Next door to the Army & Navy Store in the West End of Greenville, a long-vacant building is about to go through a transformation.
Owners Peggy Thomas and her son Ruark have entered into a 99-year lease with a national investor that is planning to turn the Haley building at 656 S. Main St. into restaurant/retail on the ground floor and office space and/or residential on the second and third floors.
Plans are still preliminary and will need to go before of the Greenville Design Review Board. Sources close to the project say that no tenants have been secured yet. The national investor declined an interview for this story. The investor was represented by Mark E. Masaschi, general broker with KDS.
The building was built in 1919 by Julius Caesar (J.C.) Haley, owner of the J.C. Furniture Company, who built it as a spec building in an “up-and-coming area” with apartments on the second and third floors. Haley leased part of the building to Duke’s Mayonnaise for its original business offices, and eventually moved the J.C. Furniture Company into the building in the mid-1920s. The Haley family expanded the business over time to all three floors and much of the property in the rear (now owned by Phil Hughes).
In the 1980s the business and building was sold to an associate of J.C.’s, but that business closed after a few years. The building sold again to an investor in 1988. In 1994, it was sold to Peggy Thomas and her family for $180,000. After the closing of Haley Furniture, the building was never used for anything except an occasional special event or holiday sale.
Peggy and her late husband had many plans for the property over the years, including condos, retail and an antique mall. They also talked about selling the site’s “plasterwork and architectural elements,” said Ruark. But then his father’s health declined and it became “increasingly expensive to renovate the building and bring it up to code.” Once the building was paid for, the focus changed to other interests, he said.
Although not officially on the national register, The Haley building was one of 20 properties that served to “define the character of the district” when the West End Historic District was added to the national register of historic places in the early ’90s, said Matt Carter, a broker with Berkshire Hathaway C. Dan Joyner Commercial who represented the Thomas family in the lease transaction.
Approached many times in the past to sell the building, Peggy, now a retired schoolteacher, and longtime Spartanburg resident, had wanted to hold onto the building not only as an investment but as an inheritance for her son Ruark. But in recent years, Peggy has had health issues and financial problems following the death of her husband and just couldn’t keep up with the back taxes and upkeep on the building anymore.
“So we came up with a creative solution in the long-term lease,” said Carter. “The lease allows the property to stay in the family and also generate revenue to provide for Peggy in her retirement.”
“Matt put together a deal that suited all of our needs,” said Ruark, adding that others had approached his mother in the past, some trying to take advantage of her and offer less than market rate and pressure her to sell.
Greenville Mayor Knox White has also kept tabs on the building. “For years Peggy and I would talk about what her building might be,” he said. “She patiently waited for the right people to come along to make something good happen. It’s wonderful to see a plan that will respect the building’s storied past and her family’s legacy.”
The building itself is gorgeous, said Ruark. “Once you get into the building and peek out through the windows, you can’t help but fall in love. It’s steel-frame, so its bones are good. Where it’s located is extraordinary and harkens back to an age that we’re all nostalgic for, but contemporary in a future that we’d like to see with our a beautiful, historic building.”
According to a source, the new group plans to invest $3-$5 million to renovate the building. Sub-lease rates will range from $33 to $37 PSF on the ground floor and $25 to $30 PSF on the upper levels for a warm shell.
“We’re happy that we get to keep being part of something that is so fantastic,” said Ruark.
