Penny sales tax approval would aid in genesis of Greenwood business park
Call it Greenwood County’s field of dreams.
One hundred and forty acres of grassland off S.C. Highway 25 purchased by the County Council in March 2015 for $645,000 as host site of a modern business park to satisfy the needs of prospective job creators.
All that’s missing is voter approval of an $8.4 million plan through a special sales tax to finance a project that county economic development leaders said is critical if Greenwood hopes to remain a viable landing spot for private investment.
That question will appear on November’s ballot as a part of a larger referendum item seeking $87.93 million in sales tax revenue across eight years to pay for capital improvement ventures across the county.
If approved, a 100,000-square-foot speculative building and site preparation on 31.7 acres — including the development of roads, extension of utility lines, signage, lighting and landscaping — would be the 10th of 27 projects slated for completion in the proposal.
“We are basically out of product in Greenwood County. We’re seeing a decline in our ability to respond to requests for information for industrial prospects,” said Theo Lane, a member of the Greenwood Area Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors who is running for a seat on County Council. “I just think it’s critically important because you can’t show what you don’t have to show.”
Similar to a model home in a subdivision that is open to prospective buyers, officials said they think the spec building would give investors a tangible structure they can use to determine whether Greenwood is a good fit for them.
“Labor availability and existing buildings or sites are always in the Top 10 criteria for site selectors,” said James Bateman, business development manager at the Greenwood Partnership Alliance, the county’s economic development arm.
According to the project’s application, Greenwood is at a “distinct disadvantage” when it comes to available prime industrial land.
“Presently, there are 22 speculative industrial buildings available in the state. Two counties adjoining Greenwood each offer a speculative building,” Greenwood Partnership Alliance CEO Heather Simmons Jones wrote in the application.
Jones and other backers of the business park see it as a companion to Piedmont Technical College’s $6 million proposal to construct a 47,000-square-foot center for advanced manufacturing. That project is listed first among projects to be covered by the proposed penny sales tax.
“The Piedmont Tech project is all about being able to assure to industrial prospects that we can fill the seat in their plants with educated and prepared workers, but my concern is right now, if we’re seeing a decline in visits from site selection officials, I don’t want to see a greater lag created,” Lane said.
Although County Manager Toby Chappell has said the ordering is not a ranking of importance, Jones and others worry that pushing the spec building’s construction back to 2019 or beyond could have a negative impact.
One option, she said, would be for the council to bond out the business park’s development now and use tax revenues to pay it down in future years.
“It’s a very widely used way of doing projects that get the nod through a referendum or another approval process, but may not get the funding immediately,” she said. “At some point, the reputation of the community as being visionary and having product and addressing the needs of economic development gets out there, and that perception becomes reality. Here we are working on the promise, they’re expecting us to have vision, they’re expecting us to be leading.”
Right now, Greenwood’s most attractive large-scale industrial site is the former Titan Wheel International Building at the county airport, which needs nearly $6 million worth of work to make it suitable for use. Between June 2014 and June 2016, at least 20 projects were lost for Greenwood because of a lack of product, and 19 requests for information were never submitted because of a dearth of building space.
Bateman said those 39 losses translates to $1.5 billion in unrealized capital and nearly 4,500 jobs lost to the county.
“There is none (inventory), and it’s shrinking to less than none if that’s possible,” he said.
Contact reporter Adam Benson at 864-943-5650 or on Twitter @ABensonIJ.
Originally Published by Index-Journal on:Aug 31, 2016
By ADAM BENSON abenson@indexjournal.com
Date: Article Link: https://www.indexjournal.com/news/penny-sales-tax-approval-would-aid-in-genesis-of-greenwood-business-park/article_e6291f2c-744d-5156-9626-866090b4c540.html
