Popular Simpsonville Food Hall – Warehouse at Vaughns Sold to Innovative Hospitality and Development
The Warehouse at Vaughns in downtown Simpsonville is a fabulous place to go. It was a very welcomed addition when it first came on the scene a couple of years ago. One of the things I really like is their music venue out back where there might be a few hundred people gathered on any particularly warmish evening listening to a local band.
There is now new ownership in place at the Warehouse at Vaughns. Bryan Beal and his team at Innovative Hospitality and Development are taking over as new owners. They have some changes planned to continue to improve the venue and the overall experience. I look forward to seeing what Bryan and his partners do with this.
Thomas Wirthlin, the founder of the Warehouse at Vaughn’s, will continue to be busy with all the businesses and venues he runs. He took this same concept and opened a food hall midtown called the Warehouse at Midtown as well as opened a new food hall at BridgeWay Station called City Market in Mauldin amongst other restaurants.
Bryan Beal and is team are working on several other projects in the Upstate from Fountain Inn to Greer. The brewery and multiple restaurants as well as an event venue will soon be opening in Fountain Inn.
Five Forks is an community within Greenville County and will a Simpsonville address but it is not part of the city of Simpsonville or Greenville. My kids would say it’s bougie but we like it because it’s got great access to downtown Greenville or down to Simpsonville or to the airport. It’s very convenient to lots of shopping for every day life as well. We moved here about 3 1/2 years ago and have loved living here. We know the area has a tough reputation for the traffic coming through Five Forks and that has been a bit rough at times.
They have been doing road construction for the most part since we moved in July 2019. It’s been 3.5 years and they are nearly done with it – thank God! I’ll let you know if it makes much of a different at 5pm coming through Woodruff Road or not.
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.
Here’s a look at the other banks along Woodruff Road between I-385 and the Five Forks area.
There’s a brand new retail shell that has been completed just across the street from the Sportsclub at Five Fork. The shell has 10 units and sits on a 2.89 acre site according to county records. The building was recently built by Smith Companies of Greenville Inc. for $3,256,574 according to the records found on Greenville County Building Permits site. The building is listed on those records as 16,660 square feet.
Five Forks continues to boom with new buildings and renovations all around the area. Five Forks often makes lists of one of the most desireable places to live in the U.S. The Greenville Journal has a great article on Five Forks. I would expect this retail strip center to do quite well when you think of the number of people who come in and out of Sportsclub every day but more importantly, the thousands of people who live south of here down Scuffletown Road. There are dozens and dozens of subdivisions bringing traffic through this area every day. This building is just a block or so off of Woodruff Road as well as the Publix at Five Forks Place.
It will be fun to see what goes in to these spaces. The property is being marketed by Bryon Culbertson of Joyner Commercial. Reach out to him for details on leasing opportunities.
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!
