Even before BMW Manufacturing announced plans for a $700 million battery assembly plant in Woodruff in October, the small city in southern Spartanburg County was already experiencing something of a renaissance.
With a booming downtown retail and restaurant scene, the city’s municipal limits have nearly doubled in recent years as the thousands of new residents flocking to the Upstate have increasingly been drawn away from big metro areas to discover the small-town charms places like Woodruff have to offer.
Unprecedented growth
When Woodruff native Lee Bailey took on the role of city manager six years ago, he had a modest goal: to attract two new housing developments. What actually happened is a bit staggering to contemplate.
On much of the land added to the city on his watch, Bailey reports up to 4,000 new homes are expected to be built in the next five years. That has the potential to increase the city’s population from about 4,300, according to the 2020 census, to as many as 18,000 just a few years from now.
Most of those new homes were already in the planning stages before BMW announced its $1.7 billion investment across the state to produce electric vehicles. Nearly half of that figure will go toward a new high-voltage-battery assembly plant on SC 101 just outside of Woodruff’s downtown, bringing a minimum of 300 jobs to the area.
“Woodruff’s future was already bright, but with BMW it will be electric,” Bailey says.
More than a dozen residential and mixed-use developments are under construction or planned, including the sale in November by Greenville’s SVN/Blackstream of 130 acres to Forestar Group Inc. for a project to build 608 new homes near the cluster of schools anchoring the southern side of the city.
Related: BMW Group announces $1.7B investment to build electric vehicles in South Carolina
The prospect of thousands of new residents in just a few short years has also posed a challenge for Spartanburg School District 4.
According to Superintendent Rallie Liston, the district’s schools are already at capacity with a student population of about 2,900. With all those anticipated new homes projected to double the student population, the district had to develop a plan to meet such rapid growth.
Given Woodruff’s proximity to BMW’s Plant Spartanburg 11 miles away and the amount of land ripe for development in the area, growth was expected.
“We have been watching for this for 15 or 20 years,” Liston says.
Related: BMW XM production starts in Greer factory
But the rapid growth added urgency to the district’s plans to build a new high school, and in August area voters approved a $100 million bond referendum for that purpose.
The new school is being designed to accommodate up to 2,000 students, more than double Woodruff High’s current total of about 800.
In conversations with economic development leaders, Liston has been told both BMW’s announcement to invest in Woodruff and the voters’ decision to invest in the future will serve as powerful inducements for other companies and individuals to move to the area.
Paying for growth
The demands of thousands of new residents for services like schools, public safety and recreation led both the city and school district to look at paying for those expanded services.
For the city, the solution came down to development impact fees. Bailey says while these are typically very unpopular among developers, such fees were the only realistic option for the city without putting an undue tax burden on existing residents.
“You have to provide the services to the public, and those impact fees were really the only option to do that,” he says.
The development impact fee amounts to about $4,000 for each new home. If all 4,000 homes planned in the next five years are built, the fees could generate up to $16 million for the city.
Bailey says that new revenue will go toward increasing staffing for the police department and development of a new sports and recreation complex on 32 acres of land the city acquired near what will become the BMW battery assembly plant.
For the school district’s $100 million bond issue, Liston explains as new homes are built and added to the tax rolls, that additional revenue will help underwrite the cost of the new high school.
The property tax increase to service the bond debt will amount to about an additional $120 per $100,000 of valuation on a home.
“I’m very thankful to the community for supporting us the way they did,” Liston says.
The Woodruff way
Liston and Bailey say the challenge posed by rapid growth is accommodating all the new residents and businesses while maintaining Woodruff’s essential character.
For city planners like Bailey, that means ensuring the city keeps the small-town feel that has led people and businesses to make a home there.
For school leaders like Liston, that means keeping what he calls the “Woodruff way” a priority.
Liston explains that Woodruff’s people have always been proud of their schools where discipline is firm but fair and where community is a priority.
He’s heard from a number of families new to the area that, aside from jobs and more affordable homes compared to other places, what drew them to Woodruff was a shared value system of community and connection.
“That was unexpected,” Liston says. He adds such an infusion of new students and families presents new opportunities for the district.
“[The future] will not be as it is now,” he says. “You’re going to bring in some thought from people from all over now… It’s kind of a generational opportunity now.”
Related: Spartanburg County government searchable map
Woodruff: closer than you think
- Woodruff is 11 miles from Interstate 85 and BMW’s Plant Spartanburg along SC 101
- Simpsonville is 16 miles away or about 20 minutes in drive time along SC 417 and SC 146
- Downtown Greenville is 24 miles away or about a 35-minute drive via SC 146 and I-385
- Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport is 17 miles away or about a 24-minute drive via SC 146 and Brockman McClimon Road
