(Rendering provided by Hughes Commercial Properties)

The building was constructed in 1983, and has been so prominent in Greenville for so long that Harrison Hughes can remember seeing it featured in a montage of area landmarks that once opened the local news. But the edifice at 300 E. McBee St. also had its issues — it was often darkened by shadows, the interior was dated, and it could seem cut off from the rest of downtown.

“It did feel dark. It did feel depressing,” said Hughes, executive vice president of Hughes Commercial Properties. “And now it’s so bright, it doesn’t feel like you’re in the same space.”

Hughes is in the final stages of a $15 million overhaul of the wedge-shaped building, which it acquired in the early 2000s, and whose primary tenant is Prisma Health. When the renovation is complete, 300 East McBee will also feature an upscale restaurant and lounge, a hair and nail salon, the headquarters of the investment lending firm Lima One Capital, and an open, pedestrian-friendly exterior better connecting the North of Broad District with the rest of downtown Greenville.

The redevelopment included $650,000 in public street improvements and supports $38 million in private investment, according to the city. The East McBee project is part of a larger reimagining of the North of Broad district that also includes the building at 110 E. Court St., where Hughes Commercial Properties is located and the advertising firm Erwin Penland and Co. is primary tenant; a parking garage with 680 spaces built with the city of Greenville; and a remaining parcel that Hughes said could become a mixed-use building with multifamily, office, and perhaps a hotel. 

“We could build five-story garden apartments and call it a day, and that's probably the best thing economically to do,” Hughes said. “But I think what we want to do is do something that's special and would have a lasting impact on the skyline and on Greenville. Not that it would be Amazon or Google, but if someone said, ‘Hey, we want to do a little 300-person southeast kind of headquarters,’ we'd love for it to be that building.”

Clear glass, natural light

The centerpiece of the entire endeavor, though, is clearly the building at 300 E. McBee St., a concrete structure with a unique curved frontage originally constructed for American Federal Bank. Former tenant SunTrust bank left after it was merged with BB&T to create Truist, and Prisma Health saw its employee count in the building decline in the wake of the pandemic and the ensuing work-from-home movement. 

“They condensed from floors two, three, four, and five to just four and five — from like 120,000 square feet down to 60,000,” Hughes said of Prisma. “And so at that time, we thought, well, this would be the perfect opportunity to really upgrade the building.”

Gensler, the Charlotte-based architect on the project, reimagined a rather brooding former bank building as a lively location for restaurants, offices and personal services. Demolition of parts of the original structure began in April of 2024, with the timeline staggered to accommodate the Prisma employees who were still working in the building.

Hughes first got rid of the former drive-through bank lanes at the rear of the structure, turning the area into a green space with trees and seating for eating lunch or working outdoors. A staircase built by The Heirloom Companies, a Greenville-based manufacturer of artisanal wood and metalworks, now connects to a first-floor lobby which was completely renovated — with polished concrete floors, new elevators banks and revolving doors, and even interior stands of trees.

The dark glass that had wrapped around the building’s ground floor was replaced with clear glass, flooding the level with natural light that had been hard to come by before. Outside there are new 8-foot-wide sidewalks with lampposts, and lights placed under the second-floor canopy to brighten the area at night. A valet area was added to facilitate both parking and rideshare programs.  

The building’s redevelopment had immediate effects, beginning with keeping Prisma’s headquarters downtown. Then in December, Lima One announced it would lease more than 60,000 square feet on two floors of 300 East McBee. The Greenville company had initially planned to relocate into the ongoing County Square redevelopment, but pulled out of that deal in November. The Lima One spaces are currently being painted and carpeted, Hughes said, with a planned move-in date set for late June or early July.

“The redevelopment of 300 McBee is another example of the power of public-private partnerships to catalyze leading-edge developments and achieve city priorities,” said Sam Konduros, CEO of the Greenville City Economic Development Corporation. “Reimagining the office spaces resulted in two headquarters, Prisma Health and Lima One, committing to the newly transformed mixed-use building.”

Causing a STIR

Once Hughes Commercial Properties decided to redevelop 300 East McBee, it quickly set its sights on bringing a food and beverage retailer to the building — and ultimately landed on STIR, a high-end restaurant and lounge chain that offers craft cocktails and an oyster bar, and will open in June. Renderings of the restaurant show an outdoor dining space festooned with red umbrellas that will help connect that corner of the development to other similar offerings downtown.

“STIR will be catty-corner and their patio will kind of look toward Yee-Haw (Brewing), which obviously has a great patio scene now,” Hughes said. “And if you're on the STIR patio, you can actually see Main Street. So I think it will draw people down from Main Street, especially since we have a ton of convenient parking.”

An Ameris Bank location will also open in the building, Hughes said, as will an 11,000-square-foot Sola Salon Studios that will offer hair and nail services and open later this summer. That brings the redeveloped 300 East McBee building to 92 percent leased, Hughes said, with some first-floor office suites still available.

The reimagined building works hand-in-hand with the city’s vision of encouraging higher levels of connectivity and pedestrian activity downtown, Konduros said. “Our investment in the landscape, streetscape, and public access areas of the 300 McBee development enhanced the visual impact of the property and made the site more attractive for dynamic new retailers, like STIR restaurant,” he added. “The redevelopment will bring a heightened vibrance and new energy to this important sector of Greenville’s central business district.”

It's still the same concrete building completed in 1983, and it still has that familiar curve to its front façade. But so much else about 300 E. McBee St. has changed — from the new glass and pedestrian areas in the front, to the completely reimagined and opened-up rear of the structure, to the new features, fixtures, and tenants within. A dark, aging edifice that once housed a dwindling workforce will soon become the linchpin of a North of Broad area that’s more connected than ever to the rest of downtown Greenville.

“If you were coming over Church Street bridge and looked out your left, you'd be like, ‘That's not at all what was there before,’” Hughes said. “We're going to have a fresh, new design. We're going to have hundreds of people in the building every single day, which it never really had before. The valet is going to be super convenient for people. Right next door you have a Publix, and Church Street is being renovated. It’s going to feel like a whole new eastern part of downtown.”