This area of the South Carolina upcountry had already worked its magic on me about a year earlier when I visited nearby Spartanburg. But Greenville, I learned, hadn’t always been so picturesque.
“We used to always be told never to go downtown,” said artist Patti Rishforth, a Greenville native whom I found in her silhoutte and portrait studio on the ground level of a mixed-use development along the Reedy River. “It’s changed like night and day.”
Downtown flourished after World War I, according to a memorial on North Main Street honoring former mayor Max Heller. But it began to decline in the 1950s and ’60s with the growth of suburban shopping centers. In the 1970s, Heller and the city made revitalizing downtown a priority, and their efforts paid off. Today, the tree-lined heart of town boasts restaurants, boutiques and plazas ideal for whiling away a sunny afternoon.
Still, even as recently as a decade ago, Rishforth said, the southern end of downtown, near the Reedy, was less than charming. She recalled cutting through abandoned lots to have picnics with her young son by the river. Now, the area is a popular park, completing the flow of pedestrian-friendly attractions.
“It’s got that European feel to it,” said Diane Ludwig, who relocated from Charleston three years ago to open the dog-centric Barkery Bistro with her daughter. Such quirky, upscale storefronts are common along North and South Main Street, including one urging passersby to “get your ‘chi’ moving.”
I wasn’t sure about my chi’s mobility, but I knew that I wanted to give the rest of my body a workout on the Swamp Rabbit Tram Trail, a nearly 14-mile walking and biking path that runs north from Greenville to the city of Travelers Rest.
On my first morning in town, local outfitter Reedy Rides delivered a spiffy white bike to my hotel, the Westin Poinsett. The city is about five years into its “Bikeville” initiative, a push to become a bicycle-friendly community, and so far the Swamp Rabbit is the most prominent result of that effort. With so much enthusiasm surrounding the trail, I worried that my leisurely ride might turn into a two-wheeled game of Frogger. But although more people were out than I’d expect on a weekday morning, I wasn’t overwhelmed. In fact, my only near collisions were with one scampering lizard and a few dangling inchworms with a death wish.
The trail runs along the Reedy, which provides a soothing soundtrack of gurgling water, at least in the spots where traffic and railroad noise don’t drown it out. Similarly, the scents emanating from the abundant greenery are occasionally lost among the fertilizer-like odors that permeate the air near a number of chemical plants not far from downtown. Farther north, as the trail approaches Furman University, the landscape takes a turn for the residential.
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