Auto park hailed as economic milestone

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But with the news that Clemson University has struck a deal to develop an automotive research park in Greenville, the state has taken its first big step toward a new way of developing its economy: leveraging its research universities into high-paying, high-tech jobs.

Other states, including Georgia and North Carolina, began doing that decades ago, and they're reaping the benefits today as innovations by professors and graduate students flow into the private sector, creating high-tech spin-offs and luring corporate research facilities.

With the announcement of the auto park, South Carolina has joined the game, backers of high-tech development said Thursday. They hailed the project as a milestone in the state's economic history.

"I think this is as significant as the Port of Charleston in its time, as significant as the original BMW announcement," said Harry Lightsey III, president of BellSouth's South Carolina operations. "This has the potential to put South Carolina on the map as a leading place for automotive research, which is just incredible."

Lightsey headed a panel created by former Gov. Jim Hodges to explore ways of developing the high-tech sector.

"This is exactly the kind of opportunity that we've been talking about," he said. "It fits together all the pieces of the puzzle."

Doug Woodward, research economist at the University of South Carolina, said the research park, dubbed the International Center for Automotive Research, "goes beyond just providing incentives for the next branch plant that comes along.

"I think in a lot of ways this is a step towards a new form of economic development in this state that hopefully will involve other universities, including my own," Woodward said.

Clemson has been planning a research presence in Greenville for more than three years as part of President Jim Barker's plan to make the school a top 20 public university.

But it hadn't officially committed to a site until Wednesday, when it said the park would go on 400 acres along Interstate 85 in southern Greenville County near the intersection with Laurens Road.

Clemson said its real estate foundation would buy about 103 acres at the site for $6.9 million by June 30 and has options to buy nearly 150 more acres by 2007 for $14 million.

Miami developer Cliff Rosen will develop an additional 150 acres wrapped around the Clemson site.

Clemson says the park will include a graduate school of automotive engineering that will serve as a magnet to draw the research facilities of automotive, motorsports and high-tech companies and possibly the federal government.

The university said the project "promises to make Upstate South Carolina a hub of the nation's automotive and motorsports industry."

Gov. Mark Sanford and Commerce Secretary Bob Faith said Wednesday that more details would be released during a separate announcement next month, including the park's "anchor tenants."

BMW Manufacturing Corp., the official name of the automaker's Greer plant, has announced a $10 million gift to endow professorships at the proposed graduate school. Also, BMW helped secure $25 million to construct the graduate school by making that amount part of what it got from state officials in exchange for a 400-worker, $400 million expansion at its Greer plant.

In July, a Microsoft Corp. spokesman has said Microsoft may play a role in the park, conducting high-tech research there in conjunction with BMW.

Greenville businessman JohnWarner, an activist for high-tech development, said the auto park will go a long way toward educating the public.

"It's one thing to talk about university/industry partnerships," Warner said. "It's another thing to have a tangible example. You can drive out to the Hollingsworth property and see where it's going to be."

Much of the park site is currently owned by the estate of the late John D. Hollingsworth.

Warner said the key to developing the high-tech sector is recruiting talented people.

Columbia businessman James E. Clark agreed. He said South Carolina should figure out a way to retain highly trained talent — such as his former colleagues at NCR Corp. who left Columbia to work with Dell Computer Corp. in Texas.

"You've got to nurture a company like NCR," said Clark, who was NCR's chief technical officer before launching NextUp Ventures, a high-tech business incubator in Columbia. "I'd say 10 of the top 12 startups in this area (Columbia) can trace their lineage back to NCR."

Wall Street financier and Lake City native Darla Moore said the auto park is the "future of the state" and a "break with the past, where we would go out and try to recruit companies to just come in and build a plant."

Moore said the park will help create an auto industry "cluster," but she warned that the public needs to understand that this kind of economic development "is a long-term strategy. This is not going to happen next year. But if we don't do this, it will never happen."

Moore last year joined with other high-profile South Carolinians to create the Palmetto Institute to explore ways of raising South Carolina's per capita personal income.

Backers of high-tech development say research-oriented developments such as the auto park are crucial to the state's economic future because, in the new global economy, South Carolina can no longer win the race to be "low-cost producer" of manufactured goods.

They want South Carolina to move beyond the "branch plant" economy and do more to develop the "knowledge-based" sector — a term that refers to industries such as biotechnology, telecommunications and computing that employ advanced technology and a highly educated work force.

South Carolina's longtime focus on industrial recruitment has left it as one of the most industrialized states, but with an average personal income below the national average.

"We've been real good at recruiting industry, but the world today has changed," said Peter Arnoti, Greenwood County's economic development director. "We are living in an economy that is driven by research and innovation and technology. Today, how much water and sewer capacity we have may not be as important as how much intellectual capacity we have."

Arnoti initiated Greenwood County's push to develop the biotech industry as a way to diversify its traditional manufacturing base. He aims to leverage cutting-edge research at the Greenwood Genetic Center into startup biotech companies.

Five years into the effort, he's got a fledgling biotech venture in a state-sponsored "incubator" for startups in Greenwood. The incubator is the first of a series of incubators that the South Carolina Biotechnology Incubation Program envisions across the state.

The auto park planning began during the Hodges administration, and got a big break last year, when state lawmakers earmarked $30 million in annual lottery proceeds to endow new research professorships at South Carolina's three research universities.

To be eligible, the universities — Clemson, the University of South Carolina and the Medical University of South Carolina — must secure private matching funds and demonstrate how their proposals will promote economic development.

So far, $15 million of the lottery money has been earmarked to endow professorships at the graduate school planned for the auto park.

Another $20 million has been designated to support research initiatives at USC and MUSC in various disciplines, and $6 million more has been put toward a collaborative venture in regenerative medicine by Clemson, USC and MUSC.