Spartanburg City News

It's one of the most concentrated areas of poverty in our City and has the lowest median income of any neighborhood in Spartanburg County, all of which makes Highland the ideal place for a City intent on improving the lives of its residents to do its most impactful work. On December 7, three finalist firms competing for the opportunity to craft a redevelopment master plan for Highland gave present...

Do you have relatives or friends coming to town this weekend? Looking for a way to show off the coolest unexpected treasures Spartanburg has to offer after everyone awakens from their annual turkey-induced coma? This week's podcast is for you! Today we're talking about the new edition of the Underground Guide to Spartanburg, published by our friends at Hub City Press. Hub City's founder and Direct...

It's been nearly 20 months since our first podcast about the Montgomery Building redevelopment, and in the intervening time all of us who spend time in Downtown Spartanburg have watched our city's most iconic historic building slowly return to its 1920's glory. Now, after an incredibly extensive historic renovation, N Church Street is about to see something most of Spartanburg's residents have nev...

A new six-story hotel planned for the southest corner of N Church and E St John streets got its first overview from the City's Design Review Board (DRB) on Tuesday. The proposed 119 room hotel includes a ground-floor restaurant and bar with outdoor seating, an outdoor pool, and a two-level parking deck. The board, citing the developer's plans to use nonconforming EFIS (exterior insulation and fini...

Spartanburg has been around for a long time (1787, 1789, or 1831...whatever date you choose, it's been a minute) long enough to have its fair share of creepy history and lore, perfect to explore on this Halloween edition of the City Podcast. We're talking with our friend Brad Steinecke, Spartanburg County Public Library Assistant Director of Local History, to hear some terrifying local tales. Happ...

He's new to the job but definitely not new to Spartanburg and its people's aspirations and challenges. City Manager Chris Story is through his first couple of weeks on the job after Spartanburg City Council voted 7-0 to award him the position after the retirement of former City Manager Ed Memmott. Story had served as Assistant City Manager since 2009 and held the position of of Assistant County Ad...

He's new to the job but definitely not new to Spartanburg and its people's aspirations and challenges. City Manager Chris Story is through his first couple of weeks on the job after Spartanburg City Council voted 7-0 to award him the position after the retirement of former City Manager Ed Memmott. Story had served as Assistant City Manager since 2009 and held the position of of Assistant County Ad...

Whatever your taste in the arts, visual or musical, theatrical or literary, mainstream or alternative, Spartanburg has something for you. Today on the podcast, we're exploring a relatively new piece of the local arts puzzle, the Proud Mary Theatre Company. Based at the West Main Artists Co-op, the group is preparing to launch its second season with The Boys in the Band ​on Friday, October 26 at 8...

The Spartanburg Area Chamber of Commerce Downtown Development Partnership has announced a new way for downtown business owners, employees, and residents to come together to learn, share information, and stay in the loop about the rapidly changing face of Downtown Spartanburg. The newly created Downtown Business Council is meant to offer a space for businesses and downtown stakeholders to share the...

As you might imagine, in his 21 years serving in Spartanburg City Government, outgoing City Manager Ed Memmott has seen our city go through some drastic changes. Coming to the the City in 1997 to serve as Community Development Director, Memmott then served as Assistant City Manager for five years before becoming City Manager in 2009 and has overseen one of the most important development periods in...

As you might imagine, in his 21 years serving in Spartanburg City Government, outgoing City Manager Ed Memmott has seen our city go through some drastic changes. Coming to the the City in 1997 to serve as Community Development Director, Memmott then served as Assistant City Manager for five years before becoming City Manager in 2009 and has overseen one of the most important development periods in...

If you've spent any significant amount of time in Downtown Spartanburg in the last decade, there's a pretty good chance that you've encountered work created by one of the 33 artists brought to Spartanburg through HUB-BUB's celebrated Artists-in-Residence program. Over the years, the program's artists have created lasting impacts that are both physical (like Sparkle City Mini Putt) and cultural. No...

At their last meeting, Spartanburg City Council unanimously approved a funding plan for the future T.K. Gregg Community Center to be built on the former site of Oakview Apartments on our city's Northside. The new center will feature an indoor aquatics center with two pools—one for competitive and exercise lap swimming and one for water therapy and swimming lessons—as well as an indoor gymnasium, f...

It's an arts institution with a storied 90-year history in our community, and for the first time since 2005, there will be a music director at the helm of Spartanburg Philharmonic as they enter a new season. After a two-year search process that brought three guest conductors to Spartanburg, Stefan Sanders was named Music Director in March. Sanders comes to Spartanburg after five seasons as residen...

The summer heat is still here but summer for our city's children is about to come to an end as school begins next week, so today on the podcast, we're doing something a bit different. We packed up the recording equipment and set up shop at the Downtown Memorial Airport Park, which opened this spring, looking to get some thoughts from our local children on what they're looking forward too this upco...

Their performances routinely sell out the theater at their Chapman Cultural Center homebase, and when it comes to community theater companies, Spartanburg Little Theatre is in a class by itself in the upstate. And taking a look at the performances scheduled in their upcoming 2018-2019 season, it's pretty easy to see why. Today on the podcast, we're talking with Spartanburg Little Theatre Executive...

One of the City's primary stated goals is to address our community's longtime racial and class disparities, and while the strategies we use are as varied and complex as the problems themselves, one important approach is to help strengthen our local minority business community. What's our newest tool to tackle that problem? The EMERGE Business Accelerator for African Americans, a program designed t...

As Spartanburg gets ready to construct the seventh courthouse in our 229-year history, we're sitting down with Spartanburg County Public Library Assistant Director of Local History, Brad Steinecke to talk about the previous six. What did each say about the community it served? How can looking back at these foundational civic structures, perhaps the most public of all public buildings, inform us ab...

When we here in local government are looking for an indicator of how the economy in Spartanburg is doing, one of the first metrics we turn to is Hospitality Tax. The two percent tax paid on prepared food and beverages is an excellent barometer for consumer spending in our city and the growth seen in H-Tax revenue over the past several years has corresponded well with what is anecdotally pretty cle...

If you've found yourself on the Mary Black Foundation Rail Trail any time in the past year or so you've probably noticed a lot of work happening just past where the trail intersects with Forest Avenue. The Rail Yard, a seven-acre multi-use park fronting the trail, is starting to take shape, and the latest amenity is a first for South Carolina: the Panthers Play 60 obstacle course. The course—which...

If you've spent any significant amount of time in Downtown Spartanburg in the last decade, there's a pretty good chance that you've encountered work created by one of the 33 artists brought to Spartanburg through HUB-BUB's celebrated Artists-in-Residence program. Over the years, the program's artists have created lasting impacts that are both physical (like Sparkle City Mini Putt) and cultural. No...

We've interviewed a lot of people on the City Podcast. We've had business leaders, elected officials, nonprofit luminaries, artists of all kinds, and a rotating gaggle of bureaucrats so smart they could probably divide by zero if asked. What we haven't had is a local author with one of the hottest books in the country...but we've fixed that. Today on the podcast, we're talking with author and Spar...

Summer is here (not officially, but you know what we mean) and that means something very special for City Podcast regulars...it's time for the budget podcast. This week we've got Assistant City Manager Chris Story on to give us an overview of the most important ordinance City Council passes each year. The $40.8 million fiscal year 2018-2019 budget includes no tax or fee increases and shows four pe...

Unequal access to economic opportunities. It's an ugly truth that communities around the country confront (or don't confront) every day, and Spartanburg is no different. Inclusivity, equity, and diversity—principles that many in leadership positions throughout our community value today—have long been challenges for Spartanburg. Racial and class disparities create very real barriers to economic mob...

If you ask us, Spartanburg punches far above its weight when it comes to creative talent. Sometimes that means being blown away by a local music performance at one of the dozens of venues downtown, sometimes it means hearing a reading from a local writer that you'll swear should be on the New York Times Bestseller List, and then sometimes it means seeing a performance put on by absurdly talented p...