Wichita business group travels to South Carolina

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described the location of Greenville.

Nearly 50 Wichita business and civic leaders left Wednesday morning for a three-day visit to soggy South Carolina.

The trip – dubbed a “leadership visit” – is a Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce project and marks the 10th year that a contingent has traveled to a community to gain ideas about best practices for growth, and urban and community innovation.

This year’s trip is to Greenville, a city of just more than 60,000 in upstate South Carolina. Located near the North Carolina state line, the U.S. Census-defined Greenville-Anderson-Mauldin metropolitan statistical area is home to close to 850,000 people, according to the latest Census numbers.

The city has a strong automotive industry presence, which Chamber chairman Jon Rosell said is a trait he and others want to learn more about.

“What they have done in their automotive industry, we think that translates well to our aviation industry,” said Rosell, a member of the visiting group. “We certainly hope to gain some understanding there, and we’re also interested in their education system in Greenville, which is excellent.”

Rosell added that he is also interested in learning about how Greenville’s leadership responded to the workforce demand associated with the growth of its automotive industry in recent years. Automaker BMW has a presence in the city and the area is home to a large number of feeder manufacturing operations for the auto industry.

Chamber spokeswoman Courtney Sendall said the group of 48 from Wichita includes a mix of private business leaders and public officials, including Mayor Jeff Longwell and City Council members Lavonta Williams and Janet Miller.

This year, visitors will focus on economic development and entrepreneurship, education and workforce development, and downtown vibrancy and talent retention, according to a chamber release. Last year, a contingent from Wichita visited Austin and in 2013, the city of choice was Des Moines.

“If you look at what they’ve done there, they’ve had excellent city and county leadership,” Rosell said of Greenville. “We’re looking forward to learning how those leaders have been able to be successful for a long time.”

Sendall said the chamber chose to not make the list of trip-goers public, though it encouraged members of the group to document the experience on social media with the hashtag #ICTC2C10, which a number of Twitter users began doing Wednesday.

Areas of South Carolina closer to the state’s coast line have been ravaged with deadly flooding in recent days from Hurricane Joaquin, though the Greenville area largely escaped the storm’s wrath.

This story was originally published October 7, 2015 at 12:57 PM with the headline "Wichita business group travels to South Carolina."