TopGolf broadens plans along I-85, setting sights on people's homes
Greenville County's attempts to control growth are being put to the test in the shadow of one of the most highly anticipated developments of the year.
The man bringing TopGolf to Greenville — developer Neil Wilson — said construction will start on his "Garlington Park" site in the next 30 days, and he is actively pursuing hotels and restaurants to complete a multimillion-dollar golf-entertainment complex at Pelham Road and Interstate 85.
But the fate of Wilson's proposed distribution center at the other end of Garlington Park — and contiguous to about two dozen homes on Durham Drive and the Ivybrooke subdivision — is far less certain. A pending county area plan would prevent commercial construction in a 12-acre area at the far western edge of Garlington Park.
Those 12 acres border a low-density residential enclave that extends hundreds of acres further westward along Interstate 85 between Pelham and Roper Mountain roads. It is the largest swath of low-density residential land along I-85 in Greenville County, and the roughly 2,000 people living there want to keep it that way.
So far, the Greenville County Council has supported them.
"There's nowhere you can go and get the same quality of life," said Rachel Kelley, who lives on an acre of land on Durham Drive right next to Garlington Park.
But Wilson said commercial development there is inevitable, and he has upped the ante by offering to buy 42 houses in the area. He launched a public relations battle this week, too, trying to convince residents that preserving low-density housing is a mistake.
"It is about trying to create jobs, and it is on the I-85 corridor with great visibility to 130,000 cars a day," said Wilson, a Greenville native. "It's great for what we are planning on doing. I always want to do what's right for Greenville County."
Garlington Park's marketing plan
Wilson has released a rendering of the 91-acre Garlington Park site that shows the 55,000-square-foot TopGolf entertainment center surrounded by parking lots and three smaller buildings, all in a roughly 50-acre area east of Rocky Creek.
Earth movers have scraped dozens of acres there, easily visible behind a Cube Smart storage facility at the southeast corner of the Pelham Road-Interstate 85 interchange. Wilson, principal of RealtyLink, said last week that he has been meeting with hotel groups out at the site, which will support at least two hotels, likely a Marriott-, Hilton- or Hyatt-branded property.
TopGolf drew 13 million visitors to its 41 sites around the country last year, according to the company. Wilson anticipates the Greenville location will draw visitors from Gaffney to the Georgia state line and southward toward Greenwood County, a region of roughly 2 million people.
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"(The hotels) would be connected to TopGolf in a campus-type setting where everybody has the ability to walk from the hotel to the restaurants and to TopGolf," Wilson said.
On another roughly 40-acre area west of Rocky Creek, Wilson's site rendering also shows two 170,000-square-foot speculative buildings and a third 50,000-square-foot speculative building.
They are not labeled, but Wilson requested rezoning in March that would allow the back 40-acre area to accommodate a 400,000-square-foot distribution center. To connect the back 40 to the front 50 acres of his property, where TopGolf will be located, Wilson said he will build a new road and bridge over Rocky Creek, which will carry traffic to a single main entrance for Garlington Park on Garlington Road.
Durham land dispute
Still in question, however, is a 15.6-acre section of the back 40 which Wilson's LLC for the development — SC Greenville Garlington — has not yet closed on, though Wilson shows it developed on his rendering of the site.
Members of the Durham family have owned that land for more than 75 years, starting with Larthun Durham, the deceased father of the property's current trustees. Several of Durham's descendants still live on parcels along present-day Durham Drive that were carved out of their patriarch's original 98-acre farm.
The 15.6 acres Wilson wants to buy — 12 acres of which is zoned residential — haven't sold previously because many residents nearby, including some members of the extended Durham family, have objected strenuously over the years to developing it as anything other than residential. The land is located at the dead end of Durham Drive.
"Zoning is supposed to protect the character of a community," said Willie Durham, one of Larthun's grandsons and a resident of Durham Drive.
Wilson had proposed changing the Durham land's residential zoning to S-1, a commercial services classification that allows hotels, restaurants, light manufacturing and distribution centers. The change would match the rest of the Garlington Park development, which is already zoned S-1.
Faced with opposition, Wilson withdrew the rezoning request, saying last week that he will revisit the issue in six months. However, Wilson is still negotiating to purchase the Durham land, a deal that has pitted members of the Durham family against each other.
Not all family members have a financial stake in the land, and most of those who do — and support its sale for commercial development — no longer live on Durham Drive.
"I don't have a problem with them selling the property," said Kelley, a Durham granddaughter whose home stands about 100 feet from one of the proposed 170,000-square-foot warehouses. "I just don't want it industrial."
County efforts to preserve community
Today no structures stand on the 15.6 acres Wilson wants to buy, other than a horse barn and the remains of the old Durham homeplace. Past attempts to develop the site, including a plan to build apartments back in 2007, have all failed because of the zoning and road-access issues.
Adding support to residential advocates, county planners are close to codifying the Durham land's residential status. The Dublin Road Area Plan is one vote away from adoption by the Greenville County Council and passed unanimously at its second reading Tuesday. The plan covers 650 acres along Interstate 85, including all 91 acres of Garlington Park, and reinforces the area's existing zoning.
County Councilman Rick Roberts, who represents that part of the county, has helped usher the Dublin Road Area Plan into reality — pitting the council against Wilson's expansion plans.
"An area plan has a lot more teeth (than zoning)," Roberts said after Tuesday's County Council meeting. "To go against it requires a super majority on our council."
County planning staff and scores of residents living in the area's six neighborhoods, including Ivybrooke, Shannon Forest and Durham Drive, worked together on the 13-page Dublin Road plan, so named after a road that crosses through most of the residential area in the plan. Dublin and Muddy Ford roads have become a popular cut-through from Garlington to Pelham roads in recent years.
Describing the area as an "urban enclave," the Dublin Road Area Plan concludes that "no additional residential density, or nonresidential development intensity, is warranted at this time." In other words, no rezoning.
Should the Durham land remain residential, the two 170,000-square-foot spec buildings depicted on Wilson's rendering could not be built. Wilson said he can work around that by sitting on that part of the property until the county's political climate changes. In the meantime, he said he can use some of it for stormwater control.
"We got 91 acres, so we've got plenty to say grace over," Wilson said.
Developer sets sights on people's homes
Still, Wilson is not sitting idly by.
Wilson asserted the Dublin Road Area Plan will not benefit landowners in the long run, and is pushing hard against its final approval in May.
"I don't know if everybody fully understands what that does to their future land values," Wilson said. "Low-density housing is not worth as much as high-density housing or S-1 zoning."
Despite the County Council's broad support for the area plan, Wilson has expanded his plans to develop the area even beyond Garlington Park. In recent weeks, he hired a real-estate firm — The Bachtel Group office of Keller Williams — to issue offers to buy every house in the Durham Drive area. The offers cover dozens of acres all currently zoned for low-density residential development.
"I think we sent out 42 offers," Wilson said Wednesday.
Those homeowners received another letter Wednesday inviting them to a community meeting Monday night at a nearby fire station to hear the developer's position. In the letter, Wilson lays out his argument that homeowners are only hurting themselves if they let the Dublin Road Area Plan pass on final reading next month.
"You may not be aware that the current area study being done could prevent you from being able to sell your property in the future at the current market value," the letter says, going on to assert, inaccurately, that the Dublin Road Area Plan seeks to "revise" zoning in the area to "Low Density" residential.
The area is already low-density residential.
County planners had already told Wilson he would not be able to use Durham Drive to access Garlington Park, except in the case of emergencies. Durham Drive is a county-maintained, roughly 17-foot-wide roadway without a center line, and planners have agreed with residents in the area that it could not support a distribution center's tractor-trailer traffic.
If Wilson buys every house on the street, though, those protections become moot. Wilson says he wants to develop the whole Durham Drive area for commercial use.
"We've got some people that are interested (in selling)," Wilson said. "We've got some who are interested if we raise the price. And some haven't responded."
Jannette Thomas, another granddaughter of Larthun Durham, said she was insulted by Wilson's offer on her Durham Drive home, which matched the county-assessed market value. She said her home is worth far more. Thomas is among the owners of the 15.6 acres of Durham property that Wilson wants to develop for his TopGolf project.
"We are not going to sell our property," Thomas said of her home on Durham Drive. "The only thing we want to sell is that 15 acres that were left in granddaddy's will. We want to get out from under that."
Kelley, another Durham granddaughter, said she estimates her home on an acre lot at the end of Durham Drive — right next to the proposed warehouses — is worth two or three times the $136,960 that was offered in her letter. She called it an "insult letter."
"I was so mad about this offer," Kelley said. "I said, 'If you are going to make a ridiculous offer like that, I will make one, too. If you want my land, how about $1.5 million?'"