Anyone driving along Interstate 85 through the Upstate in the past 30 years will have noticed a robust manufacturing and industrial presence across multiple counties.
What is less obvious is how much manufacturing and industrial growth has expanded into southern Greenville and Spartanburg counties and northern Laurens County. It is powering some of the fastest growing communities in the state.
Manufacturing matters in this southern industrial belt, but there are other factors at play that help explain why companies and people are flocking to the area.
Room to grow
Why people and enterprises of every kind are moving south of Interstate 85 in the past few years is, at a basic level, straightforward: there was room to grow.
Understanding what companies are looking for in a new site and a new community in which to operate is critical to the work of the Upstate SC Alliance, the primary regional economic development organization in the northwestern corner of South Carolina whose job is to bolster and grow the region’s economy.
For the organization’s president and CEO, John Lummus, the shrinking availability of sites along the Upstate’s interstate core has meant the bubble of opportunity has expanded — mainly to the south — and pushed the prospects for economic and population growth into new areas.
From a practical standpoint, there are about 1.5 million people within a 45-minute drive of the point along the Enoree River where Greenville, Laurens and Spartanburg counties meet.
For Lummus and Laurens County Development Corp. president and CEO Jonathan Coleman, that fact matters when talking to industrial prospects. Coleman said every prospect is looking first and foremost at the potential labor pool, over and above what a prospective site may offer in terms of space and infrastructure.
“They don’t build these things where there are no people,” Coleman said.
Lummus and Coleman said high-skill, high-paying manufacturing jobs can have a major impact on a community’s economy. Industrial wages get spent in retail shops, restaurants and a variety of other places.
Lummus said by some estimates each manufacturing job supports from three to five jobs in other sectors. This helps explain why continued industrial and manufacturing growth has made the Upstate economy more resilient than many other parts of the state and nation.
Frontline growth
While industrial growth is impacting communities all over the Upstate, it has played a significant role in driving phenomenal growth in two cities that used to be considered fairly remote and sleepy: Woodruff and Fountain Inn.
As a lifelong Woodruff resident who is now the city’s manager, Lee Bailey can remember a time not many years ago when the city struggled to provide cost-of-living salary increases for staff.
But now, thanks in part to nearby industrial facilities like BMW Manufacturing’s battery assembly plant and Airsys Cooling Technologies along S.C. Highway 101 just outside of town, Woodruff is expecting to add 7,000 homes within the next 10 years, if not sooner.
Like Lummus and Coleman, Bailey said there has to be an available pool of potential employees before a company would even consider moving into a community.
The same dynamic is at work in Fountain Inn, according to Mayor G.P. McLeer.
Straddling both Interstate 385 and the Greenville/Laurens county line, Fountain Inn has seen tremendous population growth thanks in part to its proximity to a growing industrial base.
McLeer said the effects of those industrial jobs are readily apparent in his city’s downtown.
“For us economically, you go downtown and you can see folks with different companies on their polo shirts,” McLeer said. “You see those folks after work. You see those folks living in town and working nearby.”
As pointed out by Lummus and Coleman, manufacturing jobs can help drive the broader economy and support other businesses. Bailey and McLeer see this playing out daily in their booming downtowns, which plays into another important factor in population growth: a sense of community.
Both people and companies look for a sense of vibrancy in a community before deciding to move there. A town’s vibe can seem like an ephemeral factor, but McLeer and Bailey report hearing from numerous new residents that their cities’ particular sense of place and community played a significant role in the decision to move there.
“ I think what Fountain Inn continues to offer … is a sense of place and identity and belonging,” McLeer said. “And that is very attractive for folks to fall in love with where they live.”
This, in turn, plays a factor in the decisions of new businesses, whether industrial or otherwise, to open in or relocate to that community, Bailey and McLeer said.
Growth challenges
While commercial, industrial and population growth have helped undergird and expand both Woodruff’s and Fountain Inn’s economies, that growth has also posed challenges.
For one thing, it strains the ability of local governments to provide essential services. To mitigate that strain, both Woodruff and Fountain Inn have enacted development impact fees aimed at having growth pay for growth. Such fees must be spent on capital projects to meet higher demands for services associated with growth.
Both cities are dedicating some of their impact fee revenue to bolster and expand parks and recreation amenities. With much of their population growth coming in the form of young families, Fountain Inn’s and Woodruff’s recreation facilities are in high demand and play a crucial role in underpinning the cities’ sense of community and place.
For Coleman in Laurens County, the challenge of the manufacturing and population growth in the northern portion of the county is extending those benefits to the whole county.
Lummus sees Laurens County growth as the next logical step in a growth pattern that is steadily moving south. Both land availability and comparative cost will likely continue to draw new people and businesses. Bolstering that prospect is the investment Laurens County has made over the past 20 years in expanding utility infrastructure, Coleman said.
While growth may seem inevitable and brings with it a number of challenges, Bailey said it also brings one thing virtually everyone seems to appreciate: more choices.
“People want those offerings,” Bailey said. “They don’t want their community to change a lot but they want those offerings.”
Manufacturing in the Upstate by the numbers
- There are about 3,000 engineering and manufacturing companies spread across the Upstate’s 10 counties
- Nearly 600 international companies have operations in the Upstate
- Major sectors include mobility and automotive, aerospace, advanced materials, life sciences and logistics
- The region is home to about 1.6 million people with recent estimates indicating about 80 people move to the region every day.
Source: Upstate SC Alliance
