Groundbreaking Held for 10 Affordable Housing Units in Sterling

At the corner of Calhoun and Jenkins streets, a modest two-story brick building became a legend to generations of high school students in the Sterling Community.

The Huddle gained its fame from grilled-cheese sandwiches, cherry cola floats, and a jukebox that played a steady stream of Motown, Stax, and even the raspy howls and banging piano of the internationally famous musician Esquerita, who was better known among his fellow Sterling High alums as Eskew Reeder.

But while the Huddle is spoken often in nostalgic tones by alumni and their children and their children’s children, the actual happenings are often left ambiguously hidden behind knowing nods and smiles.

While the past may be vague, the future of that corner is not.

On Thursday morning, some 200 people (the majority wearing Sterling High’s blue and white) took part in a groundbreaking that was really a glorious celebration for 10 long-term rental homes for individuals earning between 60 percent to 80 percent of the area median income. Known as the Huddle at Sterling, it will be arranged in five stacked duplexes. Tenant-based vouchers will be accepted at the property.

Site work began in November 2026 and the construction timeline is 14 to 16 months.

It is the creation of the Greenville Housing Fund and The Sterling Land Trust, who starting in 2024 partnered to develop the three parcels just off Dunbar Avenue. The Sterling Land Trust owns the land, after Bon Secours St. Francis Health System supported its purchase through an initial pre-development grant. The City of Greenville aided the work by annexing the property and the street leading to it as well as being a key funder of the Greenville Housing Fund.

But the work didn’t stop there.

Bank of America Charitable Foundation awarded a $250,000 grant for the project in 2025, underscoring the BofA’s commitment to strengthening Greenville communities through affordable housing initiatives. Financing partners include the City of Greenville and CommunityWorks.

Additional key funders include Hollingsworth Funds, Abundance Capital, the Helga Marston Foundation, the Community Foundation of Greenville, The Jolley Foundation, the Jim and Kit Pearce Endowment Fund, and a NeighborWorks America Capital Grant.

Many of these partners took part in the celebration Thursday at the Sterling Community Center, which utilizes the former high school’s gymnasium where thousands of basketball games, graduations and dances were held until a fire swept through the school in September1967 leaving little behind.

“In 1967, we thought Sterling was over,” said Lillian Brock Flemming, city councilwoman and a Sterling High graduate. “But in 2026, it is still here and it is going to be bigger and better than ever.”

Many of those 200 supporters sat in white chairs at tables with blue tablecloths. Others sat in the heavy wooden bleachers that flanked one side of the building overlooking the maple basketball court that still bears the snarling, striped visage of a Tiger, the school’s mascot. Many wore blue shirts with the name Sterling on them. There were a smattering of replica Sterling baseball jerseys and even a few vintage letterman sweaters from a bygone era.