SPARTANBURG — Industrial parks along the Interstate 85 corridor between Spartanburg and Anderson have reached 96 percent occupancy, the Upstate SC Alliance reported this week, a tightness that has prompted three new speculative warehouse and distribution developments totaling 2.4 million square feet to break ground this spring.
The figure reflects a sustained demand surge that began during the pandemic-era e-commerce expansion and has not materially subsided, driven by the corridor’s combination of deep interstate access, proximity to the Port of Charleston, and a manufacturing base anchored by BMW’s Spartanburg plant, Michelin’s North American headquarters in Greenville, and dozens of automotive and advanced manufacturing suppliers concentrated in Cherokee, Spartanburg, and Anderson counties.
“The I-85 corridor in South Carolina is one of the tightest industrial markets in the Southeast right now,” said Upstate SC Alliance President [Name]. “We have tenants who want to be here and not enough product to put them in.”
The three new speculative developments — known in commercial real estate as “spec” projects because they break ground without a committed tenant — are located at sites in Duncan, near the I-85/I-26 interchange in Spartanburg County; in Piedmont, near the Anderson County line; and in Gaffney in Cherokee County, where a 600,000-square-foot distribution facility is being developed by a Charlotte-based industrial REIT.
The Duncan project, a 900,000-square-foot cross-dock distribution facility designed for large-format logistics tenants, is being developed on a site adjacent to the existing Tyger River Industrial Park and is expected to deliver in the first quarter of 2027.
Commercial real estate brokers in the market say demand is coming from three primary sources: third-party logistics companies seeking Southeast distribution hubs, automotive suppliers expanding capacity to serve the BMW expansion in Greer, and consumer goods companies that are nearshoring distribution from coastal markets to reduce last-mile delivery times to the Southeast interior.
“Two years ago we were quoting 60-day move-in timelines. Now we’re telling tenants to plan for 12 to 18 months unless they can take an existing building,” said [Name], an industrial broker with a Greenville commercial real estate firm.
Upstate SC Alliance said it is tracking 14 active site selection inquiries for industrial properties of 200,000 square feet or larger in the corridor.