This SC city’s ‘Bermuda Triangle of downtown development’ may finally be conquered. Here’s the plan

On a pleasant Saturday morning in 1997, explosives placed just so by demolition experts brought down the 60-year-old Greenville Memorial Auditorium with a rumble and a plume of dust.

Mere seconds.

Debris was carted away, bricks sold as memorabilia and attention turned to the modern 17,000-seat arena under construction across the street, which opened the following September to a much-hyped concert by Janet Jackson.

And the Memorial Auditorium site sat empty.

It still is.

The just under 2-acre tract has become known as Greenville’s gateway because it’s located a few blocks after Interstate 385 ends and becomes Beattie Place.

New buildings for hotels and offices have turned Greenville into a destination written about in all sorts of national magazines.

But there’s this burr in the creation. It’s not because no one had any ideas. Plenty have buzzed around the community but none stuck — apartments and that age-old mixed use plan.

There have been so many ideas that Mayor Knox White called the site the Bermuda Triangle of downtown development — where projects go to die.

Now comes one many think will stick — Gracie Plaza at the Arena District.

Florida-based NR Investments has proposed an entertainment district with two buildings — 16 and seven stories for 294 apartments, 8,000 square feet of retail space, and creative studios. There will be a public plaza to act as a community gathering space and a unique solution to parking — partially underground with a raised terrace on top for a restaurant, water feature and public art.

One of the reasons Greenville leaders think this a win for the problematic site is that NR founder Nir Shoshani has done something similar in Miami.

He and his business partner Ron Gottesman took the shell of a building in a distressed area just north of downtown Miami and created 81 units called Filling Station Lofts. Then, they turned to the blighted surrounding Omni district to build condo, rental and office towers in what has become The Arts and Entertainment District, a residential neighborhood of historic buildings, residential towers that also includes a performing arts center.

Greenville’s project is not part of a large-scale plan, but city leaders hope it will be one day.

They hope for a long-desired renaissance along Beattie Place and Buncombe Street, where the library, children’s museum, history museum and Greenville Little Theatre are located.

City leaders want to tie that collection of cultural assets, now cut off by heavily traveled U.S. Highway 123, to downtown.

The revised plan will be considered by the Greenville Design Review Board in June. The board first considered the NR plan last July and asked for some changes to what the outside of the building will look like.

“The company feels very comfortable with challenges,” Shoshani told the Greenville Journal.