How a minor league ballpark revived a struggling downtown in South Carolina

CBS News

2 days ago

For Greenville, South Carolina, Fluor Field is a field of dreams come true.
The stadium is home to the Greenville Drive, the High-A Minor League Baseball team for the Boston Red Sox, complete with a replica of Fenway Park's Green Monster — the popular nickname for its massive, left field wall.
But its big pitch is community.
"We were really embraced by the community, and then we began to learn all that a baseball team can do for a community," said Craig Brown, a former high-powered Manhattan advertising executive who built the stadium for $20 million in 2006.
Brown still owns the stadium and the team.
"Fluor Field has become the front porch of the community. In the South, the front porch is where the family gathers. That's very much how we operate the place," Brown told CBS News.
The ballpark has had a monster impact on the local economy. It draws roughly half a million people a year for ball games and other events. Over the last decade, the city says the team's financial impact has been nearly $300 million.
But the stadium did much more. After a number of Greenville textile factories shuttered, Fluor Field — using bricks salvaged from demolished mills — jump-started a renaissance in the city's West End downtown, a blighted area that used to be viewed as seedy and scary.
"There was a letter to the editor that said, you put a baseball stadium down there, only prostitutes will go to baseball games," Greenville Mayor Knox White said.
White has been the city's mayor for 30 years. He says Greenville's approach 20 years ago was unusual for the time, but savvy. The city insisted that the downtown stadium be part of an ambitious, mixed-use development.
"This was the transformational event. Suddenly, this area close into the stadium became a place for condos and some high rises and hotels. But beyond it, residential neighborhoods were transformed, as well," White said.
The mixed-use approach draws people and new businesses downtown. Old Europe Desserts serves coffee and sweets several blocks from the ballpark.
When asked why the baseball stadium was such a big draw, owner Bobby Daugherty said, "Bodies. I sell cake. I need bodies through the door. So I knew [it] was kinda right in the middle of all the traffic, if you will."
It's symbolic of what Greenville found here: a sweet spot for development that touches all the bases.