The next article in this series from the Decatur Daily
Third of a five-part series.
Greenville, S.C., Mayor Knox White has the credentials to speak with authority. He is in his 11th year as mayor of a city that can boast of one of the nation’s most dramatic downtown turnarounds.
“There are many things we’ve done to make our downtown thrive,” White said, “but none of it would have worked unless we kept it safe and kept it clean. Everything else has to come after that.”
White was speaking to two dozen members of the Decatur-Morgan County Chamber of Commerce, and they were taking notes. The mayor’s speech was early in their visit to Greenville, but already it was apparent that downtown Greenville is something special.
The goal of the trip, said Chamber Vice President Jim Page, was not to mimic Greenville, but to sort out those strategies that have worked for Greenville and that might work for Decatur.
“This is a benchmarking trip,” Page said.
“Greenville has accomplished things with its downtown that Decatur has not. Some of its strategies might work in Decatur. It’s worth taking a look.”
Anchored at one end by a Hyatt Regency (built in 1982 and renovated last year) and at the other end by a minor league baseball stadium (built last year), downtown Greenville is a showcase of gorgeous trees, fountains, sculptures, expansive brick sidewalks and a riverside park.
And commerce. Greenville has about the same population as Decatur, but its downtown has more than 80 restaurants, dozens of art galleries and studios, million-dollar condominiums, boutique shops and elegant hotels.
White was speaking inside The Westin Poinsett on Main Street, a symbol of the city’s emphasis on safety.
“One of the ways we did it was reopening this hotel,” White said. “For 20 years, this hotel was vacant, full of pigeons and homeless people. This hotel was one of my priorities.”
The city condemned the hotel in 1987, but in 2000 a public-private partnership led to a $25 million restoration.
“It’s like night and day since I first came here in 1986,” said Dale Westermeier, the city’s parks and grounds administrator. “It was homeless city back then. I knew the winos by first name. Now they don’t allow that sort of stuff on Main Street. There’s a heavy police presence downtown, so people feel safe being here, even late at night.”
That was accomplished by having police over-patrol the downtown area. The police presence was visible years before it seemed necessary. That presence, though, facilitated growth. As restaurants opened and the performing arts took hold, people did not hesitate to come downtown because they knew it was safe.
Having more police patrol an area than is necessary for crime control costs money and, maybe more significantly, a change in mindset.
Decatur Police Chief Ken Collier explained that a few decades ago, cities thought routine patrols significantly reduced crime.
Studies in the early 1970s contradicted that notion, however, and that put an end to the costly practice.
“We learned that to do enough to actually make that work,” Collier said, “you’d have to hire so many officers that it’s just not feasible.”
Collier, of course, is charged with protecting an entire city. His mandate does not include rejuvenating the downtown. Greenville placed police officers downtown not because it was a high-crime area, but to communicate to visitors that it was safe.
Asking an understaffed police chief with a tight budget to engage in public-relations-inspired law enforcement is asking a lot.
“It would not be feasible with the number of officers we have right now,” Collier said. “We just couldn’t do it.”
For a downtown police presence to be noticeable, he said, would require as many as four officers. Even for new hires, a police officer costs the city about $60,000 a year, not including the cost of vehicles.
The message, already learned by Greenville: a city that wants to use a police presence as a tool for economic development needs to be willing to pay the money to make it happen.
Greenville made that investment, and it has paid off.
“One of my real joys has been watching kids come downtown,” said White. “They go to the park; they go to coffee shops. They hang out downtown until midnight, even if they’re below drinking age.”
Keep it clean
The other prerequisite to a thriving downtown, according to White, is keeping it clean.
Ben Gold, owner of Bistro Europa on Main Street, said the cleanliness of the downtown has permitted the many downtown restaurants to attract customers.
“Overall it’s a very clean, well-kept city,” Gold said. “The first part of October we had our big Fall for Greenville, a huge food festival that brought about 200,000 people to downtown Greenville for a three-day weekend.”
Food and people, of course, mean trash. Lots of it.
“I came back to work on Monday,” Gold continued, “and it was like there hadn’t even been a festival. There wasn’t any litter or trash anywhere. The city workers stay on top of it.”
Westermeier said that as the city was trying to make the downtown experiment work, his department had three full-time employees whose only duties were to maintain the grounds and pick up litter in the downtown.
Clean is key
“You’ve got to be a clean city. Being clean is a really, really key thing,” Westermeier said.
As with the police patrol, it seemed like overkill. The sidewalks were so clean people could eat off of them, but there still weren’t many people eating off the restaurant tables.
“We’ve had to strategically invest in things that gave us the biggest bang for the buck,” said Nancy Whitworth, Greenville’s longtime director of economic development, “and keeping Main Street clean was in that category.”
City workers pick up litter on the sidewalks, streets, parks and parking areas at least once a week, she said, and always do so immediately after downtown events.
The city’s focus on cleanliness extends to the tiny Reedy River, which meanders through the downtown, under a 355-foot suspension bridge and into the waterfall that is the centerpiece of the immaculate 32-acre Falls Park.
River cleanup
Before the rejuvenation effort, several city officials said, the Reedy River was disgusting.
“We used the Reedy River as the outlet for effluents from the textile mills, and not much else,” said Whitworth.
“We tried to focus on the assets we had,” she continued, “and one of those was the river. So we knew we had to clean it up.”
Now it is pristine, kept that way not only by city workers but by numerous civic groups.
“That’s something Decatur needs to work on,” said chamber Chairman Donnie Lane. “Trash builds up downtown, and that discourages visitors.”
Keeping a downtown safe and clean are not expensive economic development projects and not exciting. But, said White, they are essential.
“It’s little things like that,” said White, “that make it possible for the big projects to succeed.”
http://www.decaturdaily.com/stories/185.htm
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