The Berry company - Land Development

Tony Berry opened Berry’s Home Furnishings in Rock Hill, South Carolina, in 1991. Sales and profits grew steadily from 1991 to 1994. Then every business owner’s worst nightmare happened: the customers stopped coming.

An avid student of statistics, Berry polled the residents of York, Chester and Lancaster Counties to find out where they were going and why they had stopped shopping at his store. The message was clear: the majority of Berry’s market were buying their furniture 18 miles north in Pineville, North Carolina, while shopping, dining and being entertained, as Pineville’s growing hub of major home furnishing chains operated alongside nationally known retail, restaurants and stores were evolving. Having no previous land development experience, Berry assembled a team consisting of a commercial broker, land planner and civil engineer to identify a location and create a conceptual vision of what could be possible. Thorough research and planning led Berry to 150 acres of land at the intersection of Dave Lyle Boulevard and Interstate 77 owned by The City of Rock Hill. As fate would have it, Berry’s vision and The City of Rock Hill’s vision of what could be were one in the same, and The City of Rock Hill chose Berry and his team to develop the city owned land into what is now regionally known as Manchester Village.