Greenville, South Carolina
Baseball followers, concert-goers sporting cowboy boots and the Friday night time dinner-out crowd wander bustling downtown sidewalks on a heat spring night.
It’s a scene that many American cities are ravenous for — a return to the colourful avenue life that died within the second half of the twentieth century as downtowns hollowed out with the expansion of the suburbs and their air-conditioned buying malls.
Greenville’s received a Main Street that lives as much as its identify, on the coronary heart of a vigorous downtown linked to different elements of the town by the Swamp Rabbit Trail, a 28-mile pedestrian and bike community lined with parks and native companies.
A Michelin-starred restaurant has joined the town’s rising eating scene, there’s a pleasant arts district in an space that after hummed with textile mills, and close by lakes and state parks provide severe outdoor recreation. Two intimate new live performance venues are the most recent additions to a performing arts panorama that features Broadway reveals and arena acts. And minor league baseball video games draw followers to a good-looking ballpark within the metropolis’s historic West End.
In the middle of the town, a curved pedestrian suspension bridge passes over a uncommon pure city waterfall in Falls Park on the Reedy. Along one fringe of the park, the upscale Grand Bohemian Lodge, with a country wood-and-stone aesthetic, is certainly one of a number of downtown inns accessible through pathways that run alongside the Reedy River, inside steps of eating places and cafes.
But Greenville seemed nothing like this when retirees and avid runners Andria and Terry Hancock moved to the world 35 years in the past.
“One of the biggest changes is downtown — the Falls Park area. Because when we first came here, there was a four-lane bridge going over the river,” mentioned Andria Hancock, who was coaching alongside her husband for a 50k on a Saturday morning. “It was not an area where you wanted to hang out at all,” added her husband, Terry.
It’s certainly one of many adjustments which have introduced downtown Greenville again to life and made it a chief spot to spend just a few days exploring.
‘A place that feels safe and vibrant and active’
The four-lane bridge that handed over the falls downtown was eliminated in 2002. While there have been objections on the time, the overhauled park and its pedestrian Liberty Bridge signify “one of the most significant revitalizations in the history of the city,” mentioned Russell Stall, govt director of the Greenville County Historical Society.
It’s a far cry from the Nineteen Eighties, when this spot was a hub for medicine and prostitution, Stall mentioned. The river was referred to as the “Rainbow Reedy” due to dyes and chemical substances from the textile trade that polluted its waters. Once referred to as the “Textile Capital of the World,” Greenville’s booming mills began to fall silent within the Seventies. Now, a number of former mills home loft residences.
A stroll inside just a few blocks of Falls Park reveals curiosities like Plant Stella, a mix plant retailer, café and terrarium bar the place you possibly can create your personal little botanical wonderland. Nearby, Local Honey Coffee Co. doesn’t deal in reside vegetation, however every espresso beverage is served by itself petite bamboo tray alongside a bud vase stuffed with artfully organized stems.
Greenville’s decades-in-the-making transformation had a number of anchors, Stall mentioned. In the early Nineteen Eighties, a Hyatt Regency lodge opened. Then in 1990 got here the Peace Center, a performing arts compound that this yr added music venues The Mockingbird and Coach Music Factory to its multi-venue downtown campus. In 2006, the Greenville Drive baseball workforce, the High-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox, christened shiny Fluor Field, modeled after Boston’s Fenway Park and its well-known Green Monster.
“We tend to call it ‘a 50-year overnight success story,’” mentioned Stall. He traces its origins again to the Seventies tenure of Mayor Max Heller. Heller, who fled Nazi-occupied Austria within the Thirties, led revitalization efforts in his adopted hometown and is taken into account the “Father of Modern Greenville.” The efforts have continued through the years, with the town’s present mayor, Knox White, carrying the torch since he took workplace in 1995.
Of course, the adjustments haven’t been with out missteps, famous Stall, who teaches metropolis planning at Clemson University and can also be a former metropolis council member. “We tore down a lot of the historic structures that we shouldn’t have,” he mentioned, together with a “beautiful, musty, moldy City Hall.”
Greenville’s attraction in the present day can’t be tied to anyone standout attribute, Stall mentioned.
“It’s that package of a place that feels safe and vibrant and active, and there’s just a lot to do,” he mentioned.
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Meandering alongside the path
The Swamp Rabbit Trail has definitely introduced recent power to the town since its first stretch opened in 2009.
South of downtown, the path winds its strategy to Cleveland Park and the Greenville Zoo. The stretch north of downtown goes all the best way to the quaint Main Street of close by Travelers Rest, a small city about 10 miles from Falls Park. The path has served because the revitalization engine for “TR,” as locals name it.
Visitors who rent bikes in Greenville can navigate the largely flat path, which passes alongside Furman University’s campus, for lunch or a beverage in Travelers Rest. Acclaimed Topsoil serves domestically sourced dishes like a crispy Noonday Farm duck leg with grits and juneberry jus. The sandwiches at Upcountry Provisions are hearty and scrumptious, or you possibly can take a look at what’s on faucet at Swamp Rabbit Brewery.
For guests who aren’t up for the roughly 20-mile round-trip pedal, there’s lots to sip and pattern alongside the path in Greenville. Working up a sweat and stopping for refreshments is the fantastic thing about this city route.
That’s precisely what the Hancocks had been doing partway by way of their run — taking a break at an out of doors desk on the Swamp Rabbit Café & Grocery, a mushrooming assortment of buildings and out of doors areas that’s develop into a well-liked Greenville gathering spot since opening in 2011.
“We come here all the time,” mentioned Terry Hancock, whose job with Michelin introduced the Hancocks to this space. The French tire firm moved its North American headquarters to Greenville within the Nineteen Eighties because the textile trade was dying. “Michelin was very instrumental in Greenville’s revival,” he mentioned.
When Swamp Rabbit Café & Grocery co-founder Mary Walsh, who grew up in Jersey City, New Jersey, moved to the world twenty years in the past “one of the biggest things coming here to Greenville was how inaccessible walking was and even biking,” she mentioned.
Walsh and her enterprise accomplice, Jac Oliver, needed to create a spot folks may attain with no automotive and the place the considerable produce from the world’s lengthy rising season might be bought year-round. And why not have espresso and a bakery as properly? The path, and their café, created a group.
“We have a lot of people who meet at our store and become friends,” mentioned Walsh, who credited the café with a dozen marriages, too.
Heading again towards downtown, The Commons is one other good stopover. The meals corridor housed in a rehabbed row of warehouses is true on the path in Unity Park, the town’s latest marquee greenspace.
The park merges what had been as soon as two segregated parks on land with “a history of neglect, environmental abuse and racial inequity,” the city notes. Today’s 60-acre park options 4 play areas, together with a splash pad, a baseball subject, basketball courts and a 10-story tower with 360-degree views. The tower stands on the dividing line between the 2 former parks to function an emblem of a “shared future,” the town authorities web site says.
Keep heading south and also you’ll move by way of the charming Children’s Garden at Linky Stone Park and pop again into the center of downtown.
There are loads of worthy choices for dinner and a present downtown. But the Village of West Greenville, about two miles west, is price exploring as properly.
“It’s the arts district for Greenville,” mentioned Cherington Shucker, a Greenville native who was welcoming friends to Darin R. Gehrke Ceramics throughout a First Friday occasion this spring. She and her husband, the potter, purchased the constructing in 2018 when Gehrke and several other different artists moved from a historic constructing close by and bought their very own areas, changing into a part of the neighborhood’s revival.
The industrial space the place the gallery is situated sprang up greater than a century in the past close to once-booming textile mills. Today, the Greenville Center for Creative Arts is housed within the former Brandon Textile Mill. Not far-off is Woodside Mill, as soon as the biggest cotton mill below one roof in America (now house to loft residences).
On this Friday night in The Village, early birds stomach up for craft cocktails at Bar Margaret and Wonderland-themed The Rabbit Hole and pack practically each desk on The Anchorage’s two ranges, prepared for small plates starring native and regional elements. Around the nook, restaurant incubator Hone contains a rotating schedule of nascent and rising meals companies.
A mile up the highway in Woodside, Little Secret opened a brick-and-mortar restaurant earlier this yr after a profitable stint as a pop-up at numerous spots round city. Chef Conner Hinderks brings daring flavors and artistic twists to dishes like roasted mushroom and Manchego cheese dumplings with recent herbs, Szechuan salt and chili crisp.
A Michelin star and extra
But the splashiest headline in Greenville eating heralds the town’s very first Michelin star. The tire firm that went on to create the world’s most prestigious culinary rating — and had a huge impact on this South Carolina city’s fortunes — awarded downtown restaurant Scoundrel with one Michelin star late final yr.
Chef Joe Cash, a Greenville native who has cooked at Per Se in New York and Noma in Copenhagen, returned house to go to through the years and favored what he noticed. Opening high-end French restaurant Scoundrel, and elevating his household right here, began to look like a strong selection.
“You come home and you see, you know, there’s some new restaurants, some fun things to do. Some more interesting, a little more modern, a little less steak and potatoes, a little more farm-to-table,” Cash mentioned. “And so kind of just watching that over the years, it made sense for me to come back.”
Relative newcomers, together with Scoundrel and Jones Oyster Co., have joined downtown staples like upscale Southern restaurant Soby’s and Coffee Underground, a café and efficiency house, which each opened within the ‘90s.
Festivals and a farmer’s market add to the weekend avenue life. And some annual occasions have stood the take a look at of time. Growing up, Cash remembers going to the town’s well-liked Fall for Greenville pageant. This yr’s October occasion will function some 80 bands and meals from greater than 60 eating places.
Three blocks off Main Street, there’s a children’s museum and the Greenville County Museum of Art. The latter holds a formidable assortment of Andrew Wyeth watercolors.
The Greenville space is rising fast with new folks arriving on a regular basis — and the visitors to show it, some locals grumble. But it means there’s so much taking place on this metropolis.
“You’ll see we have so many new businesses popping up … We get people moving in and what they’re looking at is opportunity,” mentioned Calvin Ivery, who was at a Saturday night time Greenville Drive baseball recreation with a gaggle of associates. Ivery previously labored for the town and is concerned in a spread of civic tasks and companies.
“I know a lot of people are like, ‘Hey, we need to slow down,’” he mentioned. But Ivery doesn’t suppose so.
“It’s just too much positive energy amongst the city right now, and you feel it.”