A Savannah programmer plans to build an 880-acre industrial park in rural South Carolina with the aim of attracting manufacturers and distributors for cargo moving through a port across the land line in Georgia.
Northward Point Real Estate, going by the proper name SALT Land Holdings LLC, paid nearly $eight.eight 1000000 in Dec for property in Hardeeville known as the Sherwood Tract, co-ordinate to Jasper Canton property records. "Table salt" is an acronym for the industrial park's Southward Atlantic Logistics Terminal moniker.
The programmer said it volition invest roughly $200 one thousand thousand to build upwardly to 6 1000000 square feet of manufacturing, warehouse and distribution space in an initial phase that's expected to create 550 jobs in a historically poor part of the country that's been chosen the "Corridor of Shame." Applied science drawings show as many as 22 warehouses eventually could be built at the Lowcountry site, which is next to a CSX Corp. runway line.
"Information technology is encouraging to see this type of investment that will play a pivotal role in attracting hereafter investment in this corridor,” Marty Sauls, chairman of the Southern Carolina Regional Development Brotherhood, said in a written argument. "Sites like this 1 will create more opportunity and bring loftier-quality jobs for the difficult-working citizens of South Carolina."
The alliance, an industrial recruiter that sold the property to North Point, filed an awarding May 16 — and revised on June ii — with the Regular army Corps of Engineers for a let to fill about 48 acres of wetlands to develop the site. In commutation, the economic development grouping has proposed preserving 510 acres of wetlands and 102 acres of upland buffers and purchasing an boosted 407 acres in a mitigation bank.
The Regular army Corps in Charleston is accepting public comments on the proposal through June 21.
A backlog of permit applications could delay the final decision, said Danny Black, CEO of the Southern Carolina Alliance.
"They're telling u.s. it could be 8 to 10 months before they tin get the permit finished," Black said. "We're doing everything we can to attempt to speed upward that procedure. Then, we're in a property position, only we're besides laying out all the infrastructure — the h2o and sewer, the gas lines and the power lines. It's all being engineered every bit nosotros speak."
Depending on economic weather condition, Blackness said the park could see its first tenant in 2023. Blackness said the goal is to attract a mix of manufacturing and distribution.
"We don't want information technology all to be logistics," he said.
A spokesman for North Point could not be reached for annotate last calendar week.
Hardeeville Mayor Harry Williams said the industrial park "volition forever change the landscape" of the property that's along U.S. Highway 17 and Interstate 95, about five miles from the edge with Georgia.
"This critical corridor ... will exist known as the road to success for hundreds of the region’s workforce, who are looking to achieve a higher quality of life with good paying jobs (previously) unavailable in this part of the country," Williams said. "It volition likewise be a valuable source of new funding for our schools, who are looking to attract the best teachers in the land."
Jasper County Council has provided belongings revenue enhancement breaks for the project that volition reduce its cess to vi percent from the usual ten.5 percent rate S Carolina charges to businesses. Up to xl pct of that corporeality can be refunded to the developer to help pay for infrastructure costs.
State Sen. Tom Davis, a Republican who represents Jasper and Beaufort counties, is also working with the brotherhood to go funding for an upgraded water and wastewater system that would serve the Sherwood Tract and other sites in an effort to spur development. State lawmakers have set bated $1 billion from pandemic relief funds that will go to the S.C. Rural Infrastructure Authority to modernize water systems statewide. Davis said he hopes some of that money volition go toward the SALT projection.
Davis has been a key proponent for a new seaport to be built in Jasper County forth the Savannah River. While that project has stalled, he said maritime operations in Savannah increasingly involve holding on the South Carolina side of the waterway, and distribution centers like the ones North Point plans to build will create employment opportunities and ameliorate the quality of life for local residents.
The General Associates also hopes to divert some of the cargo moving through Lowcountry warehouses to the Port of Charleston, which is about 90 miles from the Sherwood Tract. A law passed in 2019 gives businesses annual tax credits of up to $3 million apiece to beginning the cost of transporting goods to and from Charleston's port.
Due north Point is buying a portion of the sprawling Sherwood Tract, which totals almost i,437 acres. In 2019, the S.C. Country Ports Authority paid $5 million for 435 acres in the tract that are split from the new industrial park project. That coin came from a state budget appropriation designed to evidence Southward Carolina's commitment toward building a seaport forth the Savannah River chosen the Jasper Ocean Terminal. The property was transferred to the Southward Carolina Alliance for futurity industrial development.
North Bespeak already has a pair of industrial sites in Georgia. Its Westward Betoken Logistics Center has virtually 600 acres of developable country about 22 miles from the Garden City Terminal in Savannah. Ottawa Farms in Bloomingdale, Ga., has another 600 acres about 14 miles from the Port of Georgia.
