Gentrification: Why revitalization can be a bad thing
Emily Artus, The Vision Magazine Artistic Director
If you pay attention, you’ll notice a distinct trend as you drive through West Greenville, Downtown Greer, Travelers Rest and—increasingly—Berea.
Amid the rundown houses and fluorescent coin laundries, upscale coffee shops, bougie boutiques, sleek apartments and niche bistros are creeping in.
What do these new businesses mean for the old ones? Do the new residents displace the original tenants? How does a city “move forward,” and what happens to those left behind?
In answering these questions, you’ll likely hear the word gentrification being tossed around. According to Merriam-Webster, gentrification is “the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents.”
And this phenomenon is nothing new in Greenville. And it all started when Greenville first made its mark on the map.
Greenville’s history is heavily rooted in the textile industry. According to greenvillesc.gov, in the late 1800s, Greenville earned a title of “Textile Center of the South.” And throughout the expansive county, industrial trappings sprang up. Mill villages, laid out in nearly perfect grids, surrounded large brick buildings with tall turnstiles.
During the Great Depression, these mill villages became destitute—and they never truly recovered. Long after textile production ceased in Greenville, these villages remained and were largely populated with lower class individuals due to a few deciding factors: hundreds of tiny houses packed together, low cost and creaky, 20th century pipes. However, with each passing year, these villages—and the surrounding areas—are being slowly overtaken.
The gentrification of Greenville truly began in the 1980s when the geometric, modernist Hyatt Regency was built at the juncture of College and Main Street.
And it was in the 1980s when Timm Artus, an employee at North Greenville University’s Print Hub, moved to Greenville to attend Bob Jones University.
“When I was in college, that was the only thing you could downtown after 5 [p.m.],” Artus says. “Go downtown to the Regency, eat at Streamers, which was the restaurant there, and hang out in the big inside/outside park.”
The next big step, according to Artus, was the construction of the Peace Center.
“High end shows were being done in Greenville. You didn’t have to go to Charlotte or Atlanta,” he says. “So now, we need a hotel, and now, we need a restaurant to go to before the show. Now, we need a bar to go to after the show. It just expanded and exploded.”
Then, in the early 2000s, the rebranding and revitalization of the Reedy River furthered the gentrification of Greenville. A gravity-defying suspension bridge replaced the overpass that once covered and hid the waterfall, and businesses like the Table 301 group (founded in 1997) and Spill the Beans expanded near the new, family-centric Falls Park.
Now, Greenville county’s gentrification trend is moving west.
According to neighborhoodscout.com, West Greenville’s child poverty rate is 60.7 percent, substantially higher than the average in Greenville, yet the West Greenville Village, a conglomeration of business and restaurants in the same area, offers artisan crafts, meals and coffee beverages at middle class prices (a latte at the Village Grind costs $4). The disparity between the two sides of West Greenville is reaching a tipping point.
And in Artus’ opinion, both pros and cons of gentrification exist, but a disturbing example of a con, he says, is the Kroc Center, a West Greenville institution.
“That [the Kroc Center] was purposefully built on an economically-depressed area with a bad future,” Artus says. “And they purposefully put that multimillion-dollar Kroc Center there—paid for with hamburgers from McDonald’s and through a partnership with the Salvation Army— so the kids and the families there would have easy access to fitness, classes, culture, shows, music, workouts and a pool. Then, they built the really nice grade school next to it.”
In theory, the Kroc Center could have been “a beacon of light and hope in the community” like their mission statement says (krocgreenville.org), but in reality, something slightly different happened.
“Then, all the sudden that dead land next to the Swamp Rabbit Trail became condos,” Artus explained, referencing the Swamp Rabbit Trail, an old train track converted into a walking path that runs right by the Kroc Center. “The poor people that are there can’t afford those apartments, so they have to move. And now, the Kroc Center is surrounded by a bunch of yuppies—which was the exact opposite of what was supposed to happen.”
But pros exist, too. According to Artus, gentrification is a conduit for the Reaganomic trickle-down theory. As more factories are built, more jobs are created. And more jobs means more people, and more people means more apartments and houses, and more houses and apartments means more restaurants. And this cycle has already happened in Greenville—like with the Peace Center—and has already worked, Artus says.
“Opportunities from Michelin and BMW means people who are in lower-end retail jobs move to higher-end manufacturing jobs, and those retail jobs didn’t go away,” Artus says. “Can you go from a janitor job to a retail job? Can you go from starting in retail to managing in retail? That brings people up.”
Gentrification doesn’t preclude people with lower socioeconomic status from being mobile, he further explains.
Gentrification, like any other human concept, is flawed. Sometimes, it hurts communities. And sometimes, it helps communities. But the people within the communities are still responsible for each other and themselves.
“How do we help people who don’t have opportunities get opportunities?” Artus says, tilting his head to the side. “Did you take advantage of the opportunity you had?”
