Portsmouth leaders outline downtown strategy after Greenville study tour

Portsmouth elected officials, city staff and local economic-development stakeholders met in a city-led workshop to discuss lessons from a study tour of downtown Greenville, South Carolina and how those lessons might be applied to reimagining Portsmouth’s downtown.

Attendees said Greenville’s revival hinged on mixed-use housing, consistent streetscape design and a long-term plan enforced across administrations. "We become what we think about," Mayor Shannon Glover said in opening remarks, invoking the visit as a prompt to change how Portsmouth imagines its downtown.

Workshop organizers and participants laid out why the Greenville example matters: Greenville used coordinated public-private financing, consistent branding, frequent downtown programming and visible anchor projects — including Falls Park on the Reedy River, a performing-arts center and a baseball stadium — to draw residents and visitors and to make its downtown a 24/7 destination. City Manager Steven Carter said Greenville’s success included cultural and organizational choices Portsmouth must replicate: "We have to change the expectation that people have when they come to Portsmouth," Carter said,…