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Report: Greenville to be decade’s most resilient county

Molly Hulsey //February 8, 2021//

Report: Greenville to be decade’s most resilient county

Molly Hulsey //February 8, 2021//

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The Beach Company's Canvas Tower will reaach completion in the coming months as the development team seeks tenants. (Photo/Molly Hulsey)This story originally appeared in the Feb. 8 edition of GSA Business Report and was updated online after publication.

When The Beach Co. commissioned Australian mural artist Guido van Helten to add local flair to what would become the keystone of its Canvas development, its development company’s leadership team gave van Helten free rein with the project.

It was a leap of faith, COO and Senior Vice President Dan Doyle said.

As he did with the rest of the city, van Helten kept the developer in the dark about the subject that would grace the façade of the 18,900-square-foot former BB&T office building until just before the installation, but Doyle had full confidence the internationally-acclaimed artist would deliver after he spent weeks scouting out the right story to tell.

“We didn’t know what he was going to do there, and that’s part of his process,” Doyle said. “But really, when you’re dealing with very creative people, you entrust them with the ability to go ahead and do what they do best.”

After 704 hours working high above the street below with a paintbrush, van Helten revealed local teaching icon Pearlie Harris, once the only Black teacher at an all-white school during the segregation era, surrounded by local students as the Canvas centerpiece.

Despite a national hit to the single family and retail real estate markets, Canvas Loft developer The Beach Co. and brokerage partner CBRE believe that Greenville Co. has strong rebound potential. (Photo/Molly Hulsey)“It was a phenomenal result,” Doyle said, adding that the company was very pleased with the mural’s message on “importance of education and the ability for our children to have an education no matter their background — rich, poor or whatever the case may be (and) how important that is to our future.”

With demand for multi-family housing, retail and office space plummeting across the country during 2020, The Beach Co.’s “significant and sizable investment” — used to renovate 130,000-square-feet of office space, lay the groundwork for 31 future townhomes, and to lease 48 luxury apartments and almost 21,000 square feet of retail space — may have been a gamble.

Still, despite a rocky start, the next decade looks bright in the Greenville market, and Doyle is convinced The Beach Co. bet on the right horse.

“It does go back a number of years,” Doyle said of Greenville’s healthy market, “and it follows our philosophy, not only looking at Greenville as a market, but really similar markets throughout the Southeast. … These are all areas over the course of the past 10 years, that have really seen significant growth of population and not only that in job growth, in manufacturing and technology, medical care and so forth — all major drivers of growth.”

CBRE, The Beach Co.’s brokerage partner on the Canvas project, recently named Greenville one of the 11 most resilient counties in the country for the next decade.

The corporate site selection study took into account population size and growth, public transit dependence, housing costs and foreclosure risks, the workforce pipeline from universities, airport access, fiscal health and risks from natural disasters.

“Site selection for companies is a highly specific and individualized process,” Tedd Carrison, senior financial analyst of CBRE’s Location Incentives Group, said in the report’s announcement. “Dense cities and coastal hubs always will be well positioned job markets, often due to established talent bases, innovation networks, cultural amenities and other important considerations. But smaller markets may be increasingly appealing as we continue into the next decade, and they should not be overlooked as viable options for many companies and projects.”

Despite a national hit to the single family and retail real estate markets, Canvas Loft developer The Beach Co. and brokerage partner CBRE believe that Greenville Co. has strong rebound potential. (Photo/Molly Hulsey)Greenville County, Boise’s Ada County, Idaho; Spokane County, Wash.; Kansas City’s Johnson County, Kan.; Knoxville’s Knox County, Tenn.; Davis County, Utah; Omaha’s Douglas County, Neb; Des Moines’ Polk County, Iowa; Indianapolis’ Hamilton County; Grand Rapid’s Kent County, Missouri; and Franklin County, Ohio, were the only locations left after CBRE researchers filtered all U.S. counties based on the team’s resilience criteria.

“Greenville County has become a high-growth area due to its wide-range of manufacturers, prime Southeast location, low cost of living, great transportation, and large talent pipeline,” Steve Smith, managing director of Greenville’s CBRE office, said in the report’s press release. “The area’s strong market fundamentals will help it continue to be resilient throughout 2021.”

Greenville County’s role as a manufacturing hub and workforce pipeline from local technical schools played a crucial role in boosting its resiliency during the study. And out of all the 11 counties listed —barring Knox County — Greenville claimed the lowest housing costs at 25% below the national average.

This is despite the fact that the county’s bustling population density is 667 residents per square mile and its annual per capita housing construction rate is more than twice the national average.

Analyists also weighed in on the number of STEM students that graduate from four-year universities at least 50 miles from each county. School acceptance rates are shown on the heat map here. (Map/Provided)In 2019, an estimated 88 housing units for every 10,000 county residents were delivered to the market.

That didn’t come as a surprise to Doyle, who is no stranger to Greenville’s residential market.

Aside from the 31 townhomes Creative Builders will break ground on this month and a mixed-use complex the Greenville contractor is continuing to work on, The Beach Co. was also the vision behind South Ridge and the 292-apartment Main and Stone mixed-use communities.

Part of the growth could be attributed to the city’s affordable housing prices relative to other parts of the country, including downtown Charleston and Nashville — though he said housing prices were not extraordinarily low compared to most of The Beach Co.’s other Southeastern markets.

“A lot of that is driven by what may be lower housing costs and greater affordability,” Doyle said of Greenville’s rapid growth. “So over time, that’s gradually ratcheted up to where we are today.”

Especially during a pandemic-driven exodus from the larger cities over the last year.

“We have seen that over the past 10 years,” he said. “And I think it will only happen at a much more rapid pace in the years to come. We’re seeing that firsthand, whether that’s here in Charleston, in Greenville or other markets that we’re in throughout the Southeast.”

Tenancy in The Beach Co.’s Greenville apartments has remained steady despite the country’s swerve toward a single-family market over the past year and the company is scouting out similar mixed-development opportunities in downtown Spartanburg.

“The Greenville market is a very strong market,” he said. “There’s no question about it.”

CBRE is managing the approximately 21,000 square feet of retail space at the Canvas development in partnershp with The Beach Co. (Photo/Molly Hulsey)And as the Mashburn Construction and The Beach Co. breathe new life into Canvas Tower as it climbs toward completion in the coming months, Greenville Area Development Corp. CEO Mark Farris said the county bucks the trend of a declining office market. In the past, office relocations made up less than 10% of the economic developer’s projects. In 2020, this number shot up to 20%.

“That resiliency is something that we’ve seen, and I think that just comes from a solid foundation, what we have after the presence of manufacturing and hopefully, we will continue to see that,” Farris said. “Now that manufacturing is more diverse than in the past. of course, but the office [projects] I mentioned earlier are certainly an indication of our evolution as a community."