Quick Notes: Trends & Talk About Town

By Dennis Quick

Three economic reports detail problems, give viable solutions for tri-county area

In summer 2002, the local chambers of commerce and the Charleston Regional Development Alliance hired economic development consultant Ed Morrison to tell us what was wrong economically and how to fix it.

Morrison wrote a report saying, among other things, that our education system needs an overhaul (something we’ve always known), that Charleston, Dorchester and Berkeley counties need to chat with one another so the economic development players can be on the same page (sad someone had to remind us that we’re all in this together), that our businesses and industries need to be more innovative, and that we need more knowledge-based industry. (In 1961, on a statewide scale, then-Gov. Fritz Hollings alluded to the last two when he started the state’s technical college system to help drag us into the 20th century.)

Morrison’s report, The New Challenge for the Charleston Region: Building an Innovation Economy, became our region’s economic repair manual.

With Morrison’s report, we could have grabbed our hammers and wrenches and started fixing what needed to be fixed. Apparently, Morrison wasn’t enough. We wanted to hear more about the rickety state of our economic engine.

We heard it at the 2003 Economic Outlook Conference in Columbia, where Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter told the state what’s what. For one thing, Porter said, (and I’m paraphrasing), the state’s three regions have to cut out their comic idiocy of competing against one another and start working together. The Lowcountry, the Midlands and the Upstate morphed into Moe, Larry and Curly as Porter (along with financier Darla Moore) delivered an eye-opening, dust-raising verbal head slap worthy of a Three Stooges scene.

We don’t earn much, Porter said. We don’t produce much. We don’t invent much. How do we snap out of our economic coma and increase our per capita income? By creating business clusters, by making our existing businesses more innovative so that we become the industrial brains rather than just the brawn, by improving K-12 education—you’ve heard it all before, here and elsewhere (including in the Morrison report)—so I won’t revisit that trampled turf.

Morrison told us. Porter told us. But, before rolling up our sleeves and getting to work, we had to hear it one more time.

Now we have the five-year economic development and marketing plan from AngelouEconomics, an Austin, Texas-based consultancy the Charleston Regional Development Alliance hired to help get our economic act together. It is a solid, comprehensive report telling us we should focus on five clusters: aircraft and aerospace, automotive, biosciences, creative industries (architecture, urban planning, film and visual media, etc.) and advanced security (tracking and surveillance, intelligence software, etc.) It says we should upgrade K-12 education, that we should improve our infrastructure to accommodate our region’s growing population, and that we should keep the port cost-competitive.

Is it just me, or is the world a warped record spinning on a dusty phonograph?

What we need to do to save our economic hide couldn’t be clearer if Fred Flintstone chiseled it on our foreheads. We do not—repeat: not—need any more reports, studies, theses, diagnoses or diagrams to tell us how we need to shape up.

Parris Island is just down the road. They have Marine Corps drill instructors who are masters of motivation. If, after all those reams of economic development advice, we still can’t get moving, we should bus in a few surly D.I.s to encourage us.

Movie madness. With the S.C. Motion Picture Incentive Act of 2004, a package offering tax exemptions to movie studios that choose to film in the Palmetto State, we can start building one cluster AngelouEconomics recommended—a creative industry centered on film-making. Why not start by enticing Hollywood to build a full-fledged movie studio here in the Lowcountry? We’ve got sunshine; we’ve got climate; we’ve got beauty; we’ve got space.

The space I’m thinking of is in Berkeley County. According to my map, plenty of acreage is available for a studio. The area north of Goose Creek, particularly around the Mount Holly Commerce Park and the Pattillo and Herrin industrial sites, appears promising. Since the film industry offers high-paying jobs—$18 an hour and up—and spawns many ancillary businesses, including production companies and equipment supply companies, it is something we should pursue.

Dennis Quick is senior staff writer for the Charleston Regional Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@crbj.com.

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