By Kathleen Dayton
Staff Writer

Move over, Myrtle Beach. The Charleston area’s first factory outlet center is set to open on schedule Aug. 4 in tandem with the state’s annual tax-free weekend.

Grand opening events will take place Aug. 30 through Sept. 10.

The 352,000-square-foot Tanger Outlet Center in North Charleston’s Centre Pointe development will open with about 90 brand-name outlet stores and will include a food court. Tenants include recognizable outlet fare such as Gap, Jones New York, Bass and Carter’s, as well as PetSense, the outlet cousin of PetSmart.

The new center is the fifth Tanger center in South Carolina, joining the company’s two Myrtle Beach outlet centers and two centers near Hilton Head Island.

Tanger Factory Outlet Centers Inc., based in Greensboro, N.C., estimates that its four current South Carolina centers attract more than 13 million shoppers annually, provide nearly 3,000 jobs and generate $16 million in property taxes and sales tax revenue. The Charleston center created more than 300 jobs during the construction phase and is expected to hire more than 900 full- and part-time employees.

“We had a very successful job fair (recently) with 1,700 people,” said Ed Camp, the center’s general manager. “We think that’s just an indicator of how busy and successful we’ll be.”

Camp has been in shopping center management since 1983 and most recently worked for Kiawah Development Group as general manager and for Freshfields Village on Johns Island as marketing manager. He has also managed Citadel Mall.

Tanger officials said the Charleston area is similar in some ways to its other South Carolina locations, but acknowledged it’s also very different.

“Charleston hasn’t been offered the outlet concept before, so it’s new and gives us a good market,” said Carrie Warren, Tanger’s director of marketing. “It’s still a very large tourism market. We have outlet centers all across the country and our most successful, for the most part, are located in tourist destinations. Then there’s a whole local population, too.”

Tanger’s research shows 846,000 people live within 60 miles of the North Charleston center, located off International Boulevard near the junction of Interstate 26 and Interstate 526. For years, the area was marked only by the Charleston International Airport, a handful of motels and the former Charles Towne Square Mall, which closed more than a decade ago.

After the opening of the North Charleston Coliseum in 1993, hotels began moving into the area and a new commercial hub began to emerge in the airport district. Centre Pointe’s Wal-Mart, which opened last year, and Sam’s Club, which opened in 2004, have also contributed to the area’s renaissance.

“The Centre Pointe people have been trying to develop it since the mid-1980s, and it’s flying high now,” said Bill Hantske, project manager for Centre Pointe Developers.

Southeastern Realty Group just brokered the sale of a 3-acre commercial site at Centre Pointe, which was sold to Charlotte, N.C.-based SREE Hotels for $2.8 million. The company, which has a portfolio of 30 hotels in the Southeast and California franchised by groups such as Marriott, has not released details of its plans for the property.

With its location at the heart of North Charleston and along the area’s two major freeways, Centre Pointe is poised to attract visitors from every feeder market into the area, said Warren. Tanger has identified four major feeder markets for the outlet center: East Cooper, Kiawah-Seabrook, downtown Charleston and visitors coming south on I-26.

“You’ve got the beach vacationers, and they’re really different from your downtown vacationers,” Warren said. “Rainy days, they have to do something. We can’t think of a much better place to hit every one of those feeder markets.”

North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey said the city has been trying to attract an outlet mall for 10 years.

“The great thing about it is, it opens up another great retail segment for the area,” Summey said. “In the past, if you wanted to go to an outlet, you had to go to Myrtle Beach or Hilton Head, which is 100 miles away. Now we have a comparative outlet mall in our own backyard. It’s also an additional shopping tool for our tourism industry.”

Phillip Owens, senior vice president of business development for the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce, said the economic impact of the Tanger center could be exponential.

“The Tanger shopping outlet is not just a regional shopping area,” Owens said. “It’s a shopping destination.”

Kathleen Dayton is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her at kdayton@charlestonbusiness.com.

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