Columbia Business Monthly, a go-to resource for Columbia-area business news, recently published an article illustrating upcoming commercial and residential projects across South Carolina. The report highlighted two of The Beach Company’s exciting mixed-use communities in progress: Canvas in downtown Greenville and The Jasper in Charleston’s historic district.

By Cindy Landrum

When the coronavirus pandemic began shutting down the economy in March, Greenville Area Development Corporation President and CEO Mark Farris expected development activity to grind to a halt, too.
It didn’t.

“We’re certainly below where we normally are this time of year in terms of projects, but we continue to have consultants call. We continue to have companies call. We continue to have requests for proposals to respond to,” he said. “It’s frankly surprising to me the activity that we’re having.”

Projects in Charleston and Columbia continued as well.

In Charleston, office construction on the Peninsula continues, and residential development continues to boom.

“Despite the pandemic, there are still construction projects and developments in just about every major pocket of Columbia,” said Peyton Bryant, senior broker and principal of NAI Columbia.

Stevie Field-Chavez, vice president of regional sales for GIS Planning, a company that provides online economic development solutions for corporate site selection, agrees.

“Projects are happening,” she said.

In Greenville County, Farris said he continues to receive inquiries from manufacturers, including food processing plants. “We’re not known as a food producing or processing state, but I think companies realize they need access to a system that is regional in nature,” he said.

Vermeer, whose founder invented the round hay baler, is building a new plant in the South Greenville Enterprise Park. The park is Greenville County’s first new industrial park in 20 years.

Greenville County is attracting interest from international companies, too, Farris said.

In addition, Farris expects some manufacturers that have put off expansions because of the Upstate’s tight workforce pre-pandemic may reconsider because unemployment has sharply increased during the pandemic.

“As crass as it sounds, given the morbidity of the coronavirus, there are opportunities out there,” he said.

CBRE Research’s 2020 Southeast U.S. Outlook Report, released in February, said speculative industrial development is reaching all-time highs as new tenants and developers find the Greenville market attractive. It said manufacturing remains an important component of the expanding local economy, and warehouse and distribution is greatly increasing its footprint.

Steve Smith, CBRE’s managing director of South Carolina, said the state has seen increased demand for warehouse space during the pandemic, which exposed weaknesses in having a global supply chain.

“We’re seeing logistics companies gobbling up space left and right, and not 50,000 square feet, but 500,000 square feet, and that’s going to continue,” he said during a recent roundtable conducted by Integrated Media, publisher of Greenville Business Magazine, Columbia Business Monthly and Charleston Business Magazine. “The industrial market was leading the way into this crisis, and it’s the market that will lead us out of this crisis along with multi-family.”

The Greenville market is experiencing record levels of multi-family development, according to the report. Recent absorption trends show that residents are eager for more product, as people are attracted to the urban work-live environment offered by downtown Greenville, it said.

The report said Greenville’s office market had corrected itself, returning to low vacancy levels, primarily in part to a handful of large leases. It said as the market continues to expand, demand for additional high-quality office space will come in the form of new suburban and urban infill Class A office development.

Smith and Farris said Greenville would continue to have a demand for office space, although what it looks like will change because of the pandemic.

Thomas Boulware, broker-in-charge and partner with NAI Charleston, said the economic drivers of Charleston were strong before the virus, and there’s no reason for that to change.

“Developers are long on Charleston and realize we have a robust market here,” he said.

Boulware said he expects an influx of people moving from the northeast, adding to the Charleston area’s already rapid population growth.

“The residential growth here is very strong, and I don’t see that slowing down. National homebuilders see Charleston as a growth market. The multi-family folks are still very active in our market, and I don’t see that slowing,” he said. “At one time, there was 10 years’ worth of demand if we continued building on the current pace, so there was a considerable backlog for folks trying to move to Charleston. I don’t see that slowing down.”

Industrial growth has been strong, too, he said.

The biggest question in the Charleston market is how quickly the hospitality industry rebounds, he said.

“Charleston is one of the top destinations in the world. That will not change,” he said. “The relief we’ll see is when people are flying on planes to get here versus driving. The question is, when does that happen? Is it 60 days, or is it six months?”

Bryant said because Columbia’s economy centers on the University of South Carolina, Fort Jackson and state government, Columbia hasn’t seen a significant commercial office building in quite some time, he said.

“We’re isolated here in Columbia. We don’t see real big swings up and we don’t see real big swings down. Greenville and Charleston have seen heavy growth, but they’re also susceptible that if things fall, they will fall in Charleston and Greenville more so than they are in Columbia,” he said. “It’s kind of a double-edged sword for us. We don’t get to enjoy the highs, but we also don’t have to worry about the lows.”