Festival Centre in North Charleston is set to get its grocery store back. Food Lion will become the newest tenant and anchor grocer at the 325,347-square-foot shopping center at 5101 Ashley Phosphate Road, with the store expected to open in October 2027.
The lease closes out a search that lasted more than a decade, according to the Post and Courier. The center hasn't had a grocery anchor since Piggly Wiggly, which operated there for 25 years, closed in 2013. The North Carolina-based chain will co-anchor the property alongside Planet Fitness, filling space that will replace American Freight, which went bankrupt and shuttered its locations.
A Property Transformed Since 2024
Festival Centre, located in Dorchester County, has been under a major overhaul since Woodlock Capital acquired it in 2024. The firm purchased the property for $21.75 million through a partnership with a Charleston-based private investment group, the outlet's reporting notes. Beyond landing Food Lion, the renovation has included parking lot upgrades, new paint and signage, and landscaping work across the center.
Woodlock has been working with Food Lion since November 2024 to bring the grocer on board, the same report states. Patrick Nealon said the Food Lion deal is a major win for the area and the shopping center, adding that Woodlock had sought to bring a grocery store back ever since Piggly Wiggly left because grocers drive traffic that benefits other tenants.
Why Grocers Matter to a Shopping Center's Bottom Line
Hal Swanson said a national or regional grocer brings consistent traffic that benefits an entire shopping center, and that the Food Lion addition should help drive sales for existing tenants while attracting new businesses. Festival Centre's current tenant mix includes Partee Shack, Pickle Rage, Dutch Bros. and a Chase Bank. Swanson also noted that grocers weigh existing demographics, projected growth, traffic counts and visibility when picking locations — factors that put Festival Centre in competition with a Publix located across the street and a Harris Teeter nearby.
Food Lion currently reports 17 locations around South Carolina and about 1,164 across Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic states. In the Charleston area, the chain already operates one downtown on King Street, another along Folly Road in James Island, two in West Ashley and one on Johns Island.
A Region Still Catching Up to Its Own Growth
The Festival Centre deal lands amid a broader grocery buildout tied to the Lowcountry's population surge. The growing population of Lowcountry residents with high incomes and high levels of education is attracting more grocery stores to the region, according to TSCG, which also notes that shoppers today are much more likely to go to multiple stores for different products rather than relying on one.
That growth has been dramatic: the Charleston-North Charleston metro area grew by 20% over the decade covered by the 2020 Census, reaching nearly 800,000 residents, as reported by ABC News 4. Charleston County ranked as the state's third-largest county in that count, with Berkeley County eighth and Dorchester County, home to Festival Centre, ranking 12th.
Not every neighborhood has kept pace with that retail expansion. TSCG's reporting points to the Chicora-Cherokee neighborhood, which hasn't had a nearby grocer since Winn-Dixie closed in 2005 and remains classified as a food desert by the U.S. Department of Agriculture due to its lack of access to fresh food. The same analysis projected more grocery stores would continue arriving in Berkeley and Dorchester counties as residential development increases, following a pattern already seen with Aldi in the market, a Lowes Foods planned for Summerville in 2017, and a Publix then being built in Charleston's WestEdge development and expected to open in the third quarter of 2018.
