Mixed-Use Financing in Florence, SC

Florence anchors the northeastern South Carolina interior as a regional service hub where healthcare, logistics, and tobacco-country agriculture converge along the I-95 and I-20 interchange, one of the few true interstate crossroads between Charlotte and Jacksonville. McLeod Health, a regional hospital system with facilities in Florence, Darlington, and Dillon, is among the largest private employers in the Pee Dee region and sustains consistent demand for medical office and outpatient facilities that smaller surrounding counties cannot adequately supply locally. The Florence Center convention complex and a mature retail corridor along David McLeod Boulevard anchor the Downtown Florence trade area, drawing consumers from Darlington, Marion, and Marlboro counties where retail options remain thin. Industrial demand concentrates around the I-95 and US-76 corridors, driven by regional distribution requirements from food processing, tobacco handling, and agricultural supply chains that feed out of Hartsville, Lake City, and Mullins. Coker University in Hartsville and Francis Marion University in Florence contribute modest but steady multifamily and retail demand in their immediate submarkets, and workforce housing projects in Sumter and Manning have drawn interest from regional developers as rents in those secondary nodes have firmed. Self-storage has been among the more active product types across the rural belt from Bishopville through Bennettsville, where limited institutional supply has kept occupancy elevated. Underwriters should account for the market's dependence on healthcare and government employment as economic stabilizers, given that manufacturing diversification remains a work in progress across the Pee Dee corridor.