Doomed building a piece of personal history

Accompanying the link in the e-mail was a message that on the other end of the blue-underlined string of words and numbers was a story in which I may be interested. The news report wasn’t a surprise, but it did bring about the conclusion that was long in coming: The Greenville News building in bustling, vibrant downtown Greenville, S.C., would soon be demolished.

The venerable building that once housed the headquarters of Multimedia, Inc., the offices of the Greenville News and Greenville Piedmont newspapers and the printing plant would soon exist only in photographs and memories, making way for Camperdown, a mixed-use development on 4.5 acres of absolutely prime real estate that will put an exclamation point on the renaissance of downtown Greenville.

Gannett, which now owns the Greenville News, has moved the newspaper’s operation a couple of miles to the east of downtown. No one can blame the media giant for selling off the old building and property, fetching $13.25 million for the site. According to developer Centennial American Properties, the newspaper’s corporate offices will be located in some of the new office square footage in the development, which will include a hotel, condos, retail and restaurant office space and parking deck, all wrapping around a center courtyard.

The site is among the last significant pieces of property at the eastern end of North Main Street, along the banks of the Reedy River which, in the early 1980s, was hidden behind a thick, unkept stand of woods. You could hear the rushing water crashing down the falls from the Greenville News parking lot and along Camperdown Way, but you couldn’t see it. And even if you could, you probably wouldn’t want to.

Modern downtown Greenville, as it was at the time, was just beginning to stretch northward up Main Street, leaving behind what is now West End, which, thanks in large part to a new downtown minor league baseball stadium, is now in the midst of its own revitalization. Separating the two is now Falls Park and its iconic suspended Freedom Bridge, a natural respite on the east side of the Main Street bridge and a short walk beneath the bridge from the new hotels, restaurants, condos and both indoor and outdoor performing arts venues along a trendy riverfront.

Through it all, Greenville has successfully blended historic buildings with new structures, seamlessly honoring its Old South past while embracing its New South future. The Greenville News building, located at the epicenter of it all, won’t be one of the old structures that survives. The office building is an odd-looking, low-rising rectangle connected to an unattractive concrete, windowless structure that once housed the composing area — which, thanks to desktop publishing technology, is now obsolete in most newspaper operations — and the printing plant.

In order for downtown Greenville to complete its transformation, the Greenville News building absolutely must go. It’s post-modern, pre-tasteful architecture is foreign to its surroundings — both old and new — and is clearly not the highest and best use of the land.

Still, its coming demolition is bittersweet. For four very enjoyable years, the Greenville News building was home. It’s where I made my own transition into adulthood, my first foray into the world beyond my native central Florida. It’s where I experienced my own personal and professional coming of age, where I began to learn about who I am and what possibilities may lie ahead. A stranger to town, the staffs of the Greenville News (morning paper) and Greenville Piedmont (afternoon) became my social circle, especially my fellow Piedmont sports department members, among them Scott Regan Scott Peterson, Chris Horeth, prep sports writer extraordinaire Rudy Jones, Abe Hardesty and Ron Green Jr. — yes, that Ron Green Jr.

Opportunity knocked to come to Charlotte in 1984 and I opened the door. On my way out of Greenville, I never closed it behind me. I brought with me an old tradition in newspapering at the time, a mock page full of mock stories designed to mock the person moving on. The main headline screams, “Warfield pegs Queen City as next victim!” It features a photo of myself, with long-ish hair parted down the middle, haphazardly trimmed beard, plaid shirt and a rooster knit tie (Don’t know what that is? Google it.).

The page is framed and has been hung in a prominent location in any office I’ve occupied since. I still remember all the people quoted in this printed version of a celebrity roast, and I have learned since of the Charlotte personalities whose identities — and fictitious comments — were included as well. It serves as a constant reminder of a time when reluctance met anticipation, and that a door left open eases the burden of passing through.

During a visit to Greenville a few months ago, I peered through the locked front glass door into the lobby where the old linotype machine remained on display in museum fashion, just as it was three decades ago when I passed through those doors every day. Given Greenville’s respect for history, I trust it will find a place of prominence, perhaps in the new Camperdown development, serving as a respectful nod to the site’s previous long-time occupant.

Monday morning, I sent an e-mail to the new owner of the property, requesting it facilitate a reunion of sorts for Greenville News and Piedmont staff members past and present for one more visit to the building before demolition. If so, I hope others share my reminiscence and attend. The Greenville News and Piedmont was more than just a place, after all. It was the people whose lives intersected with my own at that critical juncture who helped make it a special place to be.