Office projects will remake Fort Mill development - Charlotte Business Journal

Office projects will remake Fort Mill development - Charlotte Business Journal

Ken Elkins

Senior Staff Writer-Charlotte Business Journal

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The development of two regional corporate headquarters at Kingsley Village in Fort Mill is a part of a larger plan to add another mixed-use center in northern York County.

When complete, the community will contain a town center like Baxter Village but with at least two hotels, apartments and about 120,000 square feet of small shops and restaurants. Plus, there’s a plan to add 1,025 homes on the east side of Interstate 77 at S.C. Highway 160, says Kerri Robusto, director of sales, marketing and leasing at Clear Springs Development Co.

Last week, LPL Financial and The Lash Group announced they will eventually bring a combined 5,400 jobs to Kingsley Park, the corporate-center side of Kingsley Village. Robusto says landing the two big clients has resulted in some changes to original plans for Kingsley Village.

“We are tweaking the master plan for Kingsley Village, which brings the LPL campus much closer to town center, and we’re planning a charrette in July to wrap it up in order to get dirt moving,” she says.

Clear Springs will sell about 25 acres to LPL, on which the company plans a 450,000-square-foot regional headquarters, with room for an additional 150,000 square feet. LPL will initially move about 1,000 jobs to Fort Mill from space in Charlotte. Childress Klein Properties of Charlotte will develop the site for LPL.

For Lash, Clear Springs and Childress Klein will develop an initial 250,000-square-foot building on 16 acres, Robusto says. There’s room for an additional 150,000 square feet, say Robusto and Tracy Foster, president of the Lash.

Initially, Lash will move 1,200 jobs to Fort Mill from Charlotte, with plans to eventually double that to 2,400.

Clear Springs has started developing the commercial side of Springfield, another Close family community being built in Fort Mill. That community will eventually have 650 homes and 300,000 square feet of commercial space adjacent to the existing Springfield subdivision and near the Gold Hill Road interchange on I-77.

All of the communities are on about 7,000 acres that the Close family, which once controlled the former Fort Mill-based Springs Industries Inc., owns in northern York County. Baxter Village, which closed out development late last year, is also a part of the Clear Springs plan for developing the family land.