106 replies to this topic

[krazeeboi]

Morihiko Nakahara, conductor of the S.C. Philharmonic, believes he could help recruit new industry by showing off the Midlands’ depth in the arts. Nakahara’s pitch here for the arts: You have all the staples – orchestras, art museums, ballet companies – to go along with the fringe arts you could find in a college town. “We have a lot to offer. We’re an engine that could play an important part.”

[krazeeboi]

Back at the end of October, state commerce secretary Joe Taylor ran an editorial in The State about why he though the proposed penny transportation tax was bad for business in Columbia and Richland County. I'm posting the link here instead of in the other thread because he directly relates the tax to economic development potential.

Although I know it's beyond his sphere of influence, I don't think one can talk about high(er) taxes in the city of Columbia in particular without taking into account how the state's restrictive annexation laws hamstring the city. Columbia may have a population of ~125K, but it has a tax base about the size of Rock Hill's, which is half its size. That's what having tons of tax-exempt properties (state offices, USC, Ft. Jackson, hospitals, etc.) within a city that can't reasonably expand its borders will do.

[CorgiMatt]

In their Money section today USA Today provides their usual Moody's survey on projected job growth.  Moody's projects metro Columbia will have 2.4% job growth over the next year.

http://www.usatoday....h-graphic_N.htm

[krazeeboi]

It's good to see all of SC's metros at 2.0% growth and above.

[krazeeboi]

With news that Charlotte-based Duke Energy is acquiring Raleigh-based Progress Energy, does this mean that Duke's sights will be set southward towards SCANA next?

[vicupstate]

My thoughts exactly krazee.  I wonder if Greenville (and other cities) negotiate some help with burying lines underground in order to support the merger?  I'd rather see that than an $2 a month rate reduction  myself.

[Spartan]

Ugh, I hope not. SC companies need to stay in SC.

[krazeeboi]

Well there was already speculation that SCANA's CEO (who lives in Charlotte) was helping the company to look more attractive by moving it from downtown to a brand-new suburban campus. Plus there's already a history of Charlotte-based companies acquiring SC-based companies in the banking field so this would really be no different.

[Spartan]

If that happens, let's just go ahead and merge the Carolinas back together. There's really no point in having two if all of our businesses are going to be operated out of Charlotte. [/bitterness]

[krazeeboi]

krazeeboi, on 20 November 2010 - 02:06 PM, said:

Back at the end of October, state commerce secretary Joe Taylor ran an editorial in The State about why he though the proposed penny transportation tax was bad for business in Columbia and Richland County. I'm posting the link here instead of in the other thread because he directly relates the tax to economic development potential.

Although I know it's beyond his sphere of influence, I don't think one can talk about high(er) taxes in the city of Columbia in particular without taking into account how the state's restrictive annexation laws hamstring the city. Columbia may have a population of ~125K, but it has a tax base about the size of Rock Hill's, which is half its size. That's what having tons of tax-exempt properties (state offices, USC, Ft. Jackson, hospitals, etc.) within a city that can't reasonably expand its borders will do.

I moved this post from the general economic developments thread to this thread, mainly because I wanted to discuss the above in conjunction with a recent article in The State about this issue. Essentially, it asks whether the city of Columbia and Richland County are expensive places to do business, particularly compared to neighboring counties and in-state peer jurisdictions. The article begins with:

Quote

Property tax rates, coupled with business license fees, sales taxes and expensive delays in the permitting process, make Columbia and Richland County arguably the most expensive places in the state to do business, critics say.

It’s why big job announcements, like Boeing and Amazon.com, have not come their way.

Instead, they go to Charleston or Greenville, which have slightly lower taxes and fees and still offer the amenities of a city. Or they go to Lexington County, where taxes and fees are a lot lower. Since 2009, four major companies have invested nearly $80 million in Lexington County, just across the Congaree River from Columbia’s amenities, with promises of 1,600 new jobs.

While I do think there is a valid point to be made here (and the article goes on to make it), I don't think the entire story is necessarily being told here. Even with a comparable tax structure, why would Boeing come to the Midlands when there is already a burgeoning aerospace cluster in the Lowcountry? As far as Amazon.com goes, officials from that company outlined their reasons for choosing Lexington County which seemed to revolve around the availability of construction-ready land on a certified site more than anything else. Also, it's important to note that large economic developments in the state, which tend to be of the manufacturing or warehouse/distribution sort, very rarely occur in the city proper of the larger cities. They typically go to unincorporated parts of the county. Companies that locate within the city proper usually have specific reasons for doing so and they also tend to be office-type jobs, and Columbia gets its fair share of those. However, I do think that it's imperative that Richland County have more industrial sites available for companies that might want to locate large-scale developments within the county or partner with neighboring counties for joint industrial parks.

[CorgiMatt]

When you look at a map of metro Columbia, it's obvious that we would have a very lopsided situation if just as many manufacturing sites weren't being developed in Lexington County as in Richland County.  The beltway that Columbia sits in the middle of extends equally into Richland and Lexington counties.  The local media have been guilty of making the region's recent economic development an "us versus them" thing instead of thinking of the recent Lexington County developments as being metro Columbia developments.  If they were Lexington County developments first and foremost, wouldn't more of the big ones be locating closer to the town of Lexington than on sites with quick access to the highway system surrounding Columbia?  I realize the reader has to bear with me to get through this post.  I'm tired.  Good night.

[krazeeboi]

You have a point Corgi. Obviously Lexington County doesn't exist in a vacuum and attributes much of its economic success to being a core county within the Columbia metro area. But local media highlighting such issues certainly isn't unique to Columbia; you'll hear occasional ballyhooing in the Charlotte Observer when certain companies chose the panhandle of Lancaster County or York County in which to locate as opposed to Charlotte proper or Mecklenburg County. Here in the Atlanta metro, it's the same thing with Gwinnett and Cobb counties vs. Atlanta and Fulton County.

[krazeeboi]

To add to the discussion, the article is mainly talking about large-scale economic developments like manufacturing and warehousing/distribution, which, to be honest, isn't Columbia's forte anyway. A big project here and there is well and good, but I don't think it's the most effective strategy for Columbia to hang its hat on primarily luring those sorts of developments anyway. The article said it best:

Quote

Columbia and Richland County leaders don’t dispute the assertion of how expensive they are. They admit they have a hard time competing for large manufacturing jobs with less-urbanized areas that offer lower taxes.

As an alternative, they are developing a long-term strategy to encourage more small businesses and attract corporate offices for larger companies, such as insurance giant Aflac, which last week announced plans to hire 100 more people at its Columbia offices...

Benjamin knows landing “an elephant,” or a large industrial employer, is unlikely for the city because the taxes are too high and the city can’t provide a big enough building.

Instead, Benjamin prefers to focus on the city’s “sweet spot.”

“Office developments, regional headquarters, national headquarters — and make sure we have good A and B office space to accommodate them,” he said.

These are the types of developments--more white-collar and knowledge-based--that tend to propel a city into the next tier and generate wealth (e.g., Raleigh, Austin). Columbia would definitely do well to go this route instead and harness the power of its educational institutions to do so.

[krazeeboi]

Two of the six or eight companies seeking regulatory review and licenses for their small modular reactor designs told Columbia leaders Tuesday that if they build a factory to manufacture the small-scale nuclear power units, Columbia would be at the top of their list for such a facility.

The Obama administration is proposing a demonstration project funded with $450 million that would be divided between two reactors, with matching funds from private investors. That would put the minimum investment for an operational demonstration project at $450 million.

S.C. Electric and Gas Co., the Savannah River National Laboratory near Aiken and several small modular reactor designers are interested in bringing one of the demonstration projects to the region. Potential sites for such a project include the Savannah River Site, the Parr site owned by SCE&G at Jenkinsville, or a major military base in the region, such as Fort Jackson.

[krazeeboi]

About 400-450 people will assemble in Columbia this weekend to discuss and learn about ultrasound medical technology. Ultrasound images give doctors and nurses a noninvasive look at organs, vascular systems, bones and other tissues that previously could be seen only through surgery.

The World Congress on Ultrasound in Medical Education has attracted registrations from more than 20 countries and holds the prospect of making Columbia and the University of South Carolina’s School of Medicine a world center for ultrasound education, research and development, said Dr. Richard Hoppmann, dean of the USC School of Medicine and one of the hosts of the conference. Hoppmann also said that the USC School of Medicine is fast becoming a center of ultrasound excellence.

Hoppmann hopes that having top executives of major medical equipment manufacturers such as GE and Siemens in attendance could lead to economic development opportunities for South Carolina. “This is why it is so important to have a first-class world conference here,” he said. “I think the time is right. The handheld devices alone are projected to become a $1 billion-per-year business in just a few years.”

[krazeeboi]

The Columbia region's insurance technology and services industry generates more than $4.9 billion in annual sales with a nearly $6.7 billion total annual economic impact for the state of South Carolina, according to a study released today.

Regional employment in the industry is approximately 15,000, at an average salary of $62,000, according to the report.

iTsSC is currently working to promote Columbia's leadership in the industry at a national level. The group will recruit new talent to the area and address the short-term shortage of IT workers in the region, the organization said in announcing the impact study.

The report can be accessed here.

[CorgiMatt]

I think it's safe to say Columbia isn't just USC, Fort Jackson and state government.

[krazeeboi]

And this is why I think Columbia needs to make a play for the Aflac headquarters. Columbia offers a good bit more than Columbus (GA) and there's already class A office space available for them in the Palmetto Center. It only helps that they've been more successful in Columbia than they originally thought they would be when they acquired Continental American Insurance.

[Chi2Midlands]

krazeeboi, on 07 March 2012 - 11:43 PM, said:

And this is why I think Columbia needs to make a play for the Aflac headquarters. Columbia offers a good bit more than Columbus (GA) and there's already class A office space available for them in the Palmetto Center. It only helps that they've been more successful in Columbia than they originally thought they would be when they acquired Continental American Insurance.

This sounds good on paper, but Aflac is still controlled by the founding Amos family, and so I would assume as good corporate citizens they will keep the HQ in Columbus, GA.  Also keep in mind that Columbus is as close to Atlanta as Columbia is to Charlotte, so the issue of getting to a large hub airport is a wash at best.  Of course, that doesn't mean they won't expand operations here in the Midlands, it's just that I think it may be a bit unrealistic to think Aflac may move here.

If we're going to land another big insurance HQ, I say we go for the moon and go after a global player.  One that comes to mind is Allianz from Germany.  Their current Life Insurance North American HQ is in Minneapolis, and has other operations in bigger global cities like Chicago, Dallas, LA, & New York, but if we could market Columbia as a deep insurance talent base that has lower costs and is close to Charlotte and it's already established flights to Munich (which already serves as an unofficial "BMW Shuttle" from the Upstate), it may be worth a shot.

The problem with global insurance/risk management is that it is more intimately connected with global finance, and as such may see more value in locating its higher-value operations in large, established global cities like NY, London, LA, etc.  This is different from manufacturing where a smaller and/or less developed but otherwise economically ambitious region can punch above their weight (as the Upstate has done very well over the last 20 years; Nashville also got Nissan to relocate its NA HQ from California) because manufacturing can find value in more greenfield locations.  What that means is that if we can't get a big global player to land their North American HQ here, then at least we should try to get a large regional operation.  Something like how Chase has big operation in Columbus, Ohio (a city I think we should try to emulate more).  Another European insurance firm I can think of is Zurich.

[krazeeboi]

Ahhh, good info on Aflac. The distance from Columbia to Charlotte being about the same as from Columbus to Atlanta was a point I thought of as well, but perhaps some flights could be taken out of CAE which certainly has a busier airport than Columbus's. But it sounds like it's a non-starter.

I also think that Columbia should take some plays out of Columbus, OH's playbook, as that city is like a larger Midwestern counterpart of Columbia, both being centrally located state capitals home to huge universities, located along a river, having large insurance clusters, and even being named after the same person.

Good points overall.