Clinton Takes Center Stage at Ten at the Top’s Upstate Downtown Academy

Clinton welcomed regional leaders, planners, and community stakeholders Tuesday evening for the latest stop in Ten at the Top’s Upstate Downtown Academy series, a program designed to highlight downtown revitalization efforts happening across the upstate. Participants drawn from across the organization’s ten-county region (Abbeville, Anderson, Cherokee, Greenville, Greenwood, Laurens, Oconee, Pickens, Spartanburg, and Union counties), gathered at House of Pizza on Musgrove Street for a panel discussion, a guided walking tour of downtown, and an informal dinner, all centered on the question of what it takes to rebuild a downtown and make it a place people actually want to be.

A Region on the Move

Ten at the Top Executive Director Dean Hybl opened the evening by framing the purpose behind the academy series, now in its second year. “We started these about two years ago, to look at how communities of all sizes are working to either vitalize or revitalize their downtown areas and create a sense of place,” he said. Jonathan Irick, a Laurens County native and staff associate with Main Street South Carolina, co-moderated the panel. Irick noted that Clinton is one of 32 communities across the state currently participating in the Main Street four-point approach, which focuses on design, organization, promotion, and economic vitality.

The panel reflected a cross-section of Clinton’s civic and business community: Jim Spry, Main Street Clinton Director; Joseph Dyches, owner of Canebrake Civil and Main Street Clinton board member; Susan Tallman, realtor, co-owner of Musgrove Market, and President of Main Street Clinton; Danny Smith, realtor and Clinton City Council member; and Joey Meadors, Clinton City Manager.

The Numbers Behind the Momentum

Much of the evening’s energy came from the sheer scale of economic activity now pointed toward Clinton and Laurens County. Spry laid out the figures.

“For all of 2025, the Laurens County Development Corporation announced $125 million worth of capital investment and 250 new jobs,” he said. “To date in 2026, just four months in, they’ve announced $582 million worth of capital investment and 1,019 new jobs, and all of those are within 20 minutes of our high school.”

On the residential side, Spry said 1,240 new rooftops are already approved across nine developments, with another 650 in the planning process. For a city of fewer than 8,000 residents, down from a peak of roughly 9,600 before the closure of the Clinton textile mill in the early 1990s — those numbers represent a potential transformation. City Manager Joey Meadors, a Clinton native who has worked for the city for decades, put it plainly: “In five years, I want to see that growth.”

The Fire That Changed the Timeline

Any honest conversation about downtown Clinton right now has to include the fire. About 18 months ago, a fire tore through a block of Musgrove Street, the commercial corridor that had long carried the majority of downtown foot traffic. The event was held, fittingly, at House of Pizza, one of the businesses directly impacted.

Spry, whose wife owned one of the affected buildings (Aspen & Fig), described the immediate aftermath as a gut punch to the entire town. “Imagine if, in one day, three-fourths of your foot traffic for your downtown is gone,” he said. He acknowledged that communities facing similar disasters have sometimes struggled for years to recover, and that Clinton’s response stands as an exception worth noting.

What happened in Clinton was different. Former City Manager Tom Brooks and the Clinton Economic Development Corporation moved quickly to fund cleanup and broker resolutions that kept the situation out of prolonged legal disputes. A GoFundMe organized through the Chamber helped cover employee wages and support affected businesses in the immediate aftermath. “Because we are not staring at a pile of rubble,” Spry said, “we can talk about the great things that can come.”

Building on What’s Here

The panel touched repeatedly on the challenge and opportunity of connecting new growth to the existing downtown. A major piece of that puzzle is a proposed sports complex near Exit 54, where a developer has signed contracts to build eight baseball fields, five multipurpose fields, and an indoor gymnasium capable of hosting cheer competitions and basketball tournaments. Meadors said the developer hopes to break ground in late June or early July, with the possibility of hosting tournaments as early as spring 2027.

Council member Danny Smith said the projections are significant – somewhere between 350,000 and 700,000 visitors annually once the complex is fully operational. “Our challenge right now is figuring out how to get them into our downtown,” he said. Hotels and restaurants are already expressing interest in locating near the complex, and Smith said he hopes the activity will fuel a broader downtown revival. “If we can have an active community here during the week and then have crazy weekends where baseball families are coming in and buying antiques and ice cream, I think this could be one of the most booming markets anywhere in the upstate.”

Presbyterian College was highlighted as a natural anchor for downtown activity. The campus sits less than half a mile from the Musgrove Street corridor, and panelists agreed that normalizing the walk or bike ride between the two is part of the longer-term work, particularly as the pharmacy school adds to the built-in population of students and faculty already close by.

Opening a Store as an Act of Faith

A Clinton resident for 30 years and a realtor for the past eight, Susan Tallman and co-owners Heather Tiller, Ellen Templeton, and Rebecca Murray reached a point where they decided to stop waiting for someone else to open a business downtown and do it themselves. Within a month, the four had filled two adjoining storefronts on Musgrove Street with antiques, vintage goods, and gifts under the Musgrove Market name, and Tallman has been tracking where customers come from.

“On Saturdays, more than half are not from Clinton,” she said. She credited building owner Chip Cooper for offering rent terms that made it possible to launch, a point she made deliberately. “The only reason we can have our store right now is because Chip Cooper is allowing us to have reasonable rent. He’s giving us the benefit of the doubt and knows how hard it is to run a business here.”

Her message to other potential downtown business owners was direct: “I do wish more people that live here would want to open a business, we would all help them do it.”

The Work Ahead

The panel was candid that the vision is not yet the reality. Spry described downtown Clinton’s current state as more of an intersection of roads than an intersection of people and said the work ahead involves creating spaces where residents and visitors actually want to linger, not just pass through.

Joseph Dyches raised a theme that resonated throughout the evening: the importance of carrying Clinton’s existing identity forward through growth, rather than letting revitalization erase what makes the community distinct. “Clinton has a lot of local pride,” he said. “My hope is that we’ve managed to inject that current core identity into the place that we become.”

After the panel, the group moved through downtown on a guided walking tour before returning to House of Pizza, where the evening ended over pizza and conversation, a fitting close for a night spent talking about what it looks like when a community decides to invest in itself.

Publisher’s Note: I had the privilege of attending Tuesday evening’s Upstate Downtown Academy in Clinton. Watching this panel of community leaders speak openly and honestly about where Clinton has been and where it is headed was genuinely inspiring. To Dean Hybl and the Ten at the Top team, Jonathan Irick and Main Street South Carolina, and to Jim Spry, Joey Meadors, Danny Smith, Joseph Dyches, and Susan Tallman — thank you for the work you are doing to help shape the future of Clinton. This community is fortunate to have so many people willing to show up and do the hard work, and together we can make our vision of Clinton a reality. — Brenda Stewart, Publisher, Laurens County Buzz