Verdae Development Nears Groundbreaking on $1 Billion Bolden Street District Along Laurens Road

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Verdae Development Inc. is preparing to break ground this summer on Bolden Street District, a 90-acre, more than $1 billion mixed-use redevelopment along Laurens Road that company leaders describe as a decade-long transformation of one of Greenville’s busiest commercial corridors.

The project will remake existing strip malls and vacant lots on the east side of Laurens Road, stretching from Haywood Road past Verdae Commons Drive, into a mix of housing, office, retail, dining and entertainment space fronting 1.5 miles of the Prisma Health Swamp Rabbit Trail. At full build-out over the next 10 to 15 years, the district is planned to include roughly 2,900 residences, 500,000 square feet of office space and 750,000 square feet of retail space.

“We look to create a destination that combines residential, office, food and beverage, and open space that people want to come to and that’s very welcoming for the entire community,” said Dan Klausner, CEO of Verdae Development.

The initial phase, dubbed the Bolden Square neighborhood, will focus on pad sites around Verdae Commons Drive, from Big ‘O’ Dodge to the Marketplace Shopping Center. Plans call for a four-story building with roughly 4,000 square feet of neighborhood retail and 244 residential units, along with a central public gathering space, office space and a grocery store component. Civil drawings for that phase are being finalized before submission to the city for permitting.

“Given economic conditions, we feel comfortable that we should be breaking ground this year, which would kind of move the project forward and give us a pathway to real anchors and real vertical development,” Klausner said. “We feel good. It feels like everything, all tides are kind of turning in the right direction.”

The project is financed primarily through Hollingsworth Funds, Verdae Development’s parent company and owner of the 90 acres, supplemented by public financing through a tax increment financing district the city of Greenville established along Laurens Road in 2024. Nelson Worldwide, hired in early 2024 as lead master planner, has worked alongside LandDesign, SeamonWhiteside, Kimley-Horn, Cooper Carry and other firms to develop design guidelines covering everything from mobility and architecture to lighting and signage.

“When you’re doing 90-plus-acre master plans, we have to build in an incredible amount of flexibility so that as the market evolves, we can bring all the new best ideas and the best new things to the community,” said Lamar Wakefield, senior vice president at Nelson Worldwide.

For commercial real estate brokers, developers and investors, Bolden Street District represents one of the largest active pipeline opportunities in the Upstate, adding to a wave of redevelopment along Laurens Road that includes the nearby County Square project downtown. The tax increment financing structure is expected to help offset public infrastructure costs, while the scale of planned office and retail space — set against a corridor already anchored by the Swamp Rabbit Trail — positions the district as a long-term draw for regional and national tenants once vertical construction begins.