The Laurens County Development Corporation (LCDC) yesterday discussed proposals for it’s involvement in constructing two Industrial “Spec” buildings, using long-term financing from Santee Cooper. The City of Clinton Economic Development Corporation would participate with a 50,000 square foot building in the Clinton Corporate Park, while the Laurens Commission of Public Works (CPW) would be involved with the LCDC and Santee Cooper on a 100,000 square foot building in the Hunter Industrial Park. The LCDC Board came out of executive session discussions and announced it was deferring action on it’s participation until the proposals go before County Council.
We asked Clinton City Manager Frank Stovall out their plans. “The City of Clinton would like to see a 50,000 square foot spec building which seems to be the type of building that the State Department of Commerce will tell you is most needed in the area, built along our interstate frontage. We have an industrial park section on the interstate that we think is a great place for a business to be, that can access the inland port, they can access the port in Charleston. They are close enough to major population areas of Charlotte and Atlanta to be able to get a truck there and back in a day. It’s a perfect spot to build this type of industrial shell building and give us a great opportunity to prime the pump for economic development in our city.”
We asked Laurens CPW General Manager Dale Satterfield about the commissions plans. “The thing is, we’ve had many prospects at the Hunter Industrial Park, and while we’ve got a prepared site there, that doesn’t have a building on it. We continue to lose projects to existing buildings. We’re trying to find some way that we can get a building up there and we feel confident that it will draw in prospects and we believe that it will bring jobs and opportunities to the county.” Satterfield noted the larger building in Laurens would provide different opportunities for industrial development without competing with the sites in Owings and Clinton. “Well the idea with the 100,000 square foot is that you don’t need competing buildings in the county. You have prospects that are looking for building sizes in the 50,000 range, but you also have quite a number of prospects looking at a 100,000 square foot building, hoping to expand to 200,000, so we would try to fill that niche.”
The City of Clinton is anticipating $1.8 million for its 50,000 square foot building. The Laurens CPW is anticipating $2.5 to $3 million for its 100,000 square foot structure.
The financing offered by Santee Cooper requires no payments on the loans for 3 years, followed by interest only payments until the 10th year.