Spartanburg County’s new $120 million courthouse is expected to open to the public in December and joins a growing list of projects injecting new life and economic vitality into downtown Spartanburg.
The county expects to take possession of the building from contractors in mid-to-late October and move in starting in November, according to David Britt, a member of Spartanburg County Council and chairman of its economic development committee.
The new courthouse is located next to the old courthouse on Magnolia Street. It is one of several capital projects funded by a local option sales tax approved by county voters in 2017 and expected to generate upwards of $220 million by the time it expires in May 2024.
Britt credits the investment generated by the penny sales tax with serving as a powerful catalyst for a wave of new investment downtown.
“For Spartanburg to be strong — and here I’m talking about the whole county — you have to have a strong heart,” Britt said. The penny tax projects “have definitely been a shot of adrenaline.”
The courthouse is one of four projects funded by the penny tax. The revenue also resulted in a $5.6 million, 18.000-square-foot emergency operations center completed in 2022, and a $13.1 million, 45,000-square-foot Spartanburg municipal police headquarters nearing completion at the corner of St. John and Wofford streets.
The final project to be paid for by proceeds from the sales tax will be a joint Spartanburg city-county administrative complex — the first joint city-county administrative structure in the state.
The building is in the design phase now and is expected to be around 180,000 square feet over multiple stories. It will sit on the site of the current Spartanburg city administration building on West Broad Street.
The project’s location will not only bring several hundred city and county employees into the heart of downtown daily but also the hundreds of city and county residents who need to conduct business there, according to Cole Alverson, county administrator.
He said the 600 new parking spaces that will be part of the joint administrative complex will also be a boon to downtown merchants and restaurants after hours and on weekends.
Alverson said the county is exploring potential partnerships with private developers to bring additional development to the joint administration property.
All of these penny sales tax projects were part of an intentional effort by the county to prioritize the greater good over expediency, according to Manning Lynch, chairman of Spartanburg County Council. Putting tax dollars to work re-energizing downtown and delivering four new buildings to taxpayers debt free has paved the way for an influx of private investments within blocks of those new buildings, he added.
Among those major investments are a $250 million mixed-use project centered on a new minor league baseball stadium, and a $100 million mixed-use project on East Main Street being developed by Greenville-based M Peters Group.
“Momentum begets momentum,” Alverson said. “People invest in places that invest in themselves.”
