SVN Blackstream, a Greenville, South Carolina-based brokerage is expanding its Reedy River retail division in a city where shopping center vacancy rates are dropping as rents rise.
As part of the moves, SVN Blackstream has promoted Dustin Tenney and Daniel Holloway to senior vice president in the retail division. Tenney and Holloway, who were both teachers at local schools before joining SVN Blackstream in 2018, recently finished among the firm's top producers.
In addition, SVN Blackstream expanded its Reedy River retail division, named after the river that courses through downtown Greenville, with the addition of two associate advisers, Nate Hober and Chris Philbrick.
Greenville's retail market is experiencing a resurgence, even in the choppy economy, according to CoStar Market Analytics.
"Retail vacancy rates in Greenville have declined in the long-term with strong performance from discounters, grocers, and other essential services," CoStar said in a recent report. "Though a handful of closures cooled absorption through the first three quarters of 2023, population growth in the market has sustained consumer spending."
Moreover, a tightening in the supply of available shops has resulted in retail rent growth surging to 6.9%, year over year, CoStar said.
"That's largely a result of a cautious approach to new retail construction," according to the CoStar report. "While Greenville's continued population growth and downtown revitalization has led to some strip center development in the suburbs and mixed-use, adaptive reuse development near downtown and along key transportation corridors, new construction starts have slowed considerably so far in 2023 and nearly all new retail construction is preleased or built-to-suit."
Hober is a recent graduate of Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio, with an MBA and work experience in field sales. Philbrick is a graduate of the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina who has worked with loan officers in the mortgage sector and completed an internship with another real estate company.
“The market share that Reedy River Retail has been able to capture within the last five years has required us to bring new talent onto the team,” said Blackstream's Tenney in a statement announcing the moves, adding that the retail team is active throughout South Carolina and is actively working on several projects in Georgia and North Carolina.
Blackstream became an affiliate of the SVN global network in 2014. It now operates franchises in Greenville, Columbia and Charleston in South Carolina and one on Charlotte, North Carolina, with over 40 advisers.