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The expansive Upward Star Center sports complex and surrounding land on Spartanburg’s west side is up for sale.
Colliers International of Spartanburg is marketing the property, which includes the $20 million Star Center sports complex that opened in 2014.
The 107-acre property has U.S. Highway 29 frontage and is within a mile of Interstate 85. It is owned by Upward Unlimited of Spartanburg, a nonprofit corporation doing business as Upward Sports.
The 60-acre Upward Star Center sports complex serves as Upward Sports’ headquarters.
The site has been subdivided and can be sold in entirety, or individual sites can be sold separately, according to Colliers Spartanburg agents Greyson Furnas and John Montgomery.
Prices listed range from $595,000 for a single parcel to $41 million for the entire site.
“The property in a great location,” Montgomery said. “It’s a very busy corridor with a lot of development activity and proximity to Greenville and Spartanburg on I-85.”
The site is eight miles from downtown Spartanburg and 23 miles from downtown Greenville, according to the Colliers listing.
Growth near Star Center: Major apartment, retail, hotel, restaurant developments planned near Upward Star Center
Nearby developments under construction or recently completed include Grand Oaks multi-family community, a 7-Eleven store and Spartan Exchange Industrial Park.
There are six individual parcels that comprise the entire property, according to the listing.
One parcel is 33.7 acres for Class A office and industrial building; another is 18.8 acres for retail/mixed use; a third is 7 acres for interior-industrial/multifamily/mixed use; a fourth site is 11.7 acres for retail/mixed use; a fifth is 12.5 acres for multifamily/industrial/medical or mixed use; and a sixth site is 24.4 acres for a recreation center with a pad-ready site.
Upward Star Center opens: Upward Sports welcomes crowds to $20M complex
Back to Upward’s mission
Upward Sports executive director Kevin Drake said the decision to sell was made a couple months ago.
“Our mission is to promote the discovery of Christ through sports across the nation through our 2,000 church partners,” Drake said.
“When the campus was built, the idea was that Upward would move into competitive sports in addition to recreational sports,” Drake added. “We affirm God is leading us back to our beginning to work directly with churches across the nation to spread the gospel through sports ministry.”
Drake, a former publisher of the Herald-Journal, became executive director of Upward Sports in July 2020.
Drake joins Upward Sports: Drake, new executive director, focused on moving Upward Sports forward
He said Upward Unlimited is in strong financial shape, and that there is no rush to sell. He said 151 new churches have joined the sports ministry this past year.
“Our board and our team is completely unified in stewarding the resources that God has given us to reach people for Christ,” he said. “And we believe that selling our campus and utilizing those resources is where God is leading us. We want God’s best for our ministry.”
Drake said the 50 full-time employees at Upward Sports will not be laid off. Rather, they will be moved into other roles in the sports ministry.
Roots in hoops
Upward Sports was founded in 1995 by Caz McCaslin, who organized the ministry out of a basketball program in First Baptist Spartanburg’s gymnasium.
The 120,000-square-foot Star Center houses six full-size basketball courts, 12 volleyball courts, five batting cages, a rock climbing wall, a running track, a weight room, a sports medicine facility, seven meeting rooms, a retail store and café, four outdoor sand volleyball courts, four grass soccer fields and two artificial turf soccer fields with lights.
The facility also hosts community events, business meetings and sports tournaments.
When it opened in 2014, organizers said the complex expected to host 16,000 athletes and 50,000 visitors each year.
Kristen Guilfoos, marketing manager for the Spartanburg County Parks Department, said the county’s athletic programs will likely see little impact from an Upward Sports complex sale.
“There’s not much overlap between what we do and what they do, since a lot of what they offer is indoors and we do not have anything like that,” she said. “The only immediate impact we can foresee is some of their outdoors sports programs may want to start using Spartanburg County fields.”
Contact Bob Montgomery at bob.montgomery@shj.com
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