Economy
Within the past decade, developers and community leaders have spearheaded an effort to revitalize Spartanburg's downtown district. This has resulted in a remodeling of Morgan Square, the restoration of a number of historic structures and the relocation of several businesses and company headquarters to the downtown vicinity. Some of these new developments include a nine-floor, 240-room Marriott, the headquarters of Advance America, and the headquarters of QS/1 Data Systems. The world headquarters of Denny's restaurants is also located in downtown Spartanburg. Numerous other smaller businesses such as RJ Rockers Brewing Company have also moved downtown as a result of this community-wide effort.
The economy of Spartanburg also benefits from the BMW manufacturing facility located in the western end of Spartanburg County. Manufacturing began in 1996 with certain types of the 3 Series (from the E36 platform) and with the Z3 roadster. However, a year later when the newer 3 Series (E46) platform emerged, BMW decided not to build it at the Spartanburg plant, but instead exclusively manufacture variants of the popular Z3. The plant currently manufactures the X5 SAV and X6 SAC for the world market. As part of an expansion project announced in March 2008, the plant will add about 1,200,000 square feet (110,000 m2) of assembly space, and it will become the home of the next-generation X3 SAV.
Spartanburg is also home to the world headquarters and research facility for Milliken & Company. With over 12,000 associates located at more than 60 facilities worldwide, Milliken is one of the largest privately held textile and chemical manufacturers in the world.
Read more about this topic: Spartanburg, South Carolina
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant’s economy is a coarse symbol of the soul’s economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Quidquid luce fuit tenebris agit: but also the other way around. What we experience in dreams, so long as we experience it frequently, is in the end just as much a part of the total economy of our soul as anything we “really” experience: because of it we are richer or poorer, are sensitive to one need more or less, and are eventually guided a little by our dream-habits in broad daylight and even in the most cheerful moments occupying our waking spirit.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)