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Senior PGA tourney on par for $23.3 million impact
By Dennis Quick , Senior Staff Writer
Linda Malcolm, co-owner of Indigo Books, looks forward to the upcoming Senior PGA Championship at Kiawah Island’s Ocean Course. Malcolm’s bookshop is located in Johns Island’s Freshfields Village, a shopping center near the Kiawah Island entrance.
“We’re excited. We think a lot of visitors will drop in. Freshfields is an attraction, and there will be lots of activities, a lot for families to do and see,” Malcolm said.
The 2007 Senior PGA Championship is expected to generate a $23.3 million economic impact on the Lowcountry, according to a study conducted by the College of Charleston’s Office of Tourism and Analysis.
That hefty figure “is considered conservative because we didn’t include the spending of the media personnel and athletes,” said Bing Pan, a researcher with the Office of Tourism Analysis who helped produce the study.
The golf championship, which runs from May 22–27, has sold 80,000 tickets. Tickets cost $25. Children age 17 and under get in for free with an adult.
Malcolm anticipates that a good number of those ticket holders will wander from the greens and the fairways to Freshfields Village and into her bookstore.
Janet Sbihli, owner of Carolina Clay Gallery in Freshfields, says her pottery and sculpture gallery, featuring creations strictly from artists in the Carolinas, is getting ready for the big golf event.
“We’re adding new inventory, and we’re staying open late and offering wine and cheese. It’ll be fun,” Sbihli said, adding she hopes out-of-towners will stop in her gallery and “take a bit of Carolina home with them.”
Read more about this story in the April 30 issue of the Business Journal.
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New biotech startup tackling Alzheimer’s, cancer
By Dennis Quick , Senior Staff Writer
Last year, Dr. Sebastiano Gattoni-Celli and Mark Kindy, both of the Medical University of South Carolina, launched SemiAlloGen Inc., a biotech company developing vaccines and therapeutic treatments for Alzheimer’s disease and cancer.
More than 5 million people in the United States live with Alzheimer’s, a progressive brain disorder that gradually destroys a person’s memory. The risk of getting the disease increases with age. With 78 million baby boomers turning 60 last year, it is estimated someone in the United States develops Alzheimer’s every 72 seconds; by mid-century, that number will be one person every 33 seconds, according to the Chicago-based Alzheimer’s Association.
Meanwhile, the American Cancer Society estimated in the beginning of 2006 that about 565,000 Americans would die from cancer that year and 1.4 million new cases would be diagnosed.
Gattoni-Celli, a cancer radiologist, and Kindy, a neurosciences researcher, aim to create vaccines for Alzheimer’s and cancer through experiments in which they treat mice by injecting them with peptides. The researchers will publish the results of their experiments by the end of the year, Gattoni-Celli said.
Ultimately, Alzheimer- and cancer-fighting vaccines can be tailored for each person by creating individual cell banks for a person, extracting cells from the bank, injecting the cells with peptides and then injecting those cells back into the person, Gattoni-Celli said.
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U.S. Marine Corps awards Force Dynamics logistics support contract
By Daily Journal Staff
Force Dynamics LLC, a Ladson-based joint venture between defense manufacturers Force Protection Inc. and General Dynamics Land Systems, a business unit of General Dynamics Corp., announced it has received a $6.9 million contract to provide integrated logistics support for the U.S. Marine Corps’ Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles.
Under the contract, Force Dynamics will supply ILS elements including deployment blocks, maintenance workshop blocks, field service representatives and operator and maintenance training.
To date, Force Dynamics has received more than 320 of the 595 MRAP vehicle contracts awarded. Total MRAP vehicle requirements are estimated by the Marines to be in excess of 7,700 vehicles, worth an approximate $8.4 billion.
“This contract is significant as it underscores the sustainability of our vehicles in the field,” said Force Protection CEO Gordon McGilton. “The government has heavily emphasized this critical component, and we are pleased to offer our proven ILS services in response to this need.”
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Santee Cooper pilots technical career program
By Daily Journal Staff
Santee Cooper has launched its new Power Associates program, an employee-recruiting initiative designed to ready students for high-paying technical careers in the crucial field of energy development, the company said.
“South Carolina continues to grow at an incredible pace, especially in our service territories, and we have a commitment to provide affordable and dependable power to our thriving state,” said Lonnie Carter, Santee Cooper’s president and CEO. “The Power Associates program gives Santee Cooper the chance to create a skilled pool of young workers to support our more seasoned and highly skilled work force.”
Each spring, graduating high school seniors will compete for a limited number of scholarships to participating technical schools, where they will take courses toward an associate degree. Additionally, these students will have the opportunity to work up to 20 hours a week at one of Santee Cooper’s generating stations.
For its pilot year, Santee Cooper will select four candidates from Berkeley County to attend Trident Technical College and to work at its Cross and Jefferies generating stations. In subsequent years the program would accommodate up to 16 students.
Santee Cooper collaborated with TTC to develop the two-year curriculum, which prepares students with highly marketable, in-demand skills applicable to careers as an auxiliary operator, an electrical and instrumentation technician or a power plant mechanic.
Permanent employment by Santee Cooper will remain dependent on the students’ performance in the program and the company’s hiring needs when they graduate.
Santee Cooper is South Carolina’s state-owned electric and water utility and serves more than 156,000 residential and commercial customers in Berkeley, Georgetown and Horry counties.
The utility also generates the power distributed by the state’s 20 electric cooperatives to serve more than 665,000 customers in all 46 counties. All total, almost 2 million South Carolinians receive their power directly or indirectly from Santee Cooper.
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South Carolina Bank and Trust names executive vice president
By Daily Journal Staff
South Carolina Bank and Trust Thursday named Arthur P. Swanson as executive vice president of its Charleston region.
“Arthur is a highly respected and talented banker and we are very fortunate to have someone with his knowledge and expertise lead our Charleston region,” said Robert Hill Jr., CEO of South Carolina Bank and Trust. “He knows how to be successful in this very important market and will be an asset to our experienced Charleston banking team.”
Swanson comes to SCBT from Carolina First, where he was the executive vice president in charge of the Charleston market from 2000 to 2006.
Swanson was also a founding director of the Bank of Charleston from 1990 until 1998, when the company was sold to Anchor Bank. At Bank of Charleston, he served as executive vice president and later president and CEO.
With more than 30 years of banking experience, Swanson has served as a director of the South Carolina Bankers Association as well as a director of the Independent Banks of South Carolina.
Swanson, his wife, Shannon, and his daughter reside in Charleston.
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New barbecue sauce lands in local stores
By Daily Journal Staff
Move over Melvin and step aside Maurice. David White of Columbia has concocted BlackMustard Barbecue Slather, and it’s now being sold at specialty retailers in the Charleston area.
Gita’s Gourmet, Boone Hall Farms and Market Street Munchies are carrying the sauce, which White describes as a next-generation evolution of mustard-style barbecue sauce.
It won two Scovie Awards from Fiery-Foods.com in a competition against dozens of other barbecue sauces from around the country.
White started selling the sauce on the Internet after concocting it for the first time at a Fourth of July party. The product has been in development for three years and hit Columbia retail shelves in July 2006. Since then, other retailers around the state have started stocking the sauce, which is also being sold in Florida and at an organic butcher shop in Darwin, Australia.
White, who is president and creative director of H & W Creative Advertising in Columbia, plans to expand his barbecue business with a dry rub to accompany the tangy sauce.
“We’ve signed agreements with a co-packer and are developing the commercial recipe,” White said. “We’re also testing some product names and plan to have everything ready to roll out by the end of May.”
BlackMustard Barbecue Slather is being sold at five locations in Columbia, two in Lexington, two in Aiken and one each in Edgefield, Santee, and Florence, in addition to the three Charleston locations. White said orders were recently received from Fort Myers and Port Charlotte, Fla.
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