13th Floor Investments Breaks Ground on First Apartments at 250-Acre Union Bleachery Mill Overhaul in Greenville

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Construction has begun on the first residential phase of On the Trail, a 250-acre mixed-use redevelopment rising on the site of the former Union Bleachery textile mill along Old Buncombe Road, marking a major milestone for one of the largest infill projects in Greenville County.

Miami-based developer 13th Floor Investments broke ground on Venture on the Trail, a 222-unit garden-style apartment community at 301 Alston Street in the Sans Souci neighborhood just north of downtown Greenville. The project secured a $47 million construction loan from CIBC and is slated for completion in 2027.

The apartments will range from studio to three-bedroom layouts between 600 and 1,350 square feet, with amenities including a clubhouse, resort-style pool, two pickleball courts, co-working space, a fitness center and a bike room. The community’s signature feature will be direct access to the Swamp Rabbit Trail, the popular greenway that runs through the property.

Venture on the Trail is the opening phase of a much larger redevelopment. The full On the Trail site is entitled for a mix of residential, commercial, retail and hospitality uses, with additional phases still in planning. Union Bleachery operated as a textile mill from 1902 until 2003 and was later designated a Superfund site by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency after contamination from decades of industrial operations was discovered on the property.

For brokers, developers and investors tracking the Upstate market, the groundbreaking signals that one of the region’s most closely watched brownfield-to-mixed-use conversions has cleared a key hurdle after years of environmental remediation work. Projects of this scale are rare in Greenville County, where developable infill land near downtown has grown increasingly scarce, pushing large-scale residential and mixed-use development toward the county’s edges.

The site’s location — with frontage on the Swamp Rabbit Trail and proximity to downtown Greenville — positions it to draw renter demand similar to other trail-adjacent developments that have commanded premium rents in recent years. As additional phases of retail, commercial and hospitality space move through planning, the project is expected to reshape the Sans Souci area into a new activity node along the trail corridor, adding density and amenities to a part of the county that has seen comparatively little large-scale investment to date.

13th Floor Investments has built a national portfolio of urban infill and mixed-use projects, and On the Trail represents one of its largest ground-up commitments in the Southeast outside its home base in Florida.