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Investments totaling $639 million highlight development alliance’s year
By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer
The Charleston Regional Development Alliance hailed fiscal 2005, which ended June 30, as a “highly successful year” resulting in $639 million of corporate investment in the tri-county region.
The investment came from 14 companies that either moved to or expanded in the region. The activity created more than
2,500 new jobs paying an average wage of $18.52 an hour, more than 27% higher than the state’s average wage, alliance President and CEO David Ginn said.
Those new jobs will generate about $90 million in household spending, Ginn pointed out.
Ginn reviewed the alliance’s fiscal performance Oct. 27 during the organization’s annual luncheon. Among the year’s investment highlights he noted were:
• The $560 million Vought Aircraft-Alenia North America complex near Charleston International Airport, where fuselages for Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner passenger jet will be assembled and roughly 645 workers employed.
• Holset Turbochargers’ $13 million, 110,000-square-foot facility in North Charleston, creating 180 new jobs.
• Union Underwear Inc.’s 300,000-square-foot distribution center in Jedburg, creating between 100 and 200 jobs.
• Road King Trailers, a boat and utility trailer manufacturer, invested $600,000 in an assembly facility in St. George, creating 30 new jobs.
• Mount Pleasant-based Benefitfocus.com’s planned relocation to a $16 million, 143,000-square-foot office complex on Daniels Island.
The alliance’s Web site, www.charleston-for-business.com, has proved invaluable to the organization’s business recruitment efforts, Ginn said. The Web site received 124,305 visits during fiscal year 2005, a 20% increase from the previous fiscal year.
“Ten years ago we didn’t even have a Web site,” he noted. “Now it’s our top marketing tool.”
The alliance pursued 75 corporate relocation or expansion projects during fiscal 2005. While 19% of those projects landed in the tri-county region, 44% are still considering the region, and 37% of the projects were either cancelled, put on hold or selected another region, according to the alliance’s annual report.
Most of the projects involved distribution facilities, chemicals and resins companies and manufacturing and assembly companies.
Thirty-one percent of the projects the alliance pursued involved non-local companies from the Southeast, 25% were companies from the Northeast, 20% from the West and 8% from the Midwest.
For fiscal year 2006, the alliance will work with the region’s chambers of commerce, counties, colleges, universities and existing businesses to establish action teams that will help build the business clusters recommended by Austin, Texas-based AngelouEconomics, an economic development consultancy the alliance hired.
The clusters AngelouEconomics recommend the tri-county region develop include biosciences, aerospace, automotive, creative industries and advanced security.
Dennis Quick is senior staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.
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