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Category: Commercial Development

United Community Bank Relocates HQ’s to Greevnille, SC – Building New $50MM Office

United Community Bank relocated its headquarters from Georgia to Greenville last year with a new $50 million building underway. (Rendering/Harper General Contractors) – Architects: McMillan Pazdan Smith

Downtown Greenville, SC just continues to boom! It’s not quite like Raleigh, NC or Nashville, TN but it is now holding its own when it comes to new development of commercial and multi-family property within the city itself.

United Community Bank announced last year that they were leaving Blairsville, Georgia and relocating headquarters in downtown Greenville. They are currently building a gorgeous, state-of-the-art office building in downtown next to the newly built Grand Bohemian Lodge.

The companies involved in the design and construction of this building include Harper General Contractors, McMillan Pazdan Smith Architecture, BPA Engineering, and RMF Engineering.

The building is targeted for completion at some point in 2024. It will be four stories with 118,000 SF. It right down the street from the Camperdown development in downtown Greenville. United Community Bank will be the largest bank headquartered in South Carolina. They will have about 300 employees downtown once this is completed.

I wonder how they feel about work from home :). Any, it’s great to see the continued investment happening in Greenville, SC.

Map of Opportunity Zones in Greenville, Spartanburg, Anderson – Upstate SC

HUD Opportunity Zone Map of the Upstate, South Carolina

Opportunity Zones are designatured by the federal government as areas where they would like to see new investment to revitalize communities. The benefit is that if you make the investment and improve the property that meet their guidelines and hold the property for at least 10 years, then you won’t have to pay capital gains on the property when you go to sell it.

There are a number of areas here in the Upstate of South Carolina. You can zoom in on the HUD Opportunity Zone map and take a look.

3 New Banks Being Built on Woodruff Road

New Fifth Third Bank at 1510 Woodruff Road, Greenville, SC – Photo by John Murphy, Greenville Real Estate News

A running joke on one of the Simpsonville Facebook Group’s that I’m part of is that when new construction starts on a particular parcels, people will jump in and try to guess what’s being built. Most of the time they are looking for new restaurants or a Trader Joes. I just published an article on this exact topic. The most common sarcastic comments tend to be…carwash, Waffle House, and dentists offices. Well I think we could now add a meme around banks being built because there have been a lot of new bank branches that have been built across Greenville County.

On Woodruff Road right now between I-385 and Five Forks, there are 3 brand new bank buildings currently being constructed. Fifth Third has made a big move into Greenville and they have two of the buildings going up. The other building is for First National Bank.

Building these bank buildings is not cheap…but again nothing is cheap today when it comes to commercial, or residential, construction. I suspect part of the differences in these prices might well be the size of the parking lots but also perhaps the site work that needed to be completed to build these buildings. For the Fifth Third buildings, they are both replacing old gas stations that were not exactly pleasing to the eye. It looks like in reading of the tax records and the building permits that each of these buildings are owned by different entities and these banks are leasing the space from them. According to the building permits filed with Greenville County, the Fifth Third Bank building at 1510 Woodruff Road will cost $1,950,000. The Fifth Third Bank building at 2608 Woodruff Road in Five Forks will cost $2,350,000. The First National Bank building at 1217 Woodruff Road will cost $1,500,000.

Here are the other two banks being built along with a list of other banks along Woodruff Road. It’s a popular location for banks I’m sure in part because the traffic counts are typically about 90,000 per day in the area.

First National Bank 1217 Woodruff Road, Greenville, SC – Photo by John Murphy, Greenville Real Estate News
Fifth Third Bank in Five Forks 2608 Woodruff Road, Simpsonville, SC – Photo by John Murphy, Greenville Real Estate News

Here’s a look at the other banks along Woodruff Road between I-385 and the Five Forks area.

Maverick Station in Mauldin Soon to Open

Maverick Station, Mauldin, SC – Photo by John Murphy, Greenville Real Estate News

The Parker Group has completed the shell for Maverick Station in Mauldin at Butler and Laurens Roads. It’s amazing to see the transformation that they did to the building that had been there.

According to the article in the Upstate Business Journal, the following businesses will be located there…

Sully’s Steamers
Bohemian Bull
iCRYO wellness center
AT&T

The property is being marketed by Lance Byars and Scott Burgess of Colliers. Here is the Colliers’ listing information for Maverick Station in Mauldin. It appears the shell is complete and now they will be working on building out the spaces for those businesses noted above.

The Parker Group does some great development and redevelopment. This is a very nice addition to this busy area in Mauldin. There’s a lot of interest from the public to see this new project open. Congrats to the Parker Group and to Lance Byars and Scott Burgess of Colliers on getting this leased!

KVP Inc. Real Estate and Private Equity – Greenville, SC

It’s been a lot of fun to watch the succss of Krish Patel and his firm, KVP Inc. He has a great story to tell about starting off with owning Verizon stores in South Carolina and eventually expanding to 50+ all across the southeast of Texas eastward. They eventually exited all those stores and have made many new investments since then. I was driving through Greenville this morning and saw some signs posted of another KVP development.

This is still a young but fast growing company and seeing what they have done so far, I have no doubt they will become massive players here not only in Greenville, but across the southeast.

Here’s a short 2 minute video that Krish Patel recently posted about his firm.

What do Simpsonville Residents Want to See for New Commercial Development?

Photo Credit: Dustin Tenney, SVN Blackstream Reedy River Retail

Dustin Tenney, a local commercial real estate agent with SVN Blackstream, posted on the Simpsonville, SC Facebook Group basically asking the 25,000 members what would they like to see developed at the 3 sites in the pictures he posted. (Update: here’s a link to one of their Simpsonville Retail Listings ).

In less than about 12 hours, there were already over 500 comments to his post. I also live in Simpsonville as does Dustin. We have seen lots of new commercial development as the city of one of the most desirable places to live in the country right now. The joke is that if something new is being developed, it’s either a dental office, a Waffle House, a car wash or an oil change station. But Dustin Tenney and his business partner, Daniel Holloway, are looking for perhaps something that the city doesn’t have yet and he solicited the public’s opinion on it. What ensued was a lot of fun and craziness and the mentioning of an incredible amount of companies and brands. I tried to go through the post and identify the companies, stores, brands, services that people wanted to see. Frankly, it was a bit mind numbing and I only made it through maybe the first 35-40% of the comments. So my analysis below is by no means scientific and I don’t vouch that it’s 100% accurate but directionally it gives you some idea what people are looking for in terms of new development in Simpsonville, SC.

Below is Dustin Tenney’s post in the Simpsonville Residents Facebook Group:

“Simpsonville! I would love for ya’ll to provide input on these three sites and “play broker/developer”. I’m serious in my interest to hear from you – I am a resident of Simpsonville as well and do a good amount of work in our city. My business partner and I know what what we don’t need any more of, as ya’ll are very vocal about that. But sometimes we don’t always think of everything we do need.

Back story, because of the cost of the dirt, we really need national tenants here, and because it’s a major thoroughfare, national tenants are what make sense anyways. The mom and pop and regional tenants are better suited with what we have going on along Main Street around Burdette.

With that said, feel free to drop me a line here, shoot me a DM or send me an email at dustin.tenney@svn.com.

SVN Blackstream Reedy River Retail

Here’s what I came up with after combing through the post comments. If a company was mentioned, I noted how many Likes / Loves it had and have attempted to add them up on a spreadsheet. As noted above, I did not get through the entire post given the number of comments. I don’t even know if this is helpful, but clearly people want a Trader Joe’s grocery store and a Texas Roadhouse. There was also lots of interesting comments about areas needed for families and kids….skate parks, ice rinks, trampoline parks, arcades, roller skating, bounce houses, mini-golf, movie theater…but the overwhelming responses where geared toward restaurants and grocery stores. There were several comments asking for coffee shops (not Starbucks) and bookstores.

Wants Likes / Loves
7Brew 4
Academy 5
Aquatic Center 5
Barnes & Noble 22
Bingo Hall 2
BJ’s 4
Buc-ees 2
California Pizza Kitchen 2
Carrabbas 3
Cheddars 1
Chicken Salad Chick 16
Chipotle 5
Clean Eatz 5
Container Store 1
Cookout 20
Copper River Grill 1
Costa Vida 2
Costco 22
Culvers 13
Dave and Busters 3
Dunkin Donuts 9
Fazoli’s 2
Fresh Market 11
Fuddruckers 7
Go-Carts 17
Half-Price Books 4
Harris Teeter 7
Home Goods 3
IKEA 4
In-n-Out Burger 14
Indoor Bounce House 8
Jason’s Deli 8
Jimmy Johns 2
Krogers 7
Lidl 6
Logans 3
Lowe’s Foods 1
Marshall’s 8
McAlister’s 9
Menard’s 4
Mini Golf 10
Mo’ Bettahs 2
Movie Theater 3
Noodles & Company 12
Old Navy 1
Once Upon a Child (thrift) 2
Pappadeux Seafood 4
PDQ 3
Pei Wei 4
PF Changs 2
Portillo’s 5
Raising Cains 8
Red Bowl 1
Red Lobster 13
Red Robin 7
Roller Rink 5
Sam’s Club 21
Shake Shack 4
Smash Burger 4
SoftSurroundings Clothing 1
Spare Time 3
Taco Cabana 2
Taziki’s 1
Texas Roadhouse 58
Top Golf 1
Trader Joe’s 92
Trampoline Park 22
Tupelo and Honey 14
Ulta Beauty 3
Uno 2
Urban Air 17
Wegman’s 31
West Elm 7
Whataburger 20
Zoe’s Kitchen 10

Below are other images of sites Dustin Tenney and Daniel Holloway are working on in Simpsonville, SC. If you’re looking for help with retail in the area, these two are doing a great job!

SunCap Property Group Breaks Ground on Largest Spec Building in Greenville County 1MM+ SF

Greenville County continues to see massive investment in industrial space as witness today where John Montgomery, Managing Director at Colliers in Spartanburg, SC, announced that SunCap Property Group will be building the largest spec building to date in Greenville County at 1,000,000+ square feet. You can see his post below from LinkedIn. The project will be built in phases and could see phase 1 as large as 1.5MM SF. Wow!

Here’s his listing for SunCap Property Group’s Enterprise 85 Industrial Park. Congrats to SunCap on breaking ground and John Montgomery’s team at Colliers for bringing this to the market.

The Upstate of South Carolina continues to boom for industrial real estate and draw the attention of major investors and companies. Located 90 minutes southeast of Charlotte, NC and 2.5 hours from Atlanta, GA, it’s well positioned for companies to get space at a reasonable price. The area also has the remarkable Inland Port of Greer which extends the Port of Charleston inland by 212 miles. As you discover the Upstate of South Carolina – Greenville, Spartanburg, Anderson – you may want to get to know Jim Burns and the team at the Greenville Area Development Corporation.

DC BLOX Opens Multi-Tenant Data Center in Greenville, SC.

Greenville, SC Data Center / Image Source: DC BLOX

The new 25,000 square foot state-of-the-art multi-tenant data center is now officially open in Greenville. DC BLOX has announced that it’s new facility is open for business.

“We are excited to announce that our new Greenville data center is ready and open for business. As promised, this first Tier III-designed data center in this market was built specifically to accelerate the deployment of critical infrastructure and interconnected cloud services throughout South Carolina. We have seen robust pre-leasing activity as the Upstate is thriving, and we are thrilled to be able to contribute to the region’s future growth,” comments Jeff Uphues, CEO of DC BLOX.”

“DC BLOX’s purpose-built data center facility is located in Greenville’s Global Business Park off of Interstate 85 and will have a capacity of 54,000 square feet of white space and 18MW of power at full build-out. The multi-tenant data center was designed to meet the need for local, reliable, world-class colocation to enable the region’s future growth. Previously, companies in the region looking for this class of facility were forced to house their IT infrastructure in Charlotte or Atlanta.”

The way I read this is that this opens the door to South Carolina and specifically the Upstate area to start to see more IT-related companies start to develop footprints in the area. It’s just another sign of the continued growth of South Carolina.

Verdae Greenville – Masterplan

Image: Verdae.com

Here’s a helpful link to the Masterplan for the Verdae development in Greenville, SC. This has been an ongoing development for years. They plan to have more than 10,000 residents and more than 550 businesses in this development when it’s completed. It’s the largest development in the history of Greenville. It is continuing to be developed today.

It’s exciting to see the continued growth in Greenville both in terms of housing, businesses and large employers. Here’s the main link to the Verdae Community and Development.

Greenville Area Development Corporation (GADC) Announces Officers for 2021-2022

New officers have been named to the GADC for the coming year. Here’s an excellent article with all the information about the GADC board for 2021-2022 from Greenville Business Magazine.

The GADC has been very involved in helping respresent the Upstate to companies around the U.S. and around to world to try to get them to establish a business presence here.