Upstate South Carolina Sees Record Levels of Industrial Development

According to a recent report, the Greenville-Spartanburg market has almost five million square feet of industrial space under construction—the highest level of development in the area over the past 15 years.

The CBRE report shows that the Greenville-Spartanburg area has seen over one million square feet of construction each year since 2005 and CBRE expects that three million square feet of space will be completed by the end of 2015.

CBRE sites a significantly high level of speculative construction as the reason for the boom, with developers rising to meet the increasing demand for new industrial space in the Upstate. Earlier this year, we spoke with Didi Caldwell, senior principal at site selection firm Global Location Strategies, who elaborated on the need to create more industrial sites:

“One of the biggest things is developing more shovel-ready sites … Many heavy manufacturing projects require sites that are 100 acres plus, with access to rail, good quality water and waste water treatment capabilities, reliable power and an abundance of natural gas. Many of the areas in the counties in Upstate South Carolina are blessed with these things, but we do need to work on acquiring and characterizing sites and insuring they are shovel ready.”

Among the largest construction properties include BMW’s 675,000 square-foot expansion in Greer, S.C. and a 1,000,000 square-foot expansion by First Quality Tissue in Anderson, S.C.