A Pickens County site long known for its fairgrounds and a historic racetrack took the first step toward its next life as an industrial park on June 20 with a groundbreaking for Carolina Handling, the site’s first tenant.
The company, which is the Raymond solutions and support center for a large swath of the Southeast, will invest $23.2 million in the site and create about 100 jobs in the next five years. The company broke ground Thursday at Speedway Industrial & Technology Park near Easley on a new structure that will bring their Upstate operations to a single location.
“We’re going to be building a very nice facility behind us,” Brent Hillabrand, president and CEO of Carolina Handling , said to a crowd gathered for a golden shovel ceremony. “It will be 267,000 square feet 237,000 of warehouse space that we will use for our equipment operations, parts distribution and logistics through the Southeast, and also 30,000 square feet on two levels of offices space to support all those people.”
The company, which started with a few forklift technicians in 1966, has grown to more than 800 employees.
“We have four locations in the Upstate currently and we’re really excited to get them all underneath one roof and get them working together,” Hillbrand said. “ We’ve become much more than a forklift company. We are an intralogistics solutions company that really focuses on automation and helping our customers with throughput. We hope to showcase that in this new facility; it will be state of the art.”
The company serves customers in the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama and the Florida panhandle. South Carolina customers include Michelin, BMW Manufacturing, Techtronic Industries Co. (TTI-Ryobi) and First Quality tissue makers. In Pickens County their customers include BASF, Danfoss Power Solutions, Reliable Automatic Sprinkler Co. and Kentwool.
The new operation will house a warehouse, training facility, office space and customer experience center.
Founded in Charlotte in 1966, Carolina Handling opened an office and training center on River Road in Piedmont in 1972 that today serves as the company’s rebuild facility, according to a news release from the company. A second Carolina Handling building opened on River Road in 2013 to house offices, training facilities and a customer experience center. In 2015, the company opened an Equipment Distribution Center on Piedmont Highway in Piedmont as a regional hub to better serve customers across the Southeast. And in 2018, the company added a warehouse on Michelin Court near the South Carolina Tech Technology & Aviation Center Greenville.
The company offers a range of consulting, connected technologies, automation systems and service to support the growing and changing material handling needs in warehouses and distribution centers, the release stated. Along with forklifts and a range of warehouse equipment, the company offers design, engineering and implementation services to help customers achieve more space, speed, safety and efficiency with integrated automation technologies, many of which will be showcased in the new facility’s customer experience center.
Carolina Handling has partnered with architect COR3 Design LLC , civil engineering firm SeamonWhiteside and Evans General Contractors on the design and construction. It is the first project at Speedway Industrial & Technology Park, which is being developed by RealtyLink LLC .
Operations are expected to be online in spring 2025.
Phil Wilson, principal with RealtyLink, and Pickens County Council Chairman Chris Bowers said all hope is not lost for the racetrack, which opened in 1940 and saw names such as Petty, Pearson and Earnhardt roll over its dirt. Both said they are still looking for someone to take over and restore the track but Wilson said it’s a daunting challenge that would cost millions.
Phase 1 of Speedway Industrial & Technology Park is on the opposite side of the 600-acre park from the racetrack.
“It’s very unique to find this size property this close the Grenville and Easley,” Wilson said. “It’s also blessed with all the utilities you could want for what we are doing here and it also has rail service. It’s a unique find.”
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