If the colossal apartment building rising from the Camperdown development now seems grand enough to be a sign of downtown Greenville's new age of growth, another structure will soon rise alongside to eclipse it.

Work is beginning on Falls Tower — a 17-story office, condominium and retail tower that will be second in height only to the 22-story Windstream building.

The construction of the tower along with the simultaneous construction of the AC Hotel by Marriott on the corner of South Main and East Broad streets marks the final significant phase of the $350-million Camperdown development.

The developer, Greenville-based Centennial American Properties, has set an April 2020 completion date for the exterior portion of the project with full opening in the summer months.

"Everything is moving along according to schedule," Centennial owner Brody Glenn told The Greenville News in an exclusive interview this week.

In the interview, Glenn discussed the vision for the tower and the overall development, as well as plans for what will happen along the river on property the company owns across the way along the Reedy River Falls and Liberty Bridge.

The crane for the hotel is currently being put together, and the ground is being set for Falls Tower with hopes that the crane for the 217-unit apartment building can be used if timing is right, said the construction project manager, Kimberly Bailey of Brasfield & Gorrie.

The completed project will feature a 1.5-acre, publicly accessible center plaza that will house an array of national, regional and local retailers, and restaurants.

Currently, Glenn said, the developer is negotiating with several restaurants to be announced later. One, a concept by the creators of Larkin's on the River, has been announced in the first building to be finished, which is the home of The News.

The idea will be for retailers and restaurants to "energize" the plaza, Glenn said, where people can congregate with live music playing and ice cream and cookie shops operating from small spaces in the middle.

Locally owned Auro Hotels, which built the Hyatt Regency in the 1980s and is developing the new AC Hotel, will operate the plaza just as the Hyatt does NOMA Square, Glenn said.

The plaza will feature a grand staircase that will lead down to Falls Park.

Falls Tower will predominantly house office space — nearly 200,000 square feet spread among seven floors.

Bank of America and Elliott Davis have been announced as tenants, with a third signature tenant that will be new to Greenville soon to be announced, Glenn said.

The upper floors will be devoted to 18 luxury condos that will range from 2,726 square feet to 5,452 square feet, with 254-square-foot balconies overlooking Falls Park.

The first five floors of the building will be brick and glass to be reminiscent of "old Greenville," Glenn said, then stepped back 12 feet for the remaining structure so that it doesn't seems as imposing from a pedestrian perspective.

The overall development is named as an homage to the Camperdown mill that operated beginning from 1876 to 1954 and spawned a village that thrived in and around the Reedy River Falls.

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Centennial American Properties bought the 4-acre site — the former home of The Greenville News in a concrete, Cold War-era office building and printing factory — in December 2015 at a cost of $13 million.

The News building, which opened to great fanfare in 1969, was demolished in 2017.

The AC Hotel will be an "upscale, lifestyle-oriented hotel," with 196 rooms that will include 14 luxury suites.

The hotel will feature design elements associated with Greenville's textile heritage and pay respect to the century-old legacy of The Greenville News' presence at 305 South Main.

Five unique food and beverage outlets will be included as part of the hotel, such as a bar and tapas restaurant on Main Street, an authentic speakeasy, and a 16,000-square-foot indoor and outdoor rooftop bar and event space.

The development will be served by a 629-space parking garage that has been constructed underground, in addition to the current Bowater parking garage that has 300 spaces, Glenn said.

The garage will remain for the time being, Glenn said, as will the accompanying office building that once housed the Bowater headquarters and now is home to the Nexen Pruet law firm.

In drawing up plans for Camperdown, Glenn said he decided to keep the garage with the possibility that future supply and new modes of transportation, such as automated cars, could make the garage obsolete.

“Is that the highest and best use? I don’t know," he said. "But currently the highest and best use is parking. That could change over the next 10 years.”

The garage will be connected to Camperdown by a footbridge.

The former Bowater building, which has only a handful of offices that have a view of the river because when it was built the concrete Camperdown Way bridge was in place, will remain, Glenn said.

"We plan to keep that," he said. "We love that asset."

The area around the riverbank will be landscaped, in concert with plans for a Grand Bohemian Hotel that will create a new civic lawn, to create a more-inviting experience for pedestrians walking to the east side of the Liberty Bridge.

"We're going to redevelop the riverscape there to make it feel and look like what it looks like on the other side of the river," he said.

Follow Eric on Twitter @cericconnor