For siblings Geordy Johnson and Susanna Johnson Shannon, investing in their hometown of Spartanburg is a family tradition.
Both are the latest generation of the family to fill leadership roles in The Johnson Group, a collection of companies founded in Spartanburg by their father George Dean Johnson Jr.
From its origins developing retail centers in Spartanburg County in the 1980s with the founding of Johnson Development Associates Inc., The Johnson Group of companies has grown to encompass projects in all 50 states. The group’s activities range from commercial, industrial and multifamily residential developments to hospitality development and management, among others.
All of that growth came with The Johnson Group being headquartered in Spartanburg, the community where both Johnson siblings grew up.
“I tell everyone I had the best childhood in America,” Shannon said. “I think growing up in Spartanburg couldn’t get any better in terms of the sense of community, the civic spirit of all the residents of Spartanburg.”
She said the commitment in her family of giving back to the community that nurtured them started with her grandparents and parents and continues with her and her brother.
This is one reason Project Core — the $500 million-plus mixed-use development anchored by a new baseball stadium in the heart of downtown — is so significant. The project aims to create a central hub around which a revitalized downtown can blossom, a marked contrast to conditions Geordy Johnson remembers from just a couple of decades ago.
“When I graduated from Spartanburg High School in 2001, you could shoot a cannon down Main Street and no one would get hurt,” he said.
Project Core
Searching for a project that would give people a reason to come downtown led The Johnson Group team to consider Major League Baseball, specifically its minor league affiliates, Johnson said. Minor league teams and their stadiums have had a profound positive impact on the communities where they operate, and bringing baseball “back to the ’Burg” seemed like a natural fit, he said.
He and Shannon both said the stadium also seeks to take advantage of national trends where people are moving increasingly to small- and mid-sized cities.
“People want to feel urban,” Shannon said. “People want to walk to restaurants … and I really do think (the stadium) will be the front porch of the community.”
That vision for Project Core is a sound bit of urban planning, according to Nancy Whitworth, whose 40-year tenure with the city of Greenville helped guide the city’s explosive growth in recent decades.
Whitworth has been advising Spartanburg leaders on effective growth and development strategies and said destination venues like Project Core’s stadium are key to building a thriving downtown.
“I will say Spartanburg is fortunate to have local developers who are investing in the community,” Whitworth said. “It really sends a very strong message … this is the place that has potential here.”
Helping realize that potential is not only important for the community but important for her family personally, Shannon said.
Although she, her husband and two children live in Denver, Colorado, she looks forward to what her hometown will look like when her children reach their 20s.
“I think Spartanburg is perfectly poised for the next several decades for just really phenomenal growth and attracting really wonderful people to the community,” Shannon said. “I think a lot of that is because of the solid foundation of the people in the community that are already there.”
