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CSU: Developable sites seen as lands of opportunity
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
Standing before an artist’s rendering of the new American LaFrance facilities about to rise on land owned by Charleston Southern University, Jairy C. Hunter Jr. exuded both a sense of pride and a modicum of fatigue as he talked about the surge of business development at what had once been the Lowcountry’s least-developed Interstate 26 interchange.
It was only three years ago, the university president remembered, that consultants informed him that the university owned a wealth of land that it would have no direct use for “for at least 100 years.”
“The goal in all our internal planning is to make the campus more dense,” he said, as John Stevenson, president and CEO of American LaFrance looked on.
“It took some time, but I finally convinced the board of trustees that by leasing this property long-term, we would be creating a thriving endowment for the university,” Hunter continued. “Today it appears we’ll have no problem filling every available acre.”
CSU’s plan is to develop a 60-acre medical and business park, anchored on 2.6 acres along Highway 78 by two hotels, the first of which will be a Wyngate Hotel that CSU will own, but which will be run by an outside management company.
Hunter didn’t disclose what the other hotel would be, but said he expects one of its primary attributes will be a wealth of convention and meeting space.
Right behind the hotels, adjacent to the site of American LaFrance’s new headquarters, will be four 40,000-square-foot medical arts buildings to be used by Trident Medical Center, which is located directly across Highway 28 from the university, “and currently maxed out” in terms of usable space, Hunter said.
“It’s a development that’s being carefully designed to complement our curriculum,” Hunter said. “Students in our School of Nursing, for instance, will be able to garner real-life experience at the medical entities populating those buildings, and as for American LaFrance, we think that’s a perfect fit in regard to our criminal justice students.”
“At the same time, because American LaFrance is building its corporate identity, taking on roles in our own business that were formerly performed by DaimlerChrysler and Freightliner, there will be tremendous opportunities for internships and the like in computer sciences, management, marketing, you name it,” Stevenson said.
“To compete in business today, you need to think outside the box,” he continued. “CSU will fuel us with new business concepts as they emerge, and we’ll be able to provide students with an opportunity to explore and develop a unique career path.”
Asked if American LaFrance’s buildings might be the start of an automotive business cluster on the site, Hunter said he didn’t think so, at least in a manufacturing sense.
“But I can certainly see international insurance companies wanting to be close to a business like American LaFrance—this is just me dreaming, but I could see Lloyd’s of London opening an insurance training center near a facility like this—finance companies would be another nice fit. Any corporate-type business closely related to criminal justice, medicine and the first-responder business,” he said.
But as Hunter continued to talk, the possibilities continued to flow forth. “Some people say with all this office space, we’re going to need some kind of daycare facility,” he said. “That would be a natural tie-in with our School of Education. And just today I was talking with a bank about possibly establishing a presence here.
“I guess that’s the problem with describing our vision: Things are happening and evolving so quickly that we just haven’t had time to sit down with the thinkers and brainstormers and come up with a short list of what we’d like to attract,” Hunter added. “Right now we’re in the throes of unending possibility, which is not a bad place to be.”
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.
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