Any other Georgia Tech alumni in Upstate SC?

"E90M3" (e90m3)
06/05/2019 at 11:41 • Filed to: None

This is tomorrow, and I plan on attending.

DISCUSSION (18)

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > E90M3
06/05/2019 at 12:06

I could make it from WNC, but not having planned for it I will give it a pass.

I think one of the guys who went to Germany on the language trip when I did was from SC, so if you see an ME guy name of Ogle, probably him.

benjrblant > E90M3
06/05/2019 at 12:20

SCAD’s close, right?

LimitedTimeOnly @ opposite-lock.com > E90M3
06/05/2019 at 12:24

Good luck, I thought that 80% of the Greenville area professionals graduated from Clemson, and 19% from University of South Carolina.

(Disclaimer: not based on any actual facts)

E90M3 > LimitedTimeOnly @ opposite-lock.com
06/05/2019 at 12:34

That seems to be about my observations as well.

E90M3 > benjrblant
06/05/2019 at 12:35

I mean they have a campus in Atlanta, but you think artists and engineers mesh all that well. I want to do other things beside smoke weed all day.

benjrblant > E90M3
06/05/2019 at 12:43

wow, yeah. no assumptions in that statement.

Ash78, voting early and often > benjrblant
06/05/2019 at 12:50

Whoa, whoa, whoa....I seem to recall they added an “A” to STEM to make it “STEAM”

Both of you can bond on common ground: Money is no object to any project .

/finance guy

Ash78, voting early and often > LimitedTimeOnly @ opposite-lock.com
06/05/2019 at 12:51

I just came back from there and agree. A lot of Clemson people were relieved I’m not an Alabama fan, so I was sure to congratulate them on their success with Armored American Wankball .

E90M3 > Ash78, voting early and often
06/05/2019 at 12:56

What did you think of the area?

E90M3 > benjrblant
06/05/2019 at 12:56

Nope, none at all.

Ash78, voting early and often > E90M3
06/05/2019 at 13:24

Pretty nice — downtown was great, and Greer (from a school/residential POV) was pretty nice. We spent a solid 3 days driving around, visiting restaurants, Paris Mtn, all over the place. Everybody we met was great and I was thrilled to see things like an REI and Whole Foods in such a relatively small city. The sense of community was really strong, too. Since it’s an “optional move” I had to be extra critical about everything, so my only two negatives were :

1. I didn’t love the infrastructure (lots of stop&go local highways and roads like Pleasantburg, Woodruff, Pelham, 176, but with only a couple overcrowded interstate segments). In other words, it took a long time to go just a few miles. Yet at the same time, there’s so much new roadwork going on (I-85/385 interchange and downtown) while the old roads are falling apart.

2. The contrast of “shiny and new” vs “run down” was pretty stark compared to anywhere I’ve been. I guess that’s the nature of a boom town (or gentrification) since the new money isn’t evenly distributed, but seeing condemned/ abandoned businesses next to fancy, expensive new apartments was hard to process.

And t he house prices have gone up so much in the past couple years, we might have missed our window. If I’m keeping my same job, then moving to a smaller market with more expensive houses is a risky undertaking. We’re still on the fence and looking at houses, but not committed yet.

LimitedTimeOnly @ opposite-lock.com > Ash78, voting early and often
06/05/2019 at 14:13

Yes, I know a long-time resident who sold his house near the center of town for $profit$ and moved further out because of how much the values have jumped recently in Greenville.

Is Charlotte off the list for you at this point, or still one of your options?

Ash78, voting early and often > LimitedTimeOnly @ opposite-lock.com
06/05/2019 at 14:20

It might still be a contender, but it’s just far enough away to make visiting a bit of a hassle for a long weekend . But it’s probably next on the list — we’ll probably be looking around Union County almost exclusively, but also Fort Mill/Rock Hill.

E90M3 > Ash78, voting early and often
06/05/2019 at 14:33

1. Some of those are really annoying, I don’t really encounter too much traffic as I tailor my trips to times or take an alternate route. The infrastructure does need to improve.

2. It seems a lot of that is in places that are getting gentrified . I heard around a decade ago you didn’t go downtown.

3. I think I’m going to end up buying within the next year or so, so we’ll see.

Ash78, voting early and often > E90M3
06/05/2019 at 14:57

I’ve gotta say, if I were a young and single guy, it would pretty much be a no-brainer move for me and I’d live close to downtown. Unfortunately, I’ve got about 30x as much stuff to consider, so from that angle it’s a much harder sell to move anywhere.

To put it another way, every single thing we like about all the places we’ve visited....we have all of it right here where we are. So then it’s just a “grass is greener” fallacy where you convince yourself you’re sick of everything for no good reason .

E90M3 > Ash78, voting early and often
06/05/2019 at 15:19

That’s about where I am.

SSnakeAce > Ash78, voting early and often
06/05/2019 at 15:38

Living here my whole life, you’re pretty dead on in your assessments. It’s on its way up though, I think. The other nice thing about a lot of the busiest roads like Pelham and Woodruff is that there are plenty of backroads to get you around the worst traffic.

On the house prices, I bought my current house 7 years ago. It’s ballooned nearly $70k in value in that time. I bought 4 acres of land to build my next house on 2 years ago - the house beside it has sold 3 times since then, and most recently for well over half a million. It’s crazy - now I just just need to hurry up and build so I can cash in on the value of my house before something causes the market to crash.

Ash78, voting early and often > SSnakeAce
06/05/2019 at 16:12

Overall, I really liked it and would still choose it over ANY major city in a heartbeat. Also seemed less pretentious than Asheville and better growth opportunities than Chattanooga (to name two of my other favorite small cities).

I was pretty stunned at how many gated mansions I saw all over town. And you can tell when there’s a hot real estate market because people don’t always take good care of their houses or do a lot of updates. It’s an attitude of “Yep, this will sell” (and it does!)

We liked some of the new construction, but like everywhere else it’s cookie cutter, clear cut. We ended up loving more established places like Sugar Creek, but nice houses for sale there are pretty slim.