On Monday, June 12, the City of Mauldin, the Parker Group and Longbranch Development broke ground on Maverick Yards, a mixed-use project that will kick off long-awaited City Center Village. The groundbreaking ceremony featured remarks from Mayor Terry Merritt; Drew Parker, founder and broker-in-charge of the Parker Group; and Brett Basnight, co-founder of Longbranch Development.
“This is truly an exciting moment for the City of Mauldin,” Mayor Merritt said. “In fact, I think it’s the beginning of a new chapter for our City. Without a traditional downtown, Mauldin has always been known as a bedroom community, a crossroad community, a place you drive through on your way somewhere else. Today we’re taking a key step on our journey to create a livable, walkable downtown for the City, a vibrant community hub to be known as Maverick Yards.”
Located on 6.5 acres of land at the corner of Jenkins Street and Jenkins Court, Maverick Yards will include a dining and entertainment complex and more than 40 townhomes for rent.
As the focal point of the project, the Parker Group will redevelop a 20,000 square-foot industrial warehouse into “The Pickle Yard,” which will feature six pickleball courts — three located indoors and three outdoors — as its primary attraction. The redevelopment will also include three or four food concepts, outdoor seating, a stage for live performances, fire pits and a beer garden.
“Soon the buildings around us will come down, and this site is going to be bustling with activity,” Drew Parker said. “Once completed, where we’re standing is going to be a hub of activity where you can eat, you can live and you can play. I like to think that what the Parker Group and Longbranch is doing is just a small part of a bigger plan, and it’s honor to be standing here today to be a part of that.”
Adjacent to the dining and entertainment complex, at the former site of the City’s Public Works facility and a light industrial building, Longbranch Development will redevelop 2.4 acres of property into 42 townhomes that will be available for rent. All townhomes will have three bedrooms, two-car garages and open floor plans, Basnight said.
“When we think about the future of Mauldin, we realize that we’re on the forefront of the urban-residential side,” Basnight said. “And we’re very excited about that.”
Both projects are slated to open in late 2024.
Mayor Merritt thanked City Council and City staff for their hard work in bringing the City Center vision to life, calling the journey “a rollercoaster ride with numerous stops and starts,” including seeing at least eight renditions of City Center from multiple developers over the past 10 years.
He said that while the Maverick Yards project will transform Mauldin in many ways, one thing it won’t change is the City’s character.
“Mauldin is a close-knit community, and it will remain a close-knit community,” Mayor Merritt said. “We stop and talk to each other, we go to church and attend festivals together, when we see someone in need, we help them, and we still wave at our neighbors with a full hand. That’s not going to change. We’re going to keep that community spirit for generations to come.”
Mayor Merritt also noted that Maverick Yards will be a great complement to what the City already has in place, including Maverick Station, a restaurant and retail complex recently developed by the Parker Group; the Mauldin Cultural Center on East Butler Road; and BridgeWay Station, the sprawling urban village slated to open its first phase this fall.
“We’re quickly going from a city with no traditional downtown to a city with multiple community hubs and diverse gathering places, making Mauldin the destination we know it can be,” Mayor Merritt said. “It’s a dream coming true.”
For more on Maverick Yards, visit https://cityofmauldin.org/maverick-yards/.
