GREENVILLE, SC — At the corner of Calhoun and Jenkins streets, a modest two-story brick building became a legend to generations of high school students in the Sterling Community.
The Huddle gained its fame from grilled-cheese sandwiches, cherry cola floats and a jukebox that played a steady stream of Motown, Stax and even the raspy howls and banging piano of the internationally famous musician Esquerita, who was better known among his fellow Sterling High alums as Eskew Reeder.
But while the Huddle is spoken often in nostalgic tones by alumni and their children and their children’s children, the actual happenings are often left ambiguously hidden behind knowing nods and smiles.
While the past may be vague, the future of that corner is not.
On Thursday morning, some 200 people (the majority wearing Sterling High’s blue and white) took part in a groundbreaking that was really a glorious celebration for 10 long-term rental homes for individuals earning between 60% to 80% of the area median income. Known as the Huddle at Sterling, it will be arranged in five stacked duplexes. Tenant-based vouchers will be accepted at the property.
Site work began in November 2026 and the construction timeline is 14 to 16 months.
It is the creation of the Greenville Housing Fund and The Sterling Land Trust, who starting in 2024 partnered to develop the three parcels just off Dunbar Avenue. The Sterling Land Trust owns the land, after Bon Secours St. Francis Health System supported its purchase through an initial pre-development grant. The City of Greenville aided the work by annexing the property and the street leading to it as well as being a key funder of the Greenville Housing Fund.