Awards & Recognition — Voted Best Apartments in Spartanburg, SC

Spartanburg’s most awarded apartment community

Voted Spartanburg’s best apartment complex nine times since 2017. Best apartment lists are opinions; this page is the record: what Spartanburg voters, the State of South Carolina, national preservation experts and the EPA have said about Drayton Mills Lofts — and when.

2026 Community’s Choice: Best Apartment Complex

Newest honor · 2026

Voted Spartanburg’s best apartment complex

Drayton Mills Lofts is the 2026 winner of The Official Community’s Choice Awards — Best of Spartanburg, in the Apartment Complex category. This one wasn’t decided by a jury or a panel: it was voted on by the people of Spartanburg.

View the award certificate →

Every honor, and who awarded it

2026

Best Apartment Complex — The Official Community’s Choice Awards, Best of Spartanburg

Decided by public vote, not by a panel. Residents and neighbors across Spartanburg County chose Drayton Mills Lofts as the area’s best apartment complex — the ninth time since the lofts opened.

2017–2024

Best Apartment Complex — Spartanburg Herald-Journal Best of the Best, eight consecutive years

Eight straight wins in the Herald-Journal’s reader poll, beginning the year the lofts opened and running through 2024 — then the 2026 Community’s Choice win on top. Newer communities have come and gone from that list; the mill has stayed on it.

2018

Governor’s Honor Award for Historic Preservation — State of South Carolina

One of the state’s highest preservation honors, presented by Gov. Henry McMaster with the S.C. Department of Archives and History and Preservation South Carolina, for the restoration of a 1902 National Register textile mill into 289 lofts and a marketplace — the largest historic restoration in South Carolina.

2018

Historic Rehabilitation Award, Major Community Impact — Novogradac Journal of Tax Credits

National recognition for the development that best exemplified major community impact: a shuttered mill returned to Spartanburg as homes, jobs, restaurants, healthcare and a trailhead on The Dan.

Ongoing

ENERGY STAR® Certified — U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

The building performs in the top 25% of comparable buildings nationwide for energy efficiency — a 120-year-old brick mill outperforming construction a fraction of its age, and lower utility bills for the people who live here.

Why It Keeps Winning

What the judges and the voters saw

Spartanburg has added a lot of new apartments since 2016. Drayton Mills keeps topping the lists because it offers what new construction cannot copy: an authentic 1902 building with original maple floors, exposed brick, heart-pine timber and 17-foot ceilings; 68 unique floor plans shaped by the mill rather than a template; a 30-acre campus with a 60-foot saltwater pool, a two-story fitness center and the Daniel Morgan Trail running through it; and the Drayton Mills Marketplace — dinner, coffee, a haircut, a workout and a doctor, all downstairs.

Come see why. Schedule a tour, or start with the 3D virtual tours and photo gallery.

Spartanburg’s most awarded apartment community