Of the seven largest capital investment projects in the history of the state for Tier III/Tier IV counties, four of them have Chester County addresses.
Robert Long gave the report, including this startling statistic, to Chester County Chamber of Commerce members at his quarterly update.
He started the report off slow and built to this revelation at the end of his update.
“Activity slowed down a little bit, we had 20 projects up until the last 30 days and in the last 30 days, we’ve added five, so a little bit of a slowdown on the new project activity,” Long said.
Most of the interest in projects, which is when a potential industry begins considering Chester County as a location, come directly through a realtor, a consultant hired by the company or the industry itself, Long said, as opposed to leads coming through places like the state Department of Commerce.
Long and Assistant Economic Director Kris Phillips have been attending meetings and conferences, as this is a busy time for that type of opportunity.
“We’re out there working hard for the citizens of Chester. One caveat, when we are out there working those conferences and meetings, and doing those kinds of external marketing events, no county funds are paying for it. It’s either through our partnership with the I-77 Alliance or through our Chester Development Association that’s generally funding those opportunities to market Chester County,” Long pointed out.
For most communities, the amount of attraction of new industries versus expansion of existing ones or retention of existing industries, 40-60% of their activity is attraction: in Chester County, that percentage is consistently over 90%.
“These are inquiries from folks who do not currently have investment in Chester County,” Long said, adding that it has been that way since he started the job about two and a half years ago.
“That being said, it does not initially preclude somebody from York County that’s outgrown their space and they pick up the phone and call us. I don’t actively market myself to York County or Lancaster County, however, if they contact us and are looking for space, we’ll treat it like any other project,” he said.
“And we do have a few of those kind of projects like that: they’re in 20,000 square feet, they want to buy some land they want to build 50,000 square feet and the cost of land is a lot more expensive in Rock Hill and if they also look where their workers come from oftentimes, a lot of their workers are actually coming from Chester. So it makes a lot of sense for them to buy land and to relocate. We have a couple of projects in that category right now, and at least one of them is getting close to acquiring land at Colonel’s Point. So we’ll hopefully have more to say about that in the very near future,” Long said.
Economic Development has about 52 active projects currently, he said. He and Assistant Director Phillips are out in the field on a daily basis, “trying to generate leads for us as a community. There are some counties and I won’t name names, who sit back and wait for projects to be brought them. That’s not us. We are out there constantly shaking the bushes to look for opportunities that are good fits for Chester County.
“We have had some really good announcements this year, obviously, we’ll talk a little bit more about Albemarle in just a moment. But we decided to close out a couple of projects, we’ve finalized the incentives for Rutabaga, which is Birdseye Rrenewable, the solar farm project over in the Fort Lawn area, “The one caveat I always give there is I never want to give up good industrial land for solar, but if it’s an area that has no other infrastructure, all they need is access to a transmission line. This particular site is also topographically challenged on top of that, so it’s not good industrial property. So this is a case where a solar project makes good sense for that location over in Fort Lawn,” he said.
With the announcement of IKO Industries, the economic development investment is already over $1.8 billion, bringing in 1100 jobs, and based on what is already in the pipeline, Long expects the capital investment will be over $2 billion by the end of the year.
In economic development terms for incentives for industry there are four Tier designations for counties: Tier One is a fully developed county, such as York County — Chester County is a Tier Four county. The recent Albermarle industry announcement is the largest capital investment in a Tier Four county in the history of South Carolina. In fact, Long reported, out of the top seven largest capital investment projects in the history of the state for Tier II/Tier IV, four of the seven are in Chester County and three of those came about in the last couple of years, Long said.
