|
Conservation center to restore local artifacts
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
An expansion of the Warren Lasch Conservation Center, where forensic and scientific work continues on the CSS H.L. Hunley, will be the first step in the development of Clemson University’s planned 65-acre Restoration Institute campus at the old Charleston Naval Base in North Charleston.
The $3 million expansion is slated to begin this fall. It will be followed by the clearing of deteriorated buildings on the site and the construction of a 25,000-square-foot educational and research building.
When the entire Clemson project is completed, in about a decade, it is expected to create 4,700 jobs and have an annual economic impact on the region of up to $500 million.
At a luncheon meeting between university officials and Charleston area business leaders April 3, it was noted that the research and educational facility will be about more than restoring relics pulled from the sea.
The facility’s broader mission will be to explore the possibilities and potential of making the built environment and urban landscape work better.
“While the Hunley will obviously continue to focus the public’s attention on one aspect of what we intend to do here, restoration encompasses a lot of different fields,” said Barry C. Nocks, associate dean for outreach and special projects at Clemson’s College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities.
Nocks and other university officials said the center is the first in the nation formally focused on the “restoration economy,” defined as a trillion-dollar global economy centered around restoring both natural resources and existing communities.
Storm Cunningham, the keynote speaker at the luncheon and executive director of the Revitalization Institute Inc., described the restoration economy as a natural outgrowth of the use of natural resources and the end, in the past century, of an economy built almost exclusively on expanding frontiers.
“In terms of development, we’ve gotten to the point that every time you try to sprawl out farther, you’re impacting a critical watershed, a historic site or some other feature somebody cares about and will fight to protect,” Cunningham said.
“In the revitalization economy, developers can avoid those conflicts by redeveloping Brownfields and the like and undertaking infill projects,” he said. “Given the age of our cities and changing face of the economy in the wake of the technological revolution, there are amazing opportunities in this area.”
The Clemson research institute will conduct research in areas ranging from health and hydrology to materials engineering and urban design.
About 160 local business people gathered to hear remarks by Cunningham, who literally wrote the book on the subject, The Restoration Economy, and Clemson president James F. Barker, who said the institute will leverage knowledge from work already being done at Clemson. He urged the attendees to look for opportunities to partner in the effort.
Such partnerships, either in specific projects or in supplying needed materials for university researchers, will be critical to the institute’s success in years ahead, Nocks said.
He also said the university hopes that as technology and restoration business clusters develop in Charleston over time, Clemson will be a prime supplier of those companies’ workers.
“As a land grant university, our mission is to serve South Carolina,” Nocks said. “Rather than just train students and have them seek opportunities elsewhere, we want to be a magnet for bringing industry and jobs to the state, thereby encouraging the intellectual capital we develop to stay here and recruiting more of the same.”
Cunningham noted that historically, nations and their economies grew by finding new lands and resources, often by going to war to achieve those ends.
Today, nations and communities running low on resources have three choices: restoring, relocating or receding.
However, given the realities of today’s world, relocating and receding are not viable, sustainable options, he said.
“If we want a growing economy and a healthier world, we need to get serious about renewing what’s already been built,” Cunningham said.
“Noisette is a premier example of integrated revitalization,” he said, referring to the mixed-use development that is directly adjacent to the institute site. “Clemson’s plan is a perfect complement and extension of what (Noisette developer) John Knott is doing there.”
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.
|
E-Mail This Article
Printer-Friendly Version