Not just a college town anymore, the city is nurturing a startup culture, attracting and keeping entrepreneurs — and feeling its growing pains
Eric Newton, broker-in-charge and owner of Tiger Properties, a real estate agency and management company, is a Clemson University graduate and lifelong Clemson resident.
“One of the things that always amazed me is more businesses didn’t want to stay here in town and continue to do business,” he said.
Startup ventures wouldn’t stay in Clemson because they couldn’t find affordable space in a collaborative environment, Newton said.
So the finance major with a concentration in real estate came up with a solution: think tanks, where startup businesses can locate and people can work and collaborate in shared space.
The Think Tank on Sloan was Newton’s first. The office space, in what once was a floral shop just off College Avenue, is in the center of downtown Clemson and close to the university campus. It has 10 offices and shared amenities such as a copier, Wi-Fi, conference room, and restrooms. Newton, who holds the master lease on the property, spent $80,000 on the building upfit.
The Think Tank on McCollum was his second. It’s also close to downtown Clemson and the university’s campus.
Coming soon is his third, Issaqueena, located in a 9,000-square-foot former bingo parlor in east Clemson. It will have 10 office spaces, event space for 350 people, and a members-only social club. Newton bought the property with two partners last year and they plan commercial/wet-dry lab space and possibly a residential component at the 4-acre site.
“Part of my vision for the Think Tank spaces is to create unique but affordable collaborative spaces for companies to cultivate their ideas, with the expectation of growing their businesses in the Clemson market,” Newton said.
“Over time, there have been a lot of people that have felt like they wanted to make it feel more like a small town,” he said. “Now the pressures, with the university growing, enrollment and everything, that’s going to be difficult.”
Tigers and townies collaborate
One of McCollum’s tenants is Aptus Bioreactors, whose team supports researchers creating the next generation of heart-valve replacements.
Lee Sierad and Michael Cater work in a cramped, 150-square-foot corner office that they say is just fine.
On a recent weekday, Sierad explained he was filling out paperwork for a subaward on a $400,000 grant with Clemson, “so I need to be close to the university.”
“We’re producing equipment that they’re using, collaborating really closely with them, and there wasn’t really anything like this space here in Clemson,” he said.
Tom Winkopp, a Clemson developer, said Newton “has done a great job” capturing smaller users with his think-tank space approach.
Much of the future of Clemson’s business environment, for now, will depend on the university’s growth, Winkopp said. The incubators and startup companies will come as students and others stay in the area.
“In a small market like Clemson, so much of the business demand is going to be at the university,” he said. “They’ve got plenty of room on campus to build all the office space they need. From the private sector’s standpoint, there’s some risk involved in just speculating on building a bunch of office space.”
In the meantime, large users in Clemson are tough to find, he said. His 25,000 square feet of office space downtown is filled mainly with two users, and “I don’t have a lot of people banging on my door asking for large spaces,” Winkopp said.
The university has grown significantly in the last five to seven years, while enrollment is projected to reach 30,000 in the next few years. A lot of student-housing developers, including Winkopp, have targeted the area and downtown in particular.
“All things being equal, students want to walk to campus, they want to walk to the bars,” Winkopp said. “The issue is when you build downtown, the land, the type of construction, it is so expensive. There’s only so much demand for that.”
With the enrollment growth, though, goods and services will be needed, which will mean more opportunity for retail that is shared by students and nonstudents, Winkopp said.
“At some point, there will be clear demand for some of the larger office spaces,” he said. Large office users “have yet to reveal themselves here.”
That’s partly because those users can choose the attractiveness of Greenville, Charlotte, or Atlanta, he said.
“We’re still kind of a sleepy college town,” he said. “Somebody would make the argument ‘we’re just going to go to Greenville’ for a big office-type user and/or they’re going to locate in partnership with the university on campus.”
The city and university have “as good a relationship as you’ll find in the country,” Winkopp said. Growth has brought more people and traffic, and many people resist the change, he said.
“It’s a much different place than it was in the ’90s, the ’80s, and the ’70s, and people still say it’s better than ever,” he said. “Bigger isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but if you live here and you’ve lived here your whole life, some of the changes probably don’t sit well with you, which I completely understand. That’s human nature.”
Landlocked and looking for room to build
Since the city essentially is landlocked, much of the future development will have to be infill within the existing community, “which means you’ve got to tear down stuff that’s there to make room for the new,” Winkopp said. “And that’s always painful for people that live in the community.”
“It may be a blighted area or something that doesn’t look great, but it’s what they’re used to.”
Combine that with the need for affordable housing — under $200,000 — and a huge development challenge looms, he said.
“If you have to go in and pay an enormous price for property, and then tear down what’s there and then build, you can’t get in that $200,000 range,” Winkopp said. “You crowd out a lot of the people that would love to experience Clemson.”
Todd Steadman, the city’s planning and codes director, said commercial development space is currently tight but there is going to be commensurate space available as development occurs.
“The fact remains that the commercial clientele will always reflect the dominant customer base, which is 18–25 year olds,” he said.
The nonstudent population inside the Clemson city limits is about 8,000, he said. The on-campus student enrollment is about 23,000, he said.
“Would many of our citizens love to see a specialty bakery, wine and cheese shop, high-end boutiques, gourmet dining, and a Whole Foods? Absolutely,” Steadman said. “But the nonstudent population base is, in most cases, inadequate to make such places financially viable. Until and unless student desires change, student bars, pizza and sub shops, and other collegiately trendy shops will prevail. It’s a matter of metrics.”
Steadman said that based on the projected enrollment and increase in on-campus student housing at Clemson, the majority of the new students will not be living in the city.
“This is a concern in regard to the student life experience,” he said. “While no doubt there will be more student housing built in Clemson, most of the new student housing will occur elsewhere, and most likely it will occur in what is currently unincorporated Pickens, Anderson, or Oconee County.”
Meanwhile, the city has reached its sewer capacity for the campus side of town, so some project developers are being told they cannot build now, Steadman said.
Another quality of life concern is commuting, he said. “Absent advanced planning, student housing projects are going to spring up around the periphery of town, and there’s a good chance CAT [the local transit system] will not be servicing them,” Steadman said. “As a result, commute times will be much longer than what the current student population experiences and will require more commuter parking on campus. This will also create problems for the citizenry due to vehicular arteries becoming more clogged. Let’s call it carteriosclerosis. This will manifest via time, money, and frustration.”
Clemson is ‘different — but better’ now
Steadman’s hope is that the city and university find a way to work together to direct — or at least strongly influence — where this necessary growth will occur.
In addition, there is a clear need for non-undergraduate student housing, Steadman said. Married students, postgraduates, young faculty, staff, and many others working in and serving the Clemson area find it difficult to find affordable housing for rent or sale, he said.
“Studies and models show that this is a difficult conundrum as the market usually dictates pricing,” Steadman said.
But the city and university are committed to finding solutions, he said. A recent survey showed that “affordable housing” is considered as move-in ready in the $150,000 range, he said.
“This is difficult to achieve in Clemson with land costs being what they are,” Steadman said.
The city “is in no way second-guessing” the need for the university to grow, he said. “But the two are symbiotic and have a wonderful opportunity to entrench our Town and Gown status. To that mutually beneficial end, if we can agree on a location or locations for a ‘student village or villages’ and work out the services through either annexation or an intergovernmental agreement, the key to success will be providing transit to move these students in a reliable, timely, and efficient manner.”
“Let’s face it,” Steadman said. “The Clemson many of us knew and loved is gone. It is. In many ways, we are better today than 10, 20, 30, or 40 years ago. Different for sure — but better. That goes for both sides of Bowman Field.”
“Regardless, we are still one Clemson,” he said. “And we are at a juncture. The city and the university have worked together to make some very good decisions over the decades. But we have also missed some opportunities — individually and collectively — to manage our growth and common objectives. The good news is we are all committed to making the Clemson experience the best it can be now and for future generations.”
For his part, Newton witnessed a growth spurt in Clemson between 2003–2005, which led to the birth of Tiger Properties. He had been working in single-family residential development and the new business helped bail him out of the recession as student housing boomed, Newton said. He acts as a third-party management company.
He talks excitedly about his think-tank spaces because he believes more startup and entrepreneurial companies are coming to Clemson and that will be a boon to the region.
“You just never know how they could evolve,” he said. “They could end up being the next best thing. They could be the next biggest thing out there… If we could keep them here and they could develop their businesses here, then they’re more likely to contribute to the community. They’re more likely to contribute to the university, and it’ll just make this whole community a much better place for everyone.”
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