Orangeburg, S.C. State fund study for long-planned research and education park

By Dan McCue
Staff Writer

Orangeburg County and S.C. State University will split the $97,500 cost of a study to determine the feasibility of developing a World Trade Park and Education Research Center somewhere in the vicinity of the county’s global logistics triangle.



Less defined is the role of the third major partner in the project, the S.C. World Trade Center, which has received $197,000 for three years from the Legislature starting in fiscal year 2005 for the research park, also known as WT-PERC.



“We anticipate that the World Trade Center will provide wrap-around services once the study is complete,” said Barbara Dilligard, the director of the project, who once championed the effort as a contractor with the SCWTC, but is now working with Orangeburg County.



“That’s a great way to describe our role,” said Belinda Davis, executive director of the trade center, at the March 20 press conference announcing the start of the feasibility study.



Dilligard said those “wrap-around services” would entail tasks related to disseminating the study’s findings.



No one offered an estimate of how much those services would cost. The trade center has been facing declining income for the past three years and started 2007 owing more than $20,000.



A portion of the money has already been invested in globalMARKETS, the trade center’s Internet-based high school education program that is now part of the curriculum in several high schools across the state.



The six-month study will be conducted by ANGLE Technology Group of Portsmouth, Va., and will seek to quantify those attributes of Orangeburg County that might prove attractive to prospective investors in the area.



According to its Web site, ANGLE is an international management and consulting company with a focus on technology commercialization and economic development.



Past projects include feasibility studies for other research parks and business incubators, including a 350-acre science and technology park in Qatar and a business incubator at Norfolk State University in Virginia.



Robert H. Rhea, senior executive of the consultancy, said the study in Orangeburg County will be an inventory of such strength as Orangeburg’s connectivity to the region’s transportation system and its wealth of institutions of higher learning and include a financial and economic impact analysis of the area.



His research team also will strive to provide local officials with data intended to help them better direct resources to projects with the most potential.



While some of the analysis will include much of the same material already known to and used by economic developers in the region, Rhea said his company hopes to compliment and corroborate past analysis by the Orangeburg Chamber of Commerce, the state and others, and not merely to duplicate them.



Over the years, a number of locations have been proposed for a research and educational facility on 3,000 contiguous acres, but as the feasibility study gets under way no specific parcel has been identified for the project.



“At this point it could be on three different parcels or it could be in pieces at multiple locations,” Dilligard said.



S.C. State and the trade center have been working on the project since 2003, and formally entered into a collaboration agreement in 2006.



Davis, who became executive director of the S.C. World Trade Center last year, said the origination has three foundational pillars: trade services, innovation and education.



“The WT-PERC is touching every one of those underpinnings,” she said.



Of the continuing partnership, S.C. State University interim President Leonard A. McIntyre said, “We know that working together we can make an even greater contribution to economic development in the region and beyond. We believe in the mission of the World

Trade Park and the Education Research Center. We are committed to this project, and we

will do all we can to ensure its success.”



The project will include:

• An education and job-training center to provide high school students and college students with hands-on experience in logistics and supply-chain management.



• A manufacturing and distribution component intended to provide students with an avenue into the industry after graduation.



• An outlet mall and other retail components.



In addition, a logistics transportation center will serve as the intermodal component of the proposed, $70 million James E. Clyburn Transportation Research and Conference Center.



That facility is seen as being comparable to Clemson University’s International Center for Automotive Research, or ICAR, the public-private collaboration between Clemson University and BMW, which now includes a number of automotive-related companies as partners.



Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@scbiznews.com.