Investment by foreign countries might help punch hole in South Carolina's poverty belt

from the Charleston Post Courier

By Doug Pardue , Adam Parker

PROVIDENCE — Dahl Shuler steps down from hammering in roof trusses on a new concession stand for the Purple Hurricanes baseball diamond at Providence United Methodist Church. The stand is about the only new construction around this tiny crossroads community amid the vast farmlands of eastern Orangeburg County.

From this vantage point, you'd never know that Providence sits at the middle of what Orangeburg County economic development officials have dubbed the Global Logistics Triangle, a huge chunk of the county bordered by interstates 26 and 95 and U.S. Highway 301.

If county planners have their way, Providence will soon be bustling, as it hosts a mammoth inland port, factory and office complex serving not only the Port of Charleston but also companies shipping products up and down the East Coast.

It could bring thousands of jobs and do what nothing has done before: End the high unemployment that has kept this county strapped in the poverty belt that runs along I-95 from Georgia to North Carolina and forms a semi-circle around the Charleston metropolitan area.

Orangeburg's dream may be on the verge of coming true with two massive projects proposed for Orangeburg County: One is a 1,300-acre land deal in which Jafza International, a division of Dubai World, the mega Persian Gulf trading company, plans to build an inland port and office complex. Earlier this month, Jafza opened its North American headquarters in Charleston.

The other project is a 1,200-acre land deal in which a Charleston-based company, World Trade City Orangeburg LLC, plans to build a massive business center and bring in Chinese manufacturing and assembly plants. Together the two projects could bring investments of up to $2 billion over 10 to 15 years and thousands of jobs.

"Get ready for the incoming tsunami of trade," says Gregg Robinson, executive director of the Orangeburg County Development Commission. "I want every child in Orangeburg County to know when they finish high school they have a job in the Logistics Triangle."

Shuler offers a more sober perspective.

He runs a construction company and says the influx of money and construction will be good for him. But his two brothers are farmers, and he worries that all the investment and increases in land value will kill the farming nature of eastern Orangeburg County. "They see what one guy sold a 100 acres for, a million dollars, and you think, 'I'll just sell mine,' " he says.

Shuler says he's happy that the companies might bring badly needed jobs, but adds, "I'm scared of the Chinese and Arabs" and the change they could bring to this county's lifestyle.

He gazes across the baseball diamond. He used to play here as a kid. He was catcher. His kids play here.

He built the concession stand for the church baseball diamond without profit.

"Everything is volunteer in these places," he says. "Things aren't going to be the same."

Reward for a lot of work

Robinson smiles a lot when he talks about what's happening. This is what Orangeburg County has been waiting for forever, he says. And it's the product of years of work getting money, strong political leadership and cooperation between county, city and town governments to lay down the costly but necessary combination of water, sewer, power, roads, rail access and available land to finally take advantage of the county's position astride two interstates.

The result is what he calls "fertile soil conditions" — a readiness to plant the seeds of economic growth.

James E. Clyburn, the powerful U.S. House Majority Whip who represents the Orangeburg area in Congress, says the effort really got under way in the early 1990s when he set out with county and community officials to get one thing much of the area lacked: clean drinking water. That led to sewer systems and the other basics that businesses and industry need.

But it also took something outside the county's control: a surge in international business, which many expect will bring a flood of imports through the Port of Charleston and other nearby ports, bound for cities across the eastern United States. And Orangeburg County sits at the center of that.

For years that position gave this county no advantage. Its list of negatives is long, including a massive economic disparity between its majority black population and minority whites, one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation, and poverty gripping more than one in four residents.

While some in the county worry that the newcomers will change the county's rural character, Robinson disagrees. "We've got plenty of land," he says. Besides — and this is a theme he and his team repeat again and again — "poverty is not acceptable."

"This is an opportunity for Orangeburg to turn the corner," he says. "If we fail to deliver, we're missing a golden opportunity."

And missing is not an option.

"I want children in Orangeburg County to know that when they finish high school or college, they can stay at home and work," Robinson says.

Other residents of the county say any change is welcome if they can get good jobs in the county.

That has not been an option for many in Orangeburg who must commute to Columbia or Charleston, each about an hour away.

Marion Cain, 37, a route salesman for Sara Lee, says he would jump at the chance to work in a factory or plant. He's done it before. The area needs more industry, he says.

Cain's colleague, Tyrone Johnson, 37, figured that his military training would help him land a good job and support his two sons and daughter. "Family, that's why I came here," he says.

His wife has no choice but to commute. She's a flight attendant based in Charlotte. But the airline allows her to work out of the Columbia airport, a 40-mile drive.

"Coming here, you have to have a plan," Johnson says. The promise of good jobs from new international businesses could make it a lot easier to call Orangeburg home.

Jessica Roberts, 24, is part of the Gina's Housekeeping team that cleans the Santee Wire Products facility on Vance Road and other buildings in the county. Surely, new development would bring more work, she says.

"Orangeburg's been needing change for a long time," she says. "Orangeburg needs to be really on the map."

Homer Spencer, 45, fills out a job application at the South Carolina Employment Security Commission. Spencer does a little landscaping and painting work, when he can find it, but wants something steady. He worked part-time for most of last year at Koyo, a bearing manufacturer, but such jobs often are temporary or seasonal. The planned inland port sounds good.

"I'm waiting on that," he says.

At what price?

Walter Dantzler's family has farmed near Providence for generations, but he's worried that the industry could be threatened by all the incoming development and people. He's concerned about "how it will affect our way of life, and the way we do things. You have to understand our way of life. All we do is farm."

He, his son and four employees grow corn, cotton, wheat, soybeans and peanuts and raise beef cattle on some 3,500 acres spread over 10 miles of eastern Orangeburg County. Some of the land butts up to what would become Jafza's inland port.

He's worried about increased traffic on the rural farm roads that his farm equipment travels as he and his workers move between fields. Already, he says, drivers unfamiliar with farming grow increasingly intolerant of his slow-moving equipment. He's worried about safety.

And he's worried about the influx of people into a farming community, people who aren't used to the dust and noise that farming naturally creates, or the smell of hogs and cattle and chickens.

He's suspicious about all the concern over unemployment. He says the biggest problem for him and other farmers is finding people willing to work. He says he pays salaries "much higher than minimum wage," and provides health benefits and performance bonuses.

Still, he says, he can't get all the workers he needs. Perhaps they think farming is back-bending work, but it's not really like that any more. Today, farmers run high-tech machines with air-conditioned cabs.

Dantzler worries most about the price of land. With all the development and speculation going on, he says, some land already is selling for as much as $3,500 an acre. Soon, he says, it will be next to impossible for him to buy additional farm land, and renting land to farm at a profit may be even harder.