This longtime SC neighborhood is ‘one to watch,’ according to Forbes. Here’s why
A 110-year-old Greenville neighborhood that has recently experienced a slew of new business and healthy residential real estate sales has been named a neighborhood to watch by Forbes magazine.
Overbrook, just outside the city’s downtown, joins such heady neighborhoods as Union Square in New York City and West Palm Beach in Florida as being featured in a regular series by Roger Sands, a travel writer.
“Between 2020 and 2022 more than 300 homes sold in the neighborhood thanks to its easy walkability to parks, shops and restaurants along with its convenient location just over a mile from downtown,” Sands wrote.
Della Scott, a Realtor and the neighborhood president, has lived in a four-square — a house with four rooms on the first floor and four on the second — since 2007. She was drawn to the house by its spacious front porch.
The house is on the main thoroughfare — East North Street — which at the time was four lanes and a busy artery into downtown.
The city put it on a diet, as they say, reducing it to two lanes with turn lanes in the center and bike lanes on the edges. Traffic slowed. Bikers and pedestrians arrived.
It has also made the neighborhood more friendly to bikers and pedestrians. Overbrook is close to new sections of the Swamp Rabbit Trail, which began as a 20-mile path from Greenville to Travelers Rest on an abandoned railroad track.
There is a small park in the neighborhood, which is also close to much larger public parks and the Greenville Zoo.
In the past few years, the list of new businesses has grown to include a salon, massage parlor, yoga and many restaurants, including a bakery called The Pound Cake Man and a restaurant with its own farm-grown poultry and produce called Fork & Plough.
The mix of houses is expansive from small cottages to historic near mansions, some 100 years old.
And there are beekeepers. Several in fact and they are eager to share their hobby with those who want to learn, Scott said.
Overbrook was developed after the trolley line, known as the The Toonerville Trolley, was extended to the area. The Woodside brothers, cotton mill owners, developed a neighborhood of bungalows from 1913 to 1924. A second area was developed in the late 1920s for “‘well-off’ businessmen and professionals and, therefore, both lots and homes were larger,” the city says on its website.
Scott said the neighborhood is a mix of long-time residents and young families. The neighborhood association puts on at least two events a year for people to socialize, one at Christmas when houses are festive and owners stage open houses and a summertime cookout.
Not everyone is thrilled about the publicity, One women responded to the city’s social media post about the Forbes article with this: “we need a stat for how much this post will make the rent and home prices in this area go up @cityofgreenvillesc keep me updated on your gentrification quest :)
