruiter?

[g-man430]

http://www.greenvilleonline.com/apps...806190306/1003
Coalition hires Petrie to lure businesses to downtown

By Rudolph Bell • BUSINESS WRITER • June 19, 2008

A public/private coalition has hired a recruiter in an attempt to lure corporate headquarters and other large users of office space to downtown Greenville.

Kym Petrie formerly worked as a consultant helping U.S. information technology companies establish operations in Canada and ran a not-for-profit organization to benefit the downtown of Sault St. Marie, a city in Ontario, Canada.

She told reporters during a press conference Wednesday at the Greater Greenville Chamber of Commerce to announce her hiring that she expects to be back at the Chamber in a few months to "make real spectacular announcements" about companies coming downtown.

Petrie said she'll use research about Greenville's educational offerings, work force, quality of life and cost of living to build a case for companies to move downtown. She also hopes to tap into the networks of local executives for recruitment leads.

"There are many CEOs and people in positions around this area who are here because they've chosen to be here and who have contacts in industry," Petrie said.

The coalition she'll work for includes the Chamber, the city of Greenville and a group of downtown office property owners called the Downtown Owners' Group.

Coalition members argue that office space filled with white-collar employees drives other commercial activity downtown such as shopping, dining and lodging. Recruiting new office tenants also boosts city revenue from business licenses, parking fees and taxes on property, restaurant meals and hotel rooms, they say.

City Councilwoman Amy Ryberg Doyle said Petrie's hiring shows the city isn't going to "take its eye off the core of the city."

"We are not done" improving downtown, Doyle said. "We are just getting started."

Petrie's job duties include the development of marketing materials, traveling to cities targeted for recruitment and following up on leads provided by local executives, consultants and real estate brokers.

The 41-year-old moved to Greenville nine months ago from Ottawa, Ontario. Her husband works for Concentrix Corp., a Synnex Corp. subsidiary with operations in Greenville.

[Greenville]

I am REALLY liking what I hear from Kym Petrie. Her hiring is as exciting as any news we've heard in a long time, and has a chance to greatly improve our downtown.

[krazeeboi]

Sounds like someone should get Petrie and Holder at the same table.

[g-man430]

Originally Posted by krazeeboi

Sounds like someone should get Petrie and Holder at the same table.

I just got done sending him an email with a link to the article.