At its annual meeting earlier this week, Keller Williams Realty Greenville Upstate unveiled plans for its new space at 118 N. Markley St. in Greenville’s West End.
“The West End is poised for growth and we want to be part of that growth,” said Dan Hamilton, operating principal at KW.
The 10-year-old company’s current space on Airport Road “isn’t ideal,” he said, and the new space will combine the Airport Road and Augusta Road office locations.
KW hopes to occupy the new building in late 2014. Hamilton said the new space will be a “world-class, state-of-the-art facility with every inch designed with agent productivity in mind.”
The offices will offer a mix of open spaces with room for about 300 agents. Hamilton predicts a “lot of glass with a modern feel. There will also be a grand café area where agents can socialize and communicate. It’s going to be how the agent of the future does business, and technology will play a key role.” A high-tech training center will also be part of the plan, he said.
The company has contracted with a designer from Colorado who specializes in real estate company design.
The purchasers of the property were Dan Salle and Dan Hamilton from Keller Williams and Worthwhile cofounder Dan Wooster. Hamilton said each company will buy its own building after construction is complete.
There are currently four buildings between 116 and 122 N. Markley St. The building at 122 N. Markley will be demolished to make room for 52 new parking spaces. Keller Williams will occupy one of the two-story buildings with 8,761 square feet allocated for its new office. The new development will be called Markley Station.
Next door to Keller Williams is a second two-story building with a total of 9,430 square feet available for office and retail space. Worthwhile, a Web design and digital strategy company, plans to relocate in some or all of that space, though final plans “are still very much up in the air,” said CEO Dan Rundle. All 20 of Worthwhile’s Pelham Road employees will take part in the move, which will make the office more convenient for employees and more accessible to its customers, he said. “It’s a very strategic location.”
A grass courtyard area will provide picnic tables, benches and shade trees adjacent to the third building. The owners are currently in talks with a restaurant that may locate in the 5,000 square foot space. The restaurant would also have outdoor space and a bar area on the roof.
KW currently has 177 agents and six supporting staff members with a goal to increase the number of agents to more than 250 in 2014, said Michael Brown, KW team leader.
Nick Sabatini, CEO of the Greater Greenville Association of Realtors (GGAR), also spoke at the meeting, announcing that “Keller Williams was No. 1 in GGAR and No. 2 two in the marketplace,” according to 2013 numbers. Sabatini home sales in 2013 surpassed highs seen in 2008 with 9,160 units sold and an average time on the market of 93 days. GGAR’s 2014 goal is 10,000 units sold.
Mayor Knox White also addressed the crowd of realtors, receiving a standing ovation and telling the group “the next great opportunity for the city is West Greenville. It’s the back yard of Greenville. There’s a lot of property that is raw land and we need to continue to remove the remnants of the old industrial era,” referring to some of the abandoned structures that remain.
White said the city needs to move forward with plans to move the city public works department to property already purchased on Fairforest Way and then to develop the park area for which initial renderings have already been drawn up in the West Greenville master plan.
“The magic of Greenville is that it’s a catalyst that spreads out,” said White. “Taking the Camperdown Bridge down was like taking a boulder and dropping it downtown. West Greenville is the next place to drop the boulder.”
