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John Murphy
Big news today and a great win for the City of Greenville. I believe this is the first big one for Sam Konduros, CEO of the Greenville City Economic Development Corp (GCEDC) who recently took on this position and will no doubt do some great things!
300 East McBee is one very large building for downtown Greenville. The fact that Prisma is going to keep its HQ’s here is a very big deal indead. The deal includes the City of Greenville investing $650,000 in public improvements at Falls Street and East McBee Avenue. Private investors have $38MM in the building and other investments there. There will be new tenants and other very nice improvements to the space. The outside street scape will see some very notable improvements according to this post by the City of Greenville on LinkedIn.
There have been many times that I will park in the public parking garage behind this building and this is the view I see on the 3rd level of the parking garage. I think this is such a cool looking building. It reminds me of a spaceship. I can’t wait to see the improvements they are doing on the back side of this as well.
We’ve all heard things are booming in Greenville, SC and they certainly are. New subdivisions are popping up everywhere as we prepare for the great emptying of blue cities and states to the north as they make their way to the South. There are some signs that the new home construction maybe getting ahead of itself with new builds, but that cannot be said when it comes to commercial construction.
There are some large empty spec warehouses along I-85 but no doubt those will become occupied within the next 12-18 months. What I find more interesting though is the dramatic drop in new construction for commercial buildings in Greenville County. Through July 2024, there have only been 44 permits issued for commercial new construction. Let’s say this number doubles between now and the end of the year. That will still put us down about 70% compared to 2023 which was down significantly from 2022. Pretty amazing to see this data.
Commercial renovations are plugging along at a decent rate although down from 2023 by probably 15-20%. Things got kind of crazy down here with Covid and now we are digesting those gains or in some cases resetting.
Greenville is still a fabulous place to live and work. We will get through this slowdown and once again ramp up to new heights I suspect in the not too distant future.
I’ve been telling people for a while, if you want to make a bet on if Greenville is going to be one of the best places to live and invest in America, just check out how many banks are either getting a footprint here or are expanding.
My work entails paying attention to the properties that are selling because of the cost segregation work I do with building owners. I happened to see published in the Upstate Business Journal that Pinnacle Bank closed on an empty 1.45 acre lot located at 811 E. Butler Road, Greenville, SC. This looks to be about 1/3rd of a mile from the I-385 / Butler Road interchange. This area is continuing to develop. According to county tax records, the bank paid $1,050,000 on May 8, 2024. According to UBJ, Taylor Allen, Brantley Anderson and Bailey Tollison of Colliers represented the bank. Congrats to those brokers on the sale as well as to Pinnacle Bank on it’s land acquisition for a new branch presumably.
BTW, I am not familiar with Pinnacle Bank and in looking up some information, it’s kind of hard to tell exactly who they are. There have been and continue to be lots of banking mergers so I don’t know if they will actually go by the name, Pinnacle Bank, when this branch opens up – if that’s what they do with the land.
Wofford College will receive $30 million in funding for needed improvements. The funding will come from the South Carolina Jobs-Economic Development Authority, or JEDA.
According to the article in GSA Business Report linked above, the college will receive $30.39MM in funding through the issuance of Economic Revenue Development Bonds.
Wofford College is a beautiful, historic college in Spartanburg. If you haven’t had a chance to visit, make sure you do so.
Congratulations to Bryan Beal and the whole team at Innovative Hospitality & Development who brought this remarkable project to life. Millions have been invested to bring these 3 properties back to use in the town of Fountain Inn. I was down there a couple of weeks ago when they were putting the finishing touches on the buildings. I can’t wait to see the completed project.
According to the Upstate Business Journal article, the Mill at Fountain Inn is open! This will be a major asset for the City of Fountain Inn and its residents. Soon they will have a gigantic TV screen installed outside. I don’t know if there is a bigger one in the state of South Carolina once this is operational. People will be able to sit out there on law chairs on the green space and watch movies or sporting events. It really should be fabulous!
The property consists of historic buildings and a gathering space. WYFF just published some additional information about The Mill.
In what has to be one of the coolest new projects in the City of Greenville, the much anticipated Spinx Market is getting closer to reality. The folks at Spinx have requested that the city allow them to operate from 5am until 2am. This will be fantastic and I see no reason why the city should deny this request. The design is spectacular by SHLTR Architects and this kind of convenience store is much needed in this part of town in Greenville’s historic West End.
I was in downtown recently for the Artisphere weekend and walked by where the Spinx Market will be located. This was from Mother’s Day – mid May 2024. It’s in an absolutely killer location.
GSP International continues to add service for passengers to reach destinations directly instead of flying through Charlotte (CLT) or Atlanta (ATL) airports.
Breeze Airways just launch its flight service for GSP to LAX. Check out Breeze Airways website for prices.
I was not aware that the CEO of Breeze Airways was the founder of several airlines in the past including JetBlue in 1998.
I love GSP International! I will often joke that it’s our own private little airport. But that’s no longer the case. They are doing some significant expansion at the airport right now as they bring in more and more flight service to accommodate the incredible growth in the Upstate.
The City of Greenville passed it’s budget for the year weighing in at $272,500,000.
There’s an endless list of projects for the city to work on and they are tackling a number of them. Affordable Housing continues to be a high priority for everyone in the city and they’ve allocated more than $10MM to help provide housing. I’m a skeptic so I don’t really know what the $10MM brings other than it’s generally a great tax deal for the developers and investors in such projects with the city.
One of the things I decided to do this year is to try to get to as many events and festivals as possible in downtown Greenville. There is always so much going on especially in the summer! So this year was the first year we were able to go to the Greenville Greek Festival! I’m glad we did!
The festival takes place on the grounds of Saint George Greek Orthodox Church located at 406 N. Academy St., Greenville, SC. It was a cloudy day for us on Saturday but the rain held off all day and the crowds were good.
It costs $3 per person to get into the Greek Festival. There was of course lots of amazing Greek food available for purchase. There was music and dance as well. The dances were on a schedule and various age groups would perform throughout the day.
We had an opportunity to also go see inside the church. I had never been in there before. In the lower level of the church, they had their icons on display. Those were beautiful and they had explainations of Greek Orthodox and church history in relation to the Catholic Church and protestantism. We then went upstairs to see the main church and it was gorgeous. I have one picture of it below.
We’ll go back again. The one thing we did not take in was were all the vendors were. I would have liked to have seen that but will do that next years.
South Carolina’s growth continues onward as more companies are finding it’s a great place to do business and it offers their employees a good quality of life with generally lower costs of living. But a big driver here in South Carolina is that it’s in an awesome location for supply chain and distribution.
Greenville of couse is in the Upstate which is about 3.5 hours from Charleston. South Carolina is very fortunate to have the Port of Charleston but also a network of inland ports where trainloads of boxcars are sent across the state to these various inland ports. Inland Port Greer plays a critical role in supporting the manufacturing base so prevalent here in the Upstate expecially with the likes of BMW and Michelin.
Inland port growth continues and they keep adding capacity. If you are looking for a new home to operate your business, you really should consider South Carolina. It’s a great place to live, work and recreate!