New industries, such as Michelin, have helped transformed the growth
and development of Greenville County.
Photo: Michelin North America
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Greenville County Planning Commission |
Land Use Element
In the last 25 years, Greenville County has been transformed from a residential area predominantly supported by the textile industry into a complex commercial, residential, office, and manufacturing community. The population of the county has increased by more than 100,000 and the textile industry is no longer the dominant manufacturing base. New industries, such as Michelin, Lockheed, Magna, and BMW, have changed the character of Greenville County.
Greenville County leads the state in total employment, with approximately 220,000 workers, followed by Richland County at approximately 200,000, and Charleston County at approximately 175,000. Greenville County has become the Upstate's preeminent location for new office, research, and shopping center development.
In the last five years alone, the number of building permits for nonresidential uses has expanded by 64 percent. During the same period, the number of permitted units for residential uses in the county grew by 34 percent. One of the major effects of this growth has been the impact on the public facilities and infrastructure systems.
| A principal concern raised during the Designing Our Destiny public participation process has been the effect of this growth on our transportation system, particularly during peak hours. Even though the South Carolina Department of Transportation issued bonds to advance our highway improvement program by approximately $104 million by the year 2007 and the State Infrastructure Bank has committed approximately $430 million toward road improvements, we are still addressing past needs rather than improving the infrastructure in advance of development. |
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Developing and implementing effective measures to address future transportation needs is a principal challenge for Greenville County and its municipalities. The "sprawl growth" of Greenville County, particularly to the southeast and south, has created more than $55 million in highway improvements that were not anticipated in the Greenville Area Transportation Study (GRATS) Plan five years ago. |
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