[ ABOVE: Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson, far left, and other members of a delegation from the Alabama city in a dugout during a tour of Fluor Field on Monday, Oct. 17. ]
Greenville continues to be a popular destination for chamber of commerce-led delegations from around the country in search of lessons about downtown redevelopment and a good time while learning them.
Nearly 1,400 people from 38 cities in 15 states have visited Greenville as part of such delegations since February 2012, according to a tally kept by the Greenville Chamber, which leads the efforts to host the groups.
One of the most-recent groups arrived Oct. 16 from Mobile, Ala., for a three-day stay.
The delegation of about 80 included Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson, who said he was curious how Greenville was able to spur residential and retail development along its Main Street.
“We are a very old city, 300 years old, a lot of historic structures, a lot of renovation going on, but we’re still not quite where we need to be on the retail and the residential,” Stimpson said just before he and other members of his group ate breakfast at the Westin Poinsett Hotel.
Bill Sisson, president of the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce, said Greenville and Mobile both have a lot of international residents who came to town with the operations of foreign-owned companies.
In Mobile, those companies include Austal, an Australian shipbuilder that makes ships for the U.S. Navy at a 164-acre shipyard, and Airbus, the European aviation giant that began making its A320 commercial jet in Mobile in July 2015.
“We are getting a lot of foreign direct investment, a lot of European families in Mobile,” Sisson said. “Of course, Greenville has had that for decades.”
The guests ate lunch at the Commerce Club, walked Main Street during the Fall for Greenville festival and toured Fluor Field. They chose whether to visit the NEXT Innovation Center or the Swamp Rabbit Trail, walk Main Street accompanied by city officials or ride a bus to see housing redevelopment.
Their itinerary called for dining at downtown restaurants and visiting Clemson University’s International Center for Automotive Research before returning to Mobile on Oct. 18.
Along the way, they were scheduled to meet Greenville Mayor Knox White and other city officials, local developers and business executives, the owner of the Greenville Drive minor league baseball team, the associate dean of Clemson University’s downtown business school and ICAR’s executive director.
Other delegations over the past two years have come from as far away as Evansville, Ind.; Springfield, Mo.; Akron, Ohio; Longview, Texas; and Wichita, Kan.
Last month, 143 people from Columbus, Ga., chartered a plane for a two-and-a-half-day visit, said Hank Hyatt, vice president for competitiveness at the Greenville Chamber. Another delegation of 60 was scheduled to visit this week from Fayetteville, Ga.
Hyatt said the visitors spend money downtown and spread the word about Greenville’s success when they go back home.
“So people in Akron, Ohio, in Mobile, Ala., in Longview, Texas, they know about us now,” he said. “We’re on their radar. We’ve got articles in their newspapers. It’s unpaid media. We’re getting that in those communities. That can be very helpful.”
It’s common practice for chambers of commerce to lead groups of their members and local officials on trips to other cities in the hope of learning things that might prove useful.
Nashville, Denver and Pittsburgh have all been popular destinations for such intercommunity visits in the past, Hyatt said.
He said the Greenville Chamber tries to organize such a visit every two years and in past years has dispatched delegations to Austin, Pittsburgh, Orlando, Boston, Baltimore and Indianapolis.
In 2007, the Greenville Chamber organized a trip to Dublin that proved to be a factor in the later re-development of a building near downtown Greenville.
While in Dublin, the Greenville delegation visited a former Guinness beer warehouse that had been converted into office space for digital media companies, Hyatt recalled.
That was part of the inspiration, he said, for Greenville’s NEXT Innovation Center, a former warehouse at the corner of Church Street and University Ridge that was turned into office space for firms belonging to the Greenville Chamber’s Next group of technology entrepreneurs.
Hosting the regular stream of delegations from other cities sometimes takes a lot of work, but the Greenville Chamber doesn’t charge a fee as some other chambers do.
It sees the work as part of its mission, Hyatt said.
“We are there to be that front door to the community, that entity that welcomes other communities in,” he said. “It fits our DNA.”
Plus, hosting the groups is part of the Chamber’s obligations under a contract with the city of Greenville, said Hyatt and Julie Horton, the city’s governmental relations manager.
Under the contract, the city gives $50,000 a year to the chamber in exchange for various services, mostly related to economic development, Horton said.
Y’all Come Back, Now
Delegations from other cities that have visited Greenville since February 2012
DATE CITY NUMBER OF VISITORS
2/23/2012 Hickory, NC 50
3/1/2012 Montgomery, AL 15
3/22/2012 Roswell, GA 50
4/30/2012 Concord, NC 15
5/10/2012 Huntsville, AL 50
9/6/2012 Greenville, NC 25
9/17/2012 Davidson, NC 10
11/14/2012 Opelika, AL 30
2/8/2013 Charleston, SC 40
4/23/2013 Summersville, W VA 15
4/25/2013 Kannapolis, NC 25
6/28/2013 Asheville, NC 15
9/13/2013 Duluth, GA 75
10/5/2013 Kingsport, TN 10
10/14/2013 Danville, VA 50
1/24/2014 Statesboro, GA 20
2/5/2014 Athens, GA 13
4/12/2014 Conway, AK 20
4/21/2014 Middletown, OH 10
5/28/2014 Tupelo, MS 19
8/8/2014 Charleston, SC 15
9/3/2014 Jacksonville, FL 25
9/21/2014 Chapel Hill, NC 10
9/2014 Lexington, SC 10
10/5/2014 Longview, TX 15
4/15/2015 Franklin, TN 40
5/6/2015 Cary, NC 50
7/31/2015 Sugar Hills, GA 18
9/22/2015 Aiken, SC 45
9/28/2015 Akron, OH 50
10/7/2015 Wichita, KS 50
10/22/2015 Summerville, SC 20
10/22/2015 Gainesville, FL 60
11/2/2015 Longview, TX 18
9/12/2016 Evansville, IN 40
9/15/2016 Springfield, MO 60
9/28/2016 Columbus, GA 143
10/17/2016 Mobile, AL 80
10/24/2016 Fayetteville, GA 60
SOURCE: Greenville Chamber
