UpstateUpstateSOUTH CAROLINAINTELLIGENCE REPORTINTRODUCTIONUPST A TE SC | INTELLIGENCE REPORT2 MAY 2019 SI T E S E L E C T IO NLike most overnight successes, Upstate South Carolina’s has been decades in the making. Its continuing prosperity will depend on thinking decades into the future.When veteran journalist James Fallows and his wife Debra set out to document their nation by way of their small plane in their 2018 book “Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America,” they made sure to include Greenville on their itinerary. When I checked in with the Fallows team, Deb Fallows noted the “amazing, tremendous cooperation” and engagement among industry, high-tech and the public school system in Greenville, whose spirit of renewal has extended in various ways to other Upstate communities: Spartanburg, Greer, Anderson, Simpsonville, Duncan, Greenwood and Travelers Rest, among others.Talent From Near and FarThe humans needed to fill those renewed places have come streaming in. Some are expat engineers. Some are high-tech entrepreneurs. And increasingly, some are deep-pocketed investors or retirees who tend toward engagement as much as fishing and golf.Sometimes renewal brings gentrification and its attendant issues. In real estate terms, it’s about old-style cafes running up against upscale, glass-façade condos. Other challenges include increasing traffic from the area’s sheer popularity as both a living and travel destination, as the regional population approaches 1.5 million. But y’all come: Site Selection Group Vice President Beth Land, a millennial native of Rock Hill, told me a woman in her 80s she met at a college fundraiser told here: “We love when new people move here, because they bring new ideas.”Jody Bryson, president and CEO at South Carolina Technology & Aviation Center, is a lifelong resident whose great-grandparents were local sharecroppers. After working for Governor Carroll Campbell and helping lure BMW to the Upstate in the early ‘90s, he moved back from Columbia.“It was special to come back here and work,” he says. “I realize what the companies and jobs mean to the citizens of this area. It inspires me to constantly improve their livelihoods. It means so much to so many families.”Land herself moved back to the area in 2014 to work for an aerospace manufacturer. She’s impressed by the public education system as well as the technical college system. She also says that despite some rising costs, “the bang for the buck here is so good. The housing market is tight where I live, but it’s nothing compared to Atlanta or New York or D.C.”Photo courtesy of VisitGreenvilleSC/Michael Gibbons S I T E S E L E C T I O N MAY 2019 3A Lot for the Money“Housing prices have certainly appreciated quite a bit, and you can point to issues like traffic problems, but it’s more a symptom of success than anything else,” says CU-ICAR’s David Clayton, an urbanist and former research director at the South Carolina Department of Commerce whose grandparents worked in textiles and whose father worked for Michelin. He says the region is “not turning away many projects,” and low costs continue despite the area’s great quality of life. “If you’re doing AI research, you can pay someone half what they pay in Silicon Valley, and they can buy a house twice as big.”And any way you slice it, the recreational component is impressive. “Concerts, live music, comedians, hopping on a bike trail that’s 60 miles long — to us it’s mind-boggling,” says Joel Edwards, founder of Humimic, who moved to Greenville recently from Arkansas. “We wake up on the weekend and say, ‘It’s 10 o’clock, we must have missed something.’ You want to be part of the community. We are constantly trying to recruit people to move here.”When they come, they may do so through Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport, which James Fallows called “the most dramatic instance of a long-term public-private bet” in the Upstate. It was a bet made by the late textile magnate Roger Milliken, “who decided in the late 1950s that the Upstate needed an airport that would never limit its potential growth.” The airport commission owns 3,500 acres around its complex for future expansion and economic development, with the land reaching all the way to the inland port, and a continuously updated 50-year plan.Not five-year plan. Fifty. That’s how vision stays alive. And how an imagined future becomes a concrete, vibrant reality. Adam Bruns, Managing EditorUPST A TE SC | INTELLIGENCE REPORT4 MAY 2019 SI T E S E L E C T IO NLANDING PADThere is nothing small to medium about Upstate’s degree of small-firm innovation.Launch pads are a great metaphor for a place to venture forth. But as the SpaceX rockets have demonstrated, bringing a venture in for a safe landing can be an even more jaw-dropping feat. The best part? You get to reuse the spaceship when you blast off again.In 2016 the South Carolina Department of Commerce launched a Landing Pad initiative designed to help companies who may want to enter a market with a small sales, research or fulfillment location before considering plunking down the capital for a manufacturing or other type of large-scale facility. Ten such companies have recently landed in the Upstate. Leaders from three firms that just made soft landings in the area talked about how they got here and what they want to do next.Joel Edwards is the founder and inventor behind Clear Ballistics and a new medical-use offshoot called Humimic. The core product? A gelatin-like material Edwards, an IT guy, basically invented by melting and mixing up candle gels and jelly-worm fishing lures in five-gallon buckets. It’s designed to simulate a living body, which in the case of Clear Ballistics can be used to determine how to take out an enemy more effectively, or more effectively protect your own personnel. All the three-letter Department of Defense agencies are customers, as are many major federal labs. When Clear Ballistics started making a gel, however, a lot of medical companies were contacting him.“It took me six or seven years to realize maybe we have more applications in the medical space,” Edwards says from a plain office in a non-descript industrial building in a still-redeveloping section of Greenville. He says Humimic is “the only one in the world that makes the ballistics gel in the clear synthetic form.” Moreover, Humimic is doing it at what Edwards calls “a phenomenal price,” and doing it in the U.S., right there in the back of the building in Greenville (the company also has a small distribution outpost in Rotterdam). The firm moved there in late 2018, after a doctor with the Greenville Health System (now Prisma Health) called Edwards at the company’s former home office in Fort Smith, Arkansas, to compliment his product after seeing it at a defense industry trade show. Introductions were The industry schematic from German software development and supplier management consulting firm valantic corresponds well to the reasons the company chose Greenville for its first U.S. office.Image courtesy of valanticGlide Path for Growth S I T E S E L E C T I O N MAY 2019 5made with leaders at the hospital system’s office of innovation, who didn’t know that Edwards had been scouting both coasts for a move, and was pretty set on relocating to the Fort Myers-Cape Coral region of Florida.Edwards continued to meet with GHS leaders, and just at the point when he was ready to finalize a property deal in Florida, “They said, ‘What about Greenville?’ ” Edwards recalls. “I said, ‘What about it? It’s not sunny, warm, beach and ocean, which I kinda want.’ They said, ‘Let us make some calls.’ ”Proactive AND ReactiveBefore he knew what hit him, a tour hosted by the Upstate SC In the last five years, companies have invested more than $10.6 billion and announced 27,208 jobs at new projects in the Upstate.UPST A TE SC | INTELLIGENCE REPORT6 MAY 2019 SI T E S E L E C T IO NAlliance team was arranged, and leaders at the South Carolina Research Authority (SCRA) alerted him to a lot of grant options for the company. “It was for us a great experience, because it was treatment we were begging for” back home, but not getting because their potential job creation numbers weren’t in the triple digits.Next thing he knew, Marc Metcalf, senior business recruitment officer at the Upstate Alliance, “brought us into his office, scratching his head, and said, ‘These are things we could have helped you with,’ ” says Edwards. More wheels were set in motion, including possible state incentives.“They said, ‘Let’s be proactive instead of reactive,’ ” he says. “That’s what South Carolina has done. The business environment they’ve built is looking into the future versus looking at now.”Even some regional folks Edwards meets only want companies with 100 or more new jobs, not the 35 to 45 Humimic may create. But Edwards found the right people to champion his firm and his cause — something made easier by the conscious choice the state and region have made to focus on smaller footprints with big impact. “Marc at Upstate Alliance and the SCRA have that drive, and that drew us to the state,” Edwards says, also giving credit to Anita Patel, the state’s trade program manager.One arrangement that also makes his six-person firm’s Greenville location work is a side deal Edwards made with his friends at Prisma, whereby he has access to doctors and equipment — even if that MRI machine he wants is only available in the wee hours (when he does his best discovering).He calls this access “one of the pivotal points in why we came to the Upstate,” he says, “and why we put our building almost as close as we could to Memorial Hospital. We want to create an environment so if a physician is working with us, they can come right here after their shift.”Dutch and German Firms Find FootingAcross town by the former military base that today is South Carolina Technology & Aviation Center, Vincent Nijzink is heading up a new operation from Netherlands-based EAS Change Systems, formerly an independent company called Enerpec Automation Systems, with a U.S. office in Milwaukee.“I bought the company with two partners in 2015,” Nijzink says. They contemplated how to move on with the former owner retiring. The idea popped up to move over to the U.S., but analysis showed Milwaukee was not the right spot.“We started doing a market analysis of our customers and potential customers,” he explains, about two-thirds of which are automotive-related. That meant either Greater Detroit or the Southeast. “Since we’re a European company, we have a lot of ties with European automotive suppliers, and a lot is in the Southeast — BMW, VW, Volvo, Mercedes, as well as the Asian companies like Hyundai, Nissan and Toyota. Also, since we want to increase our business in Mexico, it was a shorter flight than from the Canadian border.”Initial analysis encompassed Alabama, Georgia, both Carolinas and Kentucky. He visited multiple states as well as fielding visits from state delegations in Europe. “South Carolina for some reason spoke to me right off the bat,” he says. “I came over with my wife. We visited Charleston, Columbia, Spartanburg, Greenville and Anderson. The main reason we chose the Upstate and Greenville was logistics. We can be in Atlanta in two-and-a-half hours, Tennessee in three hours — VW is a big customer of ours.”He’s found utilities, cost of living and building costs to be competitive. Wages, though a bit higher than in Europe when benefits are taken into consideration, are paid in a non-union environment. “That helps,” he says. “You have a lot more freedom in what you do with staffing than in Europe.”Meanwhile, there is plenty of freedom in the local lifestyle too.“My wife and I were pleasantly surprised by downtown Greenville and the atmosphere of the city. We lived in Shanghai for a couple years, and then Rotterdam before that. We found Greenville to be a nice mix between the big city and small cities.”His family moved over from the Netherlands in November 2017, and the company opened in February 2018, performing warehouse and sales support from the Greenville location. “The plan is to start production here or at another facility Metro Greenville saw the issuance of 1,815 commercial building permits from 2013 through 2017 (1/3 downtown), representing just over $1 billion in investment.in this area within the next two years,” says Nijzink. A workforce of six should reach 20 by the end of 2020.Already the talent is making itself manifest: Wisconsin had a lack of available technical staff, compared to the Upstate.“We looked for service technicians and project managers for four months and didn’t find anybody,” he says of Wisconsin. “We moved here and within two weeks we had a large number of interesting resumes and people to choose from.”Heart of the CityIn the center of rejuvenated downtown Greenville at an incubator in River Place right by the Reedy River sits a new office from Germany’s valantic SCE (USA) inc. where Michael Bouranis, president, says the software development and supplier management consultant plans to create at least 15 jobs. The firm came because of BMW, but is using this first U.S. office as a kickoff for serving the country. As the team evaluated the Greenville-Spartanburg and Greer areas, they talked to peers at another German software development firm in the area who told them most of their talent came from Greenville and/or Clemson.With Volvo having just opened a plant in Charleston; the Daimler Freightliner Custom Chassis operation in nearby Gaffney, VW in Chattanooga, OEM in Alabama and tier-2 and tier-3 suppliers reachable in Mexico, Bouranis sees a lot of potential for growth.Bouranis and his wife were as smitten with downtown as the Nijzinks were — and not just because it was warmer. They’re empty-nesters, freshly sprung from the Detroit suburbs into a vibrant downtown. “We see Greenville as a hidden gem,” he says. And he keeps running into others having the same experience.“I just ran into an old colleague I worked with previously, down here short term working for a supplier. He’s only been here a couple weeks, and was saying he was amazed at how great the city was, and all that was was going on.”Sounds like one more individual whose firm and people, should they be looking for a soft landing in the South, may find it in the Upstate.UPST A TE SC |INTELLIGENCE REPORT8 MAY 2019 SI T E S E L E C T IO NPEOPLE, PLACE & LIFESTYLEBridge to theAmble through downtown Greenville and you’d think its 100-plus restaurants, Swamp Rabbit trail along the Reedy River, Fluor Field ballpark and iconic pedestrian bridge had come out of nowhere, like some theme park version of an ideal city. But Greenville’s buzz has been a half-century in the making.As the City of Greenville’s “Downtown Reborn” website explains, revival of a struggling downtown was the impetus behind a 1968 Downtown Development Plan. Today the buzz is palpable in downtown Greenville, and more than one interview subject will independently volunteer that it even has a European feel, notwithstanding the fact that many structures are shiny and new instead of hundreds of years old.“We can get to the mountains in 30 to 45 minutes, there are nice national parks and a lot of outdoor activities to do, which we absolutely adore,” says Vincent Nijzink, CEO of EAS Change Systems, who moved to the area last year from the Netherlands with his wife, and has since welcomed the birth of a child. “It’s a nice, livable region. You can stroll downtown. Th ere is live music. Adapting to American life as a European is quite easy. And we’ve found quite a few Dutch people as well — there are a lot of small to medium Dutch, Belgian and German fi rms in this region. It’s part of what gives downtown Greenville more of a European feel than most American cities.”Global companies and engineering fi rms such as Fluor that have churned talent in and out of Greenville for decades — even spawning a cluster of site selection experts who have spun off but never spun away from the Upstate.“I’m spinoff of a spinoff ,” laughs Sarah White, formerly a site consultant with legendary fi rm McCallum Sweeney and now doing similar work as director of Quest Site Solutions, housed in the HQ of global engineering and construction fi rm O’Neal. “I didn’t think I would move back here, honestly, but I’m very glad I did.” She’s also an economic development spinoff , as she’s the daughter of longtime economic developer Carter Smith of Spartanburg Economic Futures Group : “It’s in my blood,” she says. “When I was little, my Photo courtesy of VisitGreenvilleSC/Chris Leyland PhotographyTalented individuals keep spinning through the Upstate — and often don’t want to leave.Future S I T E S E L E C T I O N MAY 2019 9Bridge to thenightgowns were BMW groundbreaking t-shirts. My Mom tells one story about a tax parcel map that he would color in as they got parcels. I would ask him, ‘Do we get to color today?’ ” Beth Land, another McCallum Sweeney spinoff , is vice president within the Industrial and Economic Development Division of Dallas-based Site Selection Group, establishing the fi rm’s fi rst Southeastern offi ce in downtown Greenville. Th e Clemson grad says the site consulting cluster is a cottage industry all its own.“It used to be that economic developers went to Atlanta or Charlotte and would give us a courtesy visit if they had time,” she says. “Now it makes sense to sometimes just do a Greenville visit.”One thing both consultants know for sure is the state’s ReadySC training program and technical college network is rock solid. White always highlights the Greenwood Promise, whereby funds from public and private donations are awarded to off set the remaining balance of post-secondary tuition and fees for local high school graduates. She says she had a great experience attending public schools in Lyman, a mill town between Spartanburg and Greenville. Now she’s the mother of a kindergartner in Greenville County. “Generally, I think the Upstate is pretty strong in public schools,” she says, including the showcase A.J. Whittenberg Elementary School of Engineering in downtown Greenville, named for a civil rights pioneer best known for his stand on the integration of Greenville County Schools.Sage Automotive has a career exposure program with Fisher Middle School. ZF Transmissions in Laurens County has a manufacturing employment program for educators during the summer months. A STEAM festival called iMAGINE Upstate, where industries showcase STEM careers, shuts down Main Street every year.South Carolina has always stuck out for training, White says, and also for quality of life for those trainees. “I loved it as a single person, and now I love it as a place to raise my family.” When she gets to retirement, she may still love it, as so many empty nesters and retirees already seem to. “It’s nice to see the range of ages.”White says the Upstate profi le also is strengthened by Greenville Technical College, as well as six colleges in Spartanburg, Furman University on the outskirts of downtown Greenville and Lander University in Greenwood.Helping homegrown talent stay and people from away never want to leave is part of the motivation behind a new talent attraction initiative launched by the Upstate SC Alliance called “Move Up,” which profi les a number of talented “Upstarters” in the 10-county region at MoveUpstateSC.com. “Our region has the right ingredients not only to meet business needs, but also to provide fulfi lling careers and a rich lifestyle,” says Upstate SC Alliance President and CEO John Lummus. “Move Up is here to help employers and our communities tell that story.”Sarah White, Director, Quest Site SolutionsNext >