By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer

Groundbreaking for the S.C. World Trade Center building, slated for North Charleston’s Coliseum and Convention Center complex, will happen this year.

So says Fred Frankel, founder and board chairman of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Trade Center Development Corp., the project’s developer.

Construction of the 14-floor, 280,000-square-foot building could begin this summer and last about 18 months, Frankel said.

Charlotte-based Turner Construction Co. could become the project’s general contractor. Ken Betsch of Greenville is the project’s architect, Frankel said.

The building constitutes the first construction phase of a world trade center complex. A second, identical building will be constructed as the first building fills with tenants, Frankel said.

Each building will cost about $68 million. Frankel has met with four banks, each of which has “shown interest” in funding the project, he said.

The project also has drawn interest from individual investors, who would become part of a limited liability corporation the Trade Center Development Corp. will set up, said Mark Condon, executive director of the S.C. World Trade Center.

Condon will leave his executive directorship this year to become vice president of world trade center operations for the Trade Center Development Corp.

The forthcoming building will house the offices of the S.C. World Trade Center, a dining club and health spa, a small auditorium, conference rooms, Class “A” executive office space for consuls and other VIPs, and offices for foreign companies interested in testing their products in South Carolina before building their own facilities in the state, Frankel said.

However, most of the space, approximately 190,000 square feet, will be for international companies to showcase their products, Condon said.

For that reason, Condon is “quite confident” about filling the space. “This is mainly a showcase building, not a standard office building,” he said.

So far Condon has a “firm commitment” from a tenant for one full floor and a verbal commitment from another prospective tenant, he said.

An adjacent four-star, 160- to 200-room hotel for VIPs is another component Frankel wants. Dignitaries and trade consuls from around the globe are used to world trade centers having such an amenity, he said.

A 2,800-space parking garage, to be built by the city of North Charleston, is another trade center component. The garage would also serve the Coliseum and Convention Center and the Performing Arts Center.

The S.C. World Trade Center complex will be an economic boon not only for North Charleston but for the entire state, North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey said.

Because foreign companies would use the complex as a base for testing their products in the South Carolina market, more distribution centers could arise in the Palmetto State, Summey said.

The 6 million-square-foot Taipei World Trade Center in Taiwan and the 2 million-square-foot Seoul World Trade Center in Korea are the world’s largest world trade center complexes, with the Taipei center showcasing more than 300,000 products at any given time, Frankel said.

Although the S.C. World Trade Center complex will be much smaller than these, the goal is to make the complex comparable in quality to other world trade center complexes across the globe. Plenty of product showcase space, a private restaurant and spa, VIP offices and conference rooms and a luxury hotel are necessary to attract world traders and more international business to South Carolina, Frankel said.

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

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