Business Black Box

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“The West Greenville neighborhood
has the potential to be one of the City of
Greenville’s most desirable places to live,”
says the West Greenville Master Plan, created after a year-long series
of community meetings more than a decade ago. Bounded by the
Norfolk-Southern Railroad tracks to the north and less than a mile
west of the Central Business District, the area has yet to become one
of Greenville’s most coveted, but local artist Jim Gorman says it’s
getting there. When he set up his studio five years ago he says you’d
still see the occasional panhandler, and there were far more derelict
buildings than there are now. “It’s a really positive environment
down here,” he says, “It’s really an up and coming area.”
Dan Hamilton recently announced his company’s plan to invest
in West Greenville real estate., as they will move the Hamilton &
Co. Keller Williams office into part of a redevelopment project
on Academy and North Markley Street. For more than a decade
they’ve leased office space off Haywood road, but Hamilton says
attractive interest rates and burgeoning opportunity made this
the right time to move. “We’re planting our flag in West End of
Greenville,” says Hamilton, “We feel confident that’s a place to
invest our dollars.”
In the area, conversations are once again happening among
developers and city leaders to turn the Brandon Mill into
a mixed-use development complete with 173 apartments,
restaurants and even a much-needed grocery store, as the U.S.
Department of Agriculture has designated West Greenville
a food desert—a community without ready access to fresh,
healthy and affordable food. In the meantime, a mobile
market called Good to Go makes regular stops in the
neighborhood to sell residents fresh produce.
Then, there are business owners like Mandy
Blankenship, who located her business Shop-
Keep to Pendleton Street in 2012, as she and her
husband Joshua are hoping to buy and renovate a
mill house nearby. Blankenship says even though
the original artists located to the neighborhood a
dozen years ago, they’re still working hard to get
the word out about the area.
“I think we’ve been fighting an uphill battle
letting people know who we are,” she says. Local
business leaders recently rebranded the neighborhood,
once known as the Pendleton Arts District. It’s now
called The Village of West Greenville, paying homage
to the area’s mill village vibe, where rebranding
efforts included creating a logo and launching a
website, VillageofWestGreenville.com.
“I feel like there’s a beautiful history that’s
really rich to this area,” she says, “I want to see
things coming in that are going to be accessible
to everyone from the hipsters to the people who
are lower income.”
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Q4 2013 // Business Black Box