Greenville church purchased Simpsonville YMCA for $5.5M what’s next

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A local church purchased the building and land at 100 Adams Mill Road Simpsonville from the YMCA for $5.5 million. 

The deal between the YMCA Simpsonville and Fellowship Greenville church, located at 3161 S. Highway 14, closed on June 15.

Charlie Boyd, currently a lead pastor at Fellowship Greenville, has been a member of the church for 26 years.

“We have grown tremendously over the past year,” he said. “By about 900 people in just one year. A lot of them are moving from out of state. Every week I meet people from the West and Northeast, so we ran out of space.”

A realtor who attends Fellowship Greenville services mentioned putting up a bid for the YMCA Simpsonville once it was listed for purchase, Boyd said.

“We put a figure out there, and the Y accepted our bid,” he added. “This space will hold about 700 people, and it’s just six miles down the road from our present location, so it’ll work out well as a satellite campus.”

The church has about 1,100 people who live within two miles of the YMCA Simpsonville property already wanting to go to this campus once it opens, said Boyd.

This YMCA has had a plan for several years to move everything to its other Simpsonville location near Interstate 385, said Boyd.

“We are planning to allow them to use the sports fields for the foreseeable future, but there is not a formal partnership,” Boyd said. “But we have worked together well, and it has been a great experience.”

The building will undergo $12.8 million of renovations.

Renovations will be extensive, said Marks, and they are looking into partnering with a permanent coffee shop as part of the common area coffee shop that could run at the new location all week long.

“We think it will be a nice upgrade to this part of the community,” Marks said.

Fellowship Greenville Executive Pastor Rob Marks said the building currently has a gym they are going to convert to a worship space. There are multipurpose rooms and a pool that will all be converted for kids and students. There also will be a foyer/coffee area similar to the space they have at their current location.

“Part of what we will do is run the same programming there that we do on a Sunday morning here,” said Marks.

Initially, the new location will just be open on Sundays for children’s ministry, middle school ministry, preaching and worship, and Bible study type activities will still be held at the Greenville location, he said.

“From our perspective, we have a bunch of people who already live in this area who could benefit from the new location, but we also want to reach even more people,” said Marks. “We really wanted to partner with the Y to continue to offer their outdoor sports programs. They don’t have space, yet (at the other Simpsonville location), so we still want to have the community involved in these sports. We wouldn’t want the community to feel like they couldn’t do that just because a church has moved into that space.”

DP3 Architects is the architect on record, and currently, the project is expected to be completed by the end of 2024.